What is your back-office really costing you?
Add up the true cost of running bookkeeping, payroll, IT and compliance in-house — then see an indicative comparison against outsourcing, with practical places to optimise.
Takes ~5 minutes · All figures stay in your browser until you choose to share them
Total Cost
Staff + overhead, all-in
Cost Breakdown
Where the money goes
Indicative Compare
Rough outsource estimate
Where to Optimise
Practical next steps
About this tool
Back-Office Cost Calculator
The cost of running a back office is easy to underestimate, because most of it isn't a single invoice. It's spread across software subscriptions, part-time providers, the salary and on-costs of whoever does the admin, and the owner's own hours. Add the pieces up honestly and the number is usually larger than any one line item — and larger than owners expect.
How it works
The Back-Office Cost Calculator walks you through the real components of running finance, people and operations admin — the software, the providers, the internal time — and totals them into one figure you can actually compare against the alternatives. It's designed to make the hidden costs visible, not to push a particular answer.
Who it’s for
Owners weighing how they run their back office — DIY, a set of providers, an internal hire, or an outside team — and wanting an honest baseline to compare against.
- Adds up the true cost of managing bookkeeping, payroll, IT and compliance, including the parts that never appear on an invoice.
- Gives you a single figure to compare across models: doing it yourself, using providers, or hiring internally.
- Frames the decision around the back-office capability gap — the point where a business needs more capability than it can yet justify hiring full-time.
Frequently asked questions
What does a back office actually cost a small business?
It depends heavily on size and complexity, which is why the tool asks about your situation rather than quoting a single number. The point it usually surfaces is that the visible costs — software and provider fees — are only part of the total once you include internal time and the owner's own hours.
Is it cheaper to hire someone in-house or outsource?
Neither is always cheaper — it depends on volume. Constant, full-time work often suits an internal hire; periodic, specialist or spiky work usually suits buying capability rather than headcount. We cover this trade-off in the back-office capability gap.
Does the calculator include the cost of my own time?
Yes — that's often the largest and most overlooked component. The owner's hours spent on admin are real cost, because they're hours not spent on the work only the owner can do.