When was the last time you stopped to think about how you are investing your time in your practice? It may sound like an odd question, but I think it matters more than many accountants realise.
Most accountants focus their attention on how many clients they have, on their aggregate fee income and how they spend money. Fewer give the same attention to how they spend time, despite the fact that time is usually the more constrained resource.
This is apparent from the many conversations I have had with over-stretched and stressed accountants who are working long hours to get everything done. It sometimes seems that their practice is running them, rather than the other way round.
Over the years, I have encouraged accountants to think of working time as being available for just three types of activity.
1. Client work: the billable work that clients pay us to complete, whether or not we still calculate fees by reference to time spent.
2. Admin work: all the non-billable day-to-day activity involved in running a practice.
3. Future work: the investment we make in creating a better practice tomorrow. It includes non-billable contact time with clients, time spent with prospective clients, marketing activities, CPD, strategising and so on.
That simple distinction often creates an uncomfortable moment of reflection because many sole practitioners immediately recognise where most of their time is actually going.
As a broad guide, I have long suggested that a healthy allocation might look something like this:
60–70% client work
Around 10% admin work
20–30% future work
The precise percentages are less important than the principle behind them. A successful practice needs enough client work to generate fees today, enough administration to keep things running smoothly, and enough future-focused activity to ensure the practice continues to develop.
What I see far more often, however, is a very different picture.
Many sole practitioners spend a surprisingly large proportion of their working week dealing with administration. Email management expands to fill whatever space is available. Staffing issues, if there is a team, consume attention. Cash collection becomes reactive. Processes that were designed years ago continue largely unchallenged because there never seems to be time to revisit them.
At the same time, future work receives whatever time happens to be left over.
That is rarely because accountants do not understand its importance. Most recognise the value of building stronger client relationships, developing referral sources, improving marketing, reviewing pricing, investing in learning or stepping back to think strategically about where the practice is heading.
Indeed, some sole practitioners do make time during the working week for a reasonable amount of future work, but only by pushing client work or administration into evenings and weekends. That may feel like progress, but it often comes at a significant personal cost.
The irony, of course, is that the future of the practice depends on exactly those activities that are most often neglected.
A practice that spends little time on future work can continue successfully for quite some time. Clients still arrive. Fees still come in. Work still gets completed. The risk only becomes visible later when growth slows, referrals become less predictable, profitability stalls or the owner starts feeling trapped in a business that depends entirely on their continued effort.
This is where a different question becomes useful.
Rather than asking how to fit more future work into an already full week, ask whether you really need to be doing everything that currently occupies your time.
Many accountants instinctively assume that client work and administration must remain their responsibility. In reality, a significant proportion of both can often be handled elsewhere.
Some tasks can be delegated to employees or contractors. Others can be outsourced to bookkeepers, virtual assistants or specialist support providers. Increasingly, technology and AI can automate activities that once required significant manual effort. And occasionally, the most valuable option is simply elimination.
That last one is often overlooked.
Practices accumulate processes in much the same way that lofts accumulate boxes. Most of us know there is probably something unnecessary up there, but we never quite get round to sorting it out.
I have noticed this tendency both in one-to-one conversations with mentoring clients and during discussions at meetings of the Sole Practice Club. There is often a moment of realisation when members discover that others have found ways to reduce, outsource or eliminate administrative work that they had simply accepted as unavoidable.
A surprising amount of administration survives not because it adds value, but because nobody has ever stopped to question whether it is still necessary.
The goal is not necessarily to work fewer hours, although that is often a very welcome outcome. The real objective is to ensure that more of your time is invested where it creates the greatest long-term return.
Every hour spent on unnecessary administration is an hour unavailable for building the future of the practice. Every hour invested in developing stronger client relationships, improving systems, refining strategy or creating new opportunities has the potential to generate benefits long after that hour has passed.
If you have never looked at your week through the lens of client work, admin work and future work, it may be worth doing so. The exercise is often revealing.
Start by estimating where your time currently goes. Then consider where you would ideally like it to go. The gap between those two figures may tell you more about the future trajectory of your practice than any set of financial accounts.
This is a subject that comes up repeatedly in conversations at meetings of my online Sole Practice Club because it sits at the heart of so many challenges faced by smaller firms. When accountants feel stuck, overwhelmed or unable to move forward, the issue is often not capability. It is simply that too little time is being invested in creating a different future.
If that sounds familiar, perhaps it is time for us to have a conversation. Reviewing how you allocate your time can be one of the most valuable starting points for improving both your practice and your quality of life, and it may reveal opportunities that have been hiding in plain sight.
