In 2019 micro-businesses spent 10 weeks sorting finances, says Starling

Digital banking services like Tide, Monzo, Coconut and Starling could help.

The owners of Britain’s smallest businesses are spending around 15 hours a week, or 10 weeks a year, sorting out their financial admin.

According to 1,000 business owners surveyed by digital bank Starling, a third say that dealing with these finances negatively impacts their personal lives and one in ten say it keeps them up at night.

The report, called Make Business Simple, found that the smaller the company the more time is spent on financial admin, with sole traders spending almost a third (31%) of their time on it.

On the companies covered by the report, Starling Bank CEO and founder Anne Boden said: “The importance of micro-businesses can’t be overstated. They make up the vast majority of enterprises in the UK, employ almost nine million of us and generate nearly a trillion pounds in revenue each year.”

“What our findings unequivocally show is that micro-businesses are spending a huge amount of time on financial admin work.”

By most measures, Britain’s 5.6m SMEs account for around 96% of the country’s total business population.

Clearly both the survey is geared toward promoting Starling Bank’s Business Account, with its money management tools that automate a lot of the repetitive accounting practices of small companies, however, it also shines a light on the huge opportunity for UK fintech.

If startups like Starling, Tide, Monzo, and Coconut can streamline the financial admin facing the country’s smallest companies, the boost to productivity and reduction of wasted time and cost to the UK would be immense.