Blog · Virtual Assistant Hiring
How Much Is Your Time Worth as a Business Owner?
A simple formula to work out what your hour is worth, what doing your own admin really costs each year and the break-even point where help pays for itself.
Prateek Sahni
Published: 14 October 2026 · 10 min read
Most business owners know exactly what they charge a client per hour. Very few know what their own hour is worth to the business and that is the number that decides whether doing your own admin is saving money or quietly costing it.
It is easy to miss because admin doesn't send an invoice. Nobody bills you for the Tuesday evening spent chasing payments or the Sunday morning on the CRM. But those hours have a price and once you put a number on them, the question of whether to hand them over usually answers itself.
This guide gives you a simple formula to work out what your time is worth, a way to count the hours you lose to admin, three worked examples and the break-even point where help pays for itself.
Quick answer: To work out how much your time is worth as a business owner, add what you pay yourself to the business's annual profit, then divide by the hours you work in a year. Multiply that hourly figure by the admin hours you do each week and by 48 working weeks, to see what doing your own admin really costs. For most owners of established small businesses it runs from tens of thousands to well over A$100,000 a year.
The number most owners never calculate
Owners tend to judge admin by what it would cost to pay someone else, not by what it costs them to do it. A$9 an hour for help feels like an expense. The same hours done yourself feel free.
They aren't free. Every hour you spend on invoices, inboxes and data entry is an hour you are not spending on the work only you can do: selling, delivering for your best clients, hiring, pricing, planning. That lost work is the real cost – economists call it the opportunity cost of your time and in an established business it is almost always far higher than the cost of help.
Step 1: Work out what your hour is worth
Use your own numbers from the last financial year. You need three figures.
Figure | Where to find it |
|---|---|
A – What you pay yourself | Your salary or drawings |
B – Business profit | Net profit after all costs, before tax |
C – Hours you work in a year | Your usual weekly hours × 48 working weeks |
Your hourly value = (A + B) ÷ C
This is a deliberately conservative figure. It only counts what the business already earns, not what you could earn if your time went into growth. If you know that an hour of selling or quoting typically brings in more than this and for many owners it does, use the higher number.
Why profit plus pay, not revenue? Because revenue includes costs you would pay anyway. Profit plus your pay is what the business actually produces for you, so it is the fairest way to value your hour.
Step 2: Count the hours you spend on admin
Most owners underestimate this badly, so don't guess. For one ordinary week, jot down every block of time that goes on work someone else could do with a clear process. The usual categories:
Admin category | Typical tasks |
|---|---|
Inbox and calendar | Sorting email, replying to routine enquiries, booking and rescheduling |
Money admin | Raising invoices, chasing payments, entering receipts, preparing for the bookkeeper |
Customer admin | Updating the CRM, following up quotes and leads, sending reminders |
Documents and data | Filling in forms, updating spreadsheets, uploading files, data entry |
Supplier and staff admin | Ordering, rosters, timesheets, onboarding paperwork |
Add the week up. Fifteen to twenty hours is common for an owner-led business with no admin support, the time often hides in early mornings, evenings and weekends. Our 20-hour audit walks through this tracking in more detail.
Step 3: Put a price on it
Annual cost of your admin = admin hours per week × 48 × your hourly value
That is what doing your own admin costs the business each year, measured in your time. It isn't money leaving the account, which is why it is so easy to ignore. It is money the business could have made with those hours.
Three worked examples
These are illustrative examples to show the method, not data about any particular business. Replace them with your own numbers.
Business A | Business B | Business C | |
|---|---|---|---|
Annual revenue | A$500,000 | A$1,000,000 | A$3,000,000 |
Owner's pay + profit (A + B) | A$150,000 | A$250,000 | A$450,000 |
Hours worked per week | 55 | 55 | 60 |
Hours worked per year (× 48) | 2,640 | 2,640 | 2,880 |
Owner's hourly value | about A$57 | about A$95 | about A$156 |
Admin hours per week | 15 | 18 | 20 |
Annual cost of owner doing admin | about A$40,900 | about A$81,800 | A$150,000 |
Notice the pattern. The more successful the business, the more expensive the owner's admin becomes. The owner of Business C is effectively paying A$150,000 a year to do work that has nothing to do with growing a A$3 million business.
Step 4: Compare it with the cost of help
Now compare those figures with a part-time virtual assistant. At My Virtual Mate, rates start from A$9 an hour (around US$7, £5 or €6), depending on the role and scope, confirmed on a Discovery call. A 20-hour week at the starting rate is about A$180 a week, or roughly A$8,640 a year.
The useful number is the break-even point: how many of your hours per week the assistant needs to free up to cover their own cost.
Break-even hours per week = weekly cost of help ÷ your hourly value
Business A | Business B | Business C | |
|---|---|---|---|
Owner's hourly value | A$57 | A$95 | A$156 |
Weekly cost of a 20-hour VA at the starting rate | A$180 | A$180 | A$180 |
Break-even: owner hours freed per week | 3.2 hours | 1.9 hours | 1.2 hours |
In other words, if a 20-hour-a-week assistant gives the owner of Business A back just over three hours of their own week, the arrangement has paid for itself. Everything beyond that is gain.
Two honest caveats
Freed time only has value if you use it. If the hours you get back go into more admin or more email, the maths doesn't hold. Decide in advance where the time goes – sales calls, quoting, key clients, hiring and protect it in your calendar.
Handover takes time at the start. The first two weeks with any assistant involve writing down processes and checking work. That is an investment, not a loss, but expect the full benefit from around the second month, not day one. Our 30-day onboarding system shows how to keep that period short.
Why the real cost is usually higher
The formula only counts hours. It leaves out the costs that don't show up on a timesheet and in practice they are often bigger.
Things that slip. Quotes sent two days late, invoices that sit in drafts, leads that never get a second follow-up. Each one is lost or delayed revenue that the hourly maths doesn't capture.
Decisions made tired. Pricing, hiring and strategy decisions made at 10pm after three hours of admin are rarely your best ones.
You become the bottleneck. When every approval and every reply runs through the owner, the whole team waits. The business can only grow as fast as the owner's inbox.
Your one-page worksheet
Copy this into a notebook or spreadsheet and fill in your own figures.
Step | Your number |
|---|---|
A – What you pay yourself per year | |
B – Business profit per year | |
C – Hours you work per year (weekly hours × 48) | |
Your hourly value = (A + B) ÷ C | |
D – Admin hours per week (from your one-week log) | |
Annual cost of your admin = D × 48 × hourly value | |
E – Weekly cost of help (hours × hourly rate) | |
Break-even hours = E ÷ your hourly value |
If your break-even is a few hours a week and your admin log shows fifteen or more, the decision is already made. What remains is choosing what to hand over first – our guide to outsourcing admin tasks covers that.
How My Virtual Mate helps
We have worked with more than 300 businesses and many of their owners started exactly here: making money, working long weeks and doing admin that didn't need them. A dedicated virtual assistant takes on the inbox, invoicing, CRM, follow-ups and data entry inside your own systems, working whichever time zone you need.
Every client gets a dedicated Project Manager who runs onboarding and checks in with you and the assistant, plus a 6-Week Performance Guarantee and a 5-Day Replacement promise. No recruitment fees, no lock-in. Staff are pre-vetted, sign confidentiality agreements as standard and arrive trained on the AI tools most businesses use. We work with clients in more than 15 countries.
Rates start from A$9/hour (around US$7, £5 or €6), depending on the role and scope, confirmed on a Discovery call. Book a call and bring your one-week admin log, we'll show you which hours to hand over first and what that is worth to you.
Related reading
Frequently asked questions
How much is my time worth as a business owner?
Add what you pay yourself to the business's annual profit, then divide by the hours you work in a year. For example, an owner who takes A$150,000 in pay and profit and works 55 hours a week for 48 weeks is worth about A$57 an hour to the business. If an hour of your selling or delivery work typically earns more, use that higher figure.
How do I calculate my hourly rate as a business owner?
Use the formula: (your pay + business profit) ÷ hours worked per year. Work out hours per year by multiplying your usual weekly hours by 48 working weeks. Use profit rather than revenue, because revenue includes costs the business would pay anyway.
What is the opportunity cost of my time?
The opportunity cost of your time is the value of the work you could have done instead. For a business owner, every hour spent on admin is an hour not spent on selling, serving key clients, hiring or planning. Multiply your weekly admin hours by 48 and by your hourly value to see what that costs each year.
Is it worth hiring a virtual assistant?
It is worth it when the assistant frees up more of your hours than it takes to cover their cost. At A$9 an hour, a 20-hour-a-week assistant costs about A$180 a week. If your time is worth A$57 an hour, the assistant pays for itself once they free up just over three hours of your week.
How many hours does a virtual assistant need to save to pay for itself?
Divide the weekly cost of the assistant by your hourly value. A 20-hour week at A$9 an hour costs about A$180, so the break-even is about 3.2 hours a week if your time is worth A$57 an hour, 1.9 hours at A$95 and 1.2 hours at A$156.
Should I hire an assistant?
Track one ordinary week. If you spend ten or more hours on admin that someone could do with a clear process and your break-even is only a few hours a week, an assistant almost always pays for itself. The condition is that you reinvest the freed time in work that grows the business.
