Ask a trade or construction business owner how many hours a week get eaten by admin, and you'll get a shrug. "A few, I s'pose." Run the actual numbers with them on a Time Audit call and the shrug turns into a wince. Twelve hours is the average we find. Some businesses are worse. Almost nobody thinks it's them — until we show them the maths.

Here's the breakdown we see, week after week, across electrical, plumbing, building and civil businesses of every size:

None of that is one big obvious problem. That's exactly why it survives. It's death by a thousand five-minute tasks — a quote redrafted at 9pm because the first version had the wrong pricing, an invoice you meant to send Tuesday and finally sent Friday, the same customer details typed into three different places because none of your systems talk to each other. Each one is nothing. Together, they're your Thursday night.

Why this maths is different to a productivity hack

You've probably tried the "block out your calendar" advice. It doesn't work on a trades business, because the hours aren't wasted — they're just in the wrong place. They belong to the business, not to you specifically. That's the actual finding of most audits: it's not that you need to be more disciplined, it's that a chunk of what's on your plate was never yours to carry in the first place.

That's the whole point of the 45-minute Time Audit call. We don't hand you a generic checklist — we map your week, find where the hours are actually going, and hand back a plain-English report showing exactly what to move off your plate and how. At least 5 hours a week, guaranteed, or you don't pay a cent.

What actually changes once you find it

• ✔Quotes go out same-day instead of "when I get a minute."
• ✔Invoices get chased automatically, without an awkward phone call from you.
• ✔You stop being the human glue between six different bits of software.
• ✔Your Thursday night is, for once, actually yours.

You don't need to overhaul your whole business to get those hours back — you need to know exactly where they are. That's a 45-minute conversation, not a six-month project.

Nobody gets into trades to become a debt collector. But that's exactly what happens every time an invoice sits unpaid for three weeks and you're the one who has to ring up and ask for your own money. It's awkward, it's slow, and — because it's awkward — most owners put it off, which makes it worse.

The fix isn't "get better at being pushy." It's taking yourself out of the loop entirely.

The follow-up sequence that actually works

Every job we set up runs some version of the same rhythm — automated, but never robotic:

The first two reminders go out without you lifting a finger — written in your voice, not a template that screams "automated email." By the time a conversation actually needs a human, it's because it genuinely does, and you're walking in with the full history already sorted, not chasing your own paperwork to figure out what's owed.

Why this matters more than people think

Late payment isn't just annoying — it's the reason otherwise profitable businesses run short on cash. Every week an invoice sits unpaid is a week you're effectively lending money, interest-free, to a client who's happy to let it slide until someone asks. A proper system doesn't make you the bad guy. It makes the follow-up boring and predictable, which is exactly what gets money moving without burning a relationship.

• ✔Reminders go out on schedule, even on your busiest week.
• ✔The tone stays warm — mates-rates, not debt-collector.
• ✔You only step in when a real conversation is actually needed.
• ✔Cash lands in your account days, sometimes weeks, sooner.

This is exactly the sort of thing the Time Audit maps out for your business specifically — what's currently manual, what should be automatic, and who (person or system) should own each step.

Every trades business has one person holding the whole thing together behind the scenes — answering the phone while chasing a supplier, reconciling invoices while fielding a client who wants to know where the crew is. Usually it's an office manager. Usually she's doing the work of two and a half people, on the tools of none of them.

We've sat in enough of these offices to say it plainly: the office manager is often the single best hire a trades business has ever made, and also the most under-resourced person in it.

What "backing her" actually looks like

It's not about hiring more people for the sake of it. It's about making sure the person holding the business together isn't doing it with a spreadsheet, three sticky notes and pure memory. That usually means three things:

• ✔Systems that talk to each other, so she's not retyping the same job details four times.
• ✔Extra hands for the repetitive stuff, so her time goes to the judgment calls only she can make.
• ✔A boss who actually asks what's eating her week, instead of assuming she'll just cope.

The cost of not backing her

Under-supported office managers don't complain much — they just quietly absorb more, for longer, until they don't. And when they leave, the business doesn't just lose a person, it loses every undocumented process that lived in her head. Replacing her costs more than backing her ever would have.

This is where a well-placed VA earns its keep fast. Not to replace her — to take the repetitive load off her desk so she can do the parts of the job that actually need a real person with real judgment. Same-day quotes, chased invoices, a full inbox that doesn't own her evenings.

If you're not sure where the gap is, that's exactly what the Time Audit maps out — for her role specifically, not a generic org chart.

Most clients aren't waiting for the best quote. They're going with the first one that lands that feels right. If yours takes four days because it's queued behind a dozen other jobs, you're not losing on price or quality — you're losing on speed, and you probably don't even know it's happening.

We see this constantly on Time Audits: a smaller outfit down the road wins the job not because they're cheaper, but because their quote hit the client's inbox the same afternoon, while yours was still sitting in a folder marked "do tonight."

Why speed beats almost everything else

Think about the last time you got three quotes for something around your own house. Chances are you didn't wait a week for the third one — you went with whoever got back to you fastest and seemed like they had their act together. Your clients do exactly the same thing. Speed reads as competence, and competence wins jobs.

What makes same-day quoting possible

It's rarely about working faster — it's about not doing the whole thing from scratch every time. The businesses winning work fastest usually have three things in place:

• ✔Standard pricing and templates for the jobs they quote most often.
• ✔Someone (or something) drafting the first version, so the owner is only reviewing, not starting from a blank page.
• ✔A clear rule: quotes go out same-day, no exceptions, no "I'll get to it tonight."

That last one is the real unlock. It's not a tools problem, it's a system-and-people problem — and it's exactly the kind of gap the Time Audit is built to find. Some businesses need a VA drafting the first pass. Others need a smarter system doing it in seconds. Most need a bit of both.

Here's the deal, plainly: book a Time Audit, and we guarantee we'll find you at least 5 hours a week back. If we don't, you don't pay. No fine print, no "guarantee" that's actually a store credit — a full refund.

People ask us often how we can afford to offer that. The honest answer is: because it's not actually much of a risk on our end.

Why we can back it with real money

Every trades and construction business we've audited — every single one — has had more than 5 hours a week of recoverable time hiding in admin. That's not a sales line, it's just what 20+ years of running operations inside these businesses tells you to expect. The maths from our "where do 12 hours go" piece holds up business after business. Quoting delays, invoice chasing, double-handled admin — it's almost always there, because almost nobody has had the time to go looking for it themselves.

What the guarantee protects you from

• ✔Paying for a report that turns out to be generic fluff.
• ✔Being told "it depends" without a straight number attached.
• ✔Committing to anything ongoing before you've seen real value.

And to be clear — the guarantee is on the audit, not on locking you into anything after it. If the report lands and you decide to run with it yourself, that's completely fine. Everything we build and recommend, you keep. No lock-ins, anywhere on the ladder. It's just usually the moment people realise having a real team do the fixing is easier than doing it solo.

"Proud Pro Purpose Partner" shows up on almost every page of this site, and fair enough if you've wondered what it actually means beyond a nice badge. So here's the plain-English version, no spin.

Profits from every Percy engagement — every audit, every placement, every retainer — help fund startup loans for women and families in Indonesia. Real money, into real hands, to start real small businesses: a farming plot, a market stall, a trade of their own. When the loan is repaid, it doesn't disappear — it gets recycled straight into the next family's business.

Why this, and why like this

It's not a donation that disappears into a general fund. It's a loan, which means it has to actually work — it gets repaid, and repaid loans go straight back out to start the next business. One dollar keeps doing its job long after the first one leaves our account. That's the bit we like most about it: it's not charity in the "feel good once" sense, it's a small, working economic engine that keeps turning.

It doesn't stop at loans

We also hire and back marginalised workers across our own team — people who don't always get an easy first shot elsewhere. It's the same principle applied closer to home: a real opportunity, real support, and a genuine career built on the other side of it. Oh, and every time someone on our team swears on a client call, a dollar goes in the purpose jar too. The jar, we're told, is thriving.

• ✔Every engagement contributes to a Pro Purpose startup loan.
• ✔Loans repaid get recycled into the next family's business.
• ✔Real careers, built by hiring and backing marginalised workers on our own team.

So when you book a Time Audit, you're not just buying your own week back. You're quietly funding someone else's shot at building their first one.

Percy Productivity (ABN 11 675 209 373) respects your privacy. This policy explains what personal information we collect through this website and our booking and audit process, why we collect it, and what we do with it. It applies to visitors, discovery-call bookers, audit clients, placement clients, and AI consulting clients.

What we collect

Depending on how you interact with us, we may collect: your name, business name, email address, phone number, business location and industry, and the answers you give us on a booking or discovery form (for example, what's eating your time, what software you use, or what role you're looking to fill). If you become a client, we also collect the operational information needed to run your audit, placement, or AI consulting engagement — things like your current systems, workflows, and team structure.

How we collect it

• ✔Directly from you, via our booking forms (Zoho Bookings), email, phone, or during a call.
• ✔Automatically, through standard website analytics (page views, general location, device type) if analytics tools are active on this site.

Why we collect it

We use your information to run your Time Audit or discovery call, deliver your audit report, place a VA or team member, provide AI consulting and support, invoice you, and respond to your enquiries. With your consent, we may also use your details to send you occasional updates — the Out by Five blog, service announcements, or founding-client offers. You can opt out of that at any time.

Who we share it with

We don't sell your information. We do share it with the trusted service providers we use to run the business — for example, our booking and scheduling platform, our CRM, our accounting software, and our email provider. Each of these providers only receives what they need to do their job, and remains bound by their own privacy and security obligations. If you're placed with, or matched to, a role, relevant details are shared with the parties directly involved in that placement, and nowhere else.

How we protect it

We take reasonable technical and organisational steps to keep your information secure, including restricting access to the people who actually need it to do their jobs. No online system is 100% risk-free, but we treat your data the way we'd want our own treated.

Access, correction and deletion

You can ask us what personal information we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it, at any time. Email hello@percy-productivity.com and we'll sort it out — usually within a few business days.

Cookies & analytics

This site may use standard analytics tools to understand how it's used (for example, which pages get read and where visitors come from). These tools may use cookies or similar technology. They don't identify you personally, and you can control cookies through your browser settings at any time.

Complaints

If you think we've mishandled your personal information, tell us first — hello@percy-productivity.com — and we'll do our best to sort it out directly. If you're not satisfied with our response, you can contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) at oaic.gov.au.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time as our business or our tools change. The version on this page is always the current one.

Contact

Percy Productivity · ABN 11 675 209 373
Unit 1A/35-39 Bourke St, Alexandria NSW 2015
hello@percy-productivity.com

These terms apply whenever you book a Time Audit, engage Percy Productivity (ABN 11 675 209 373, "Percy", "we", "us") for VA or team placement, or take up AI Consulting & Support. By booking a call or engaging our services, you're agreeing to them.

The Time Audit & the guarantee

The Time Audit is a one-off, paid engagement: a 45-minute call followed by a written report, typically delivered within a week. We guarantee that report will identify at least 5 hours per week of recoverable time in your business. If it doesn't, you're entitled to a full refund of the audit fee — email hello@percy-productivity.com within [X] days of receiving your report to request it. The guarantee covers the audit fee only; it does not extend to any ongoing placement or consulting engagement that follows.

VA & team placement

Placement rates are Tier 1 from $18/hour and Tier 2 from $23/hour (+GST), with a 20 hour/week minimum engagement and a one-off onboarding fee of $695 (+GST). Senior specialist placements are scoped and priced individually and confirmed with you in writing before work begins. There's no lock-in contract — you can end a placement with [X] days' notice.

AI Consulting & Support

Ongoing AI Consulting & Support is billed monthly, scoped to your business during your audit or onboarding call, and confirmed with you in writing before it starts. As with placements, there's no lock-in — you can cancel with [X] days' notice, and you keep everything we've built together, without exception.

Payment

Fees are in Australian dollars and exclusive of GST unless stated otherwise. Audit fees are payable at time of booking. Placement and consulting fees are invoiced [monthly / fortnightly — confirm], payable within [X] days of the invoice date. We may pause services if an invoice becomes significantly overdue, and we'll always talk to you before that happens.

Rescheduling & cancellations

Life happens — if you need to move your audit or strategy call, just let us know with reasonable notice and we'll find a new time. Repeated no-shows without notice may affect your ability to rebook at short notice.

What you own

Any report, system, workflow, or tool we build for you as part of an audit, placement, or consulting engagement is yours to keep and use, whatever you decide to do next — whether that's continuing with us or running with it yourself.

Liability

We provide our services with reasonable care and skill. To the extent permitted by Australian law, our liability for any claim arising from our services is limited to the amount you paid us for the specific engagement giving rise to that claim. Nothing in these terms limits any right you have under the Australian Consumer Law that can't lawfully be excluded.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of New South Wales, Australia.

Changes to these terms

We may update these terms from time to time. The version on this page is always the current one; significant changes affecting an active engagement will be communicated to you directly.

Contact

Percy Productivity · ABN 11 675 209 373
Unit 1A/35-39 Bourke St, Alexandria NSW 2015
hello@percy-productivity.com