The audit — Swan Campbell

Your week

Your numbers, not mine.

Estimate rather than guess — look at last week if you can. A figure you half-believe is worse than no figure.

Answer for one person: you. Every hours figure on this page is one person's week, priced against one package.

What an hour of yours bills at Before tax. If you're salaried, take the cost of employing you.

Hours a week you spend in the inbox Reading, sorting, and writing replies you'd never invoice for.

Hours a week you spend writing up meetings Notes, actions, and the follow-up email you send afterwards.

Hours a month you spend on receipts and expenses Including the part where you go looking for the missing one.

What your mail runs on

Which one

Which of them you're pricing.

Inbox Starter takes the inbox: triage, the invoice chaser and a Monday round-up, for setup and the first month. Back Office takes the meeting notes and the receipts as well, and drafts the replies. Back Office+ is that, plus up to six on-request jobs a month. One job is one clear deliverable, about 20–30 minutes, not an ongoing project. All three are here so you can see the gaps rather than take my word for which one you want.

Inbox Starter Triage, the invoice chaser and a Monday round-up. Setup and the first month — then carry on, or switch off. — £150standard £250 — Back Office Everything in Inbox Starter, plus extraction, meeting notes, conflict checks and suggested replies. Monthly. — £75standard £99 — Back Office+ Everything in Back Office, plus up to six on-request jobs a month. One job = one clear deliverable, about 20–30 minutes — not an ongoing project. Extras £15 each; anything bigger needs a written yes first. — £125standard £175 —

Every figure here is a month — your weekly answers multiplied out at 4.3 weeks, so two hours a week shows as 8.7. Hours is what that package would take off you. Inbox Starter is credited with the inbox hours alone, because triage, the invoice chaser and the Monday round-up are what it does; meeting notes and receipts sit on Back Office and Back Office+. Difference is what those hours cost at your rate, less the founding fee. Inbox Starter’s fee is setup and the first month, not a monthly price. The line under each fee is the standard price, once the five founding places are gone. Founding prices are locked for 12 months, and a 50% deposit secures a place.

The reading

What that week already costs you

The hours it takes off you, at your rate: £2,250
The fee — Back Office, founding: £75
The difference: £2,175

I'm not going to tell you how many of those hours actually come back. I don't know yet, and anyone who quotes you a figure before they've seen your inbox is guessing.

What arrives

An ordinary Tuesday.

The figure above is the easy half. The harder question is what actually lands, and when. This is a constructed day — not a client's, and not a good day chosen carefully — but every item on it is something the service produces, in the form it produces it.

07:40
Forty-one messages arrived overnight, sorted before you open them. Nineteen newsletters and three circulars filed and out of the way. Nine for information. Seven that expect an answer, each with a draft already waiting. And three marked as today's, left undrafted on purpose — those need you, not a draft of you.
07:41
One of the seven, waiting in your own Drafts folder:
From Marion, 06:58
Can I have the board pack before Thursday? I’d like to read it on Wednesday evening.
Re: Board pack · draft, not sent
Hi Marion, you’ll have the board pack by [confirm day and time]. [Anything worth flagging before you read it on Wednesday.]

Everything outside the brackets is from Marion’s email. The date is yours to give, and so is anything worth flagging; the software will not guess either in your name.
11:30
Yesterday's call written up. Three decisions, six actions with an owner and a date on each, two open questions nobody answered — and a follow-up email drafted underneath it, ready to go out in your name once you've read it.
14:10
Two receipts landed and went straight into the spreadsheet — a £53.20 rail fare, recorded zero-rated, and a £276.00 software renewal with the £46.00 of VAT split out. A third was flagged rather than entered: a photographed restaurant bill where the VAT line was unreadable. It's in the review queue with the photo attached, not guessed at.
16:45
An invoice thirty-two days overdue, with a reminder drafted in the wording you approved. And tomorrow's 9am is flagged: it sits twenty minutes after a train gets in, which is the conflict check rather than something you were going to notice on the platform.
18:00
Ninety-two messages by the end of the day, and twenty drafts written. None of them was sent. Everything above is sitting in your drafts, waiting for you.

That Tuesday is Back Office, not every package. Inbox Starter is the triage, the invoice chaser and the Monday round-up. The drafts, the write-up, the receipts and the conflict check are what Back Office adds. A research brief is not a standing item in the afternoon. On Back Office+ it can be one of the six on-request jobs: one deliverable, about 20–30 minutes, not an ongoing project. Extras are £15 each, and anything bigger needs a written yes first.

Replies stay in those drafts until you send them. The only message the system can send is an overdue-invoice reminder, and only after you switch that on in writing and approve the template. That is the guarantee.