[New Data] Heating Business Owners Spend One Day a Week On Admin & Paperwork
Running a business comes with many benefits, but it also means you’re wearing multiple hats. Without help, a good chunk of your working week is spent dealing with admin and paperwork; work that your customers never see and work that doesn’t earn you money.
In our 2025 Heating & Plumbing Report, data showed business owners are spending on average 7.1 hours a week on admin — that’s almost a full day each week.
No gas engineer got into the trade to sit behind a desk — especially if it’s over evenings or weekends. So how can you maximise your time on the tools?
WHAT THE DATA SHOWS
One fifth of the week is spent off the tools
We asked heating and plumbing business owners how much time they spend on admin tasks like:
- Writing certificates
- Creating and sending invoices
- Booking jobs and juggling diaries
- Taking customer calls
- Chasing paperwork and payments
The average came out at 7.1 hours per week, and is already skewed to the lower end since the survey was sent to Gas Engineer Software Users — people who already use software to reduce admin.
In simple terms, admin eats up around 20% of the working week for these engineers and business owners.
Over a year, that’s the equivalent of more than 9 full working weeks spent away from billable jobs.
The same section of the report shows what happens when admin is streamlined. Businesses using software report saving on average 7.7 hours per week — time which can be reinvested.
WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOU
Admin is part of the job, but it doesn’t have to dominate it
Paperwork is a necessary part of the job, but it should complement the work done, not cause stress and ruin work-life balances.
For sole traders, that usually means evenings spent catching up on certificates, invoices written days or weeks after the job, and weekends tidying paperwork that should already be done. For small teams, it turns into constant interruptions, lost information, and duplicated effort.
Making admin more efficient doesn’t remove responsibility. It simply gives time back:
- Time to fit in another job.
- Time to invoice on the day.
- Time to finish earlier without falling behind.
THE OPPORTUNITY
What you could do with the time saved
One of the most interesting insights in the report is how businesses streamlining their work with software reinvest the time saved back into their business.
Gas Engineer Software users report saving 7.7 hours per week, but their overtime only drops by 2.7 hours.
The time may be reallocated to completing more jobs, having less hectic days, working on marketing strategies, and so on. In fact, businesses report an average revenue increase of 37% in their first year with Gas Engineer Software, despite very few making new hires — a clear sign that efficiency, not longer hours, is doing the heavy lifting.
How Gas Engineer Software streamlines your work
1. Admin happens as part of the job, not after it
Certificates, records, and invoices can be created on-site, linked to the job, and stored automatically. No double handling. No end-of-day catch-up.
2. Fewer interruptions, fewer mistakes
Customer details, job history, and paperwork live in one place. That means fewer calls taken mid-job, less rework, and fewer “I’ll sort that later” moments.
3. Less mental clutter
Knowing jobs, invoices, and paperwork are already handled removes a constant background stress. That headspace matters more than most people realise.
What this means for your business
Spending one day a week on admin has quietly become normal in heating and plumbing. The data shows it doesn’t have to be.
Admin will always be part of the job. But losing evenings, weekends, and billable hours to it doesn’t.