What one short circuit really costs a small business

Every small business has a few places where work falls between two systems. An order comes in by email and gets typed into the order system, then typed again into the books. An invoice goes out, and whether it gets chased depends on who remembers. We call those gaps shorts, because that is what they are: the current is supposed to flow, and it does not.

Why shorts hide

Shorts rarely show up as a line on a report. They show up as an evening at the keyboard, a late payment, a missed post, a price that should have gone up last month. Because the cost is spread across people and weeks, nobody adds it up.

Price one in four numbers

Pick the single process that annoys you most and answer four questions:

• How many people touch it?
• How many hours a week does each of them spend on it?
• What does an hour of their time really cost you, with taxes and benefits?
• How much money does it let slip each week: late payments, lost orders, missed sales?

Multiply people by hours by cost, add what slips through, and multiply by the weeks you work. That is the yearly price of one short. Our cost of a short calculator does the math for you.

What to do with the number

The number is not a sales pitch. It is a way to decide what to fix first. A short that costs a few hundred dollars a year can wait. One that costs a part-time salary should not. When you can see the price, the order of work is obvious.

If you want a second set of eyes, that is exactly what a fit check is for. You keep the map and the cost model either way.