The Delegation Audit: Find the $20/hr Tasks Eating Your Schedule
Most business owners dramatically underestimate how much of their week is spent on work that is worth a fraction of their market rate. They know it, vaguely — there is always a sense that the inbox is eating time that should go to clients, or that scheduling logistics are somehow occupying Tuesday afternoons that used to be strategic planning. But they have never actually measured it.
The Delegation Audit changes that. It is a four-step process that takes about a week to run, costs nothing but attention, and typically reveals that 40 to 60 percent of a founder's working hours are spent on tasks that could be delegated to a VA at $700 per month. It is one of the highest-leverage exercises any small business owner can do.
This post walks through the framework step by step, with a real example showing what the numbers typically look like before and after delegation.
Why This Matters More Than You Think
The instinct to hold onto tasks is understandable. You do them faster than explaining them. You are used to them. You trust yourself. And some of them are genuinely satisfying in a mindless-productivity kind of way — the email inbox, the calendar, the recurring reports.
But every hour you spend on a $20/hour task is an hour you did not spend on a $200/hour task. That is not a metaphor. That is a calculation. And when you run the numbers over a full year, the gap between what you are doing and what you should be doing becomes a concrete dollar figure that is usually uncomfortable to look at directly.
The Delegation Audit makes that number visible. Once it is visible, it is actionable.
Step 1: Track Every Task You Do for One Week
For five business days, capture every task you work on. Do not filter. Do not rationalize. Write down everything: the email you responded to, the meeting you scheduled, the invoice you followed up on, the blog post you edited, the spreadsheet you updated, the Slack thread you organized.
The most accurate method is a time-tracking tool like Toggl or Clockify. You start a timer when you begin a task and stop it when you finish or switch. If that feels like too much friction, a simple handwritten list works — just estimate time in 15-minute increments throughout the day and record it before you leave your desk.
By Friday you should have a list of 80 to 150 distinct tasks with their associated time. That list is your raw material.
What to track:
- Task name
- Time spent (in minutes)
- Frequency (how often does this happen per week?)
- Whether it required your specific expertise or judgment
Do not skip the last column. It is the most important one.
Step 2: Categorize Each Task by Hourly Value
Now you sort your task list into four buckets based on the value of the work — not what you are paid, but what the task itself is worth in the market.
| Tier | Hourly Value | Example Tasks |
|---|---|---|
| Tier 1 | Under $20/hr | Data entry, filing, formatting documents, sending routine emails, booking travel |
| Tier 2 | $20–$50/hr | Scheduling, basic research, social media posting, inbox management, invoicing |
| Tier 3 | $50–$100/hr | Client communication, writing, analysis, hiring coordination, marketing execution |
| Tier 4 | $100–$200+/hr | Strategic decisions, sales, high-stakes client relationships, product development, fundraising |
The exercise requires honest categorization. Many founders put "client emails" in Tier 4 because it feels strategic. Most client emails are Tier 2. The test is simple: could a well-trained professional with good communication skills handle this task after a proper briefing? If yes, it is probably not Tier 4.
Apply this categorization to your full task list from Step 1.
Step 3: Everything Under $50/hr Is a Delegation Candidate
Once your tasks are categorized, everything in Tier 1 and Tier 2 is a delegation candidate — work that a skilled VA can handle at a fraction of what your time is worth.
For most founders and senior leaders, Tier 1 and Tier 2 tasks represent 40 to 60 percent of their total working hours. That is not inefficiency in any unusual sense — it is the natural accumulation of operational responsibility that has never been intentionally redistributed.
Highlight every task in your list that falls below the $50/hour threshold. You are looking at your delegation inventory.
Before you move to Step 4, note which tasks required your signature, your specific judgment, or your relationships — even if the task itself seems low-value. A few tasks on your delegation list may turn out to be non-delegable for legitimate reasons. That is fine. The goal is not to delegate everything; it is to delegate everything that can be delegated.
Step 4: Prioritize by Frequency Times Time Spent
Not all delegation candidates are equal. A task that takes 30 minutes but only happens once a quarter is a lower priority than a task that takes 20 minutes and happens daily. You want to capture the high-frequency, high-volume work first, because that is where the hours are.
Create a simple prioritization score:
Priority Score = Hours per week × Frequency per week
Rank your delegation candidates by priority score. The highest-scoring tasks are where you start. They give you the fastest, largest time recovery.
For most founders, the top five delegation priorities look something like:
- Inbox management and email drafting
- Calendar management and scheduling
- CRM updates and data entry
- Social media posting and scheduling
- Research and report compilation
These are not glamorous tasks. They are also, collectively, often 15 to 25 hours per week.
The Before-and-After: A Typical Founder's Week
Here is what the audit typically looks like for a founder running a small professional services firm:
Before Delegation:
| Category | Hours per Week |
|---|---|
| Email management | 8 hrs |
| Scheduling and calendar | 4 hrs |
| CRM updates and data entry | 3 hrs |
| Social media | 3 hrs |
| Research and admin tasks | 4 hrs |
| Client strategy and delivery | 10 hrs |
| Business development | 4 hrs |
| Financial review | 2 hrs |
| Team management | 2 hrs |
| Total | 40 hrs |
Of the 40 hours, 22 hours are spent on sub-$50/hour tasks. Only 18 hours are available for genuinely high-value work — the strategy, the relationships, the revenue-generating activity that only the founder can do.
After Delegation:
| Category | Hours per Week |
|---|---|
| Reviewing VA work (email, CRM, social) | 2 hrs |
| Scheduling exceptions | 1 hr |
| Admin that stayed | 3 hrs |
| Client strategy and delivery | 16 hrs |
| Business development | 10 hrs |
| Financial review | 3 hrs |
| Team management | 3 hrs |
| New initiatives | 2 hrs |
| Total | 40 hrs |
After delegation, only 6 hours remain on administrative and sub-$50 work. The founder now has 34 hours per week for high-value activity — compared to 18 hours before.
That is an 89 percent increase in productive capacity. Not by working more. By working on different things with the same 40 hours.
The Financial Math
For a founder whose high-value work generates $150/hour in revenue or business value:
- Before delegation: 18 high-value hours × $150 = $2,700/week
- After delegation: 34 high-value hours × $150 = $5,100/week
- Weekly gain: $2,400
- Monthly gain: ~$9,600
Cost of a full-time THC VA: $1,300/month.
That is a 7x return on the VA investment — before you factor in the compounding effect of better focus, reduced decision fatigue, and faster execution on strategic priorities. See our pricing page for current plan details.
For operators in markets like San Francisco, where founder time is particularly valuable, our San Francisco executive assistant services are specifically designed for this kind of delegation leverage.
Run Your Own Numbers
Every business is different. Your specific mix of tasks, your billing rate, and your delegation candidates will produce different results. To run the calculation for your situation, use THC's ROI calculator — plug in your hourly rate, your delegation candidates, and your VA cost, and it will show you the real numbers.
For the complete framework — including how to train a VA to handle your delegated tasks, how to set up systems that make delegation sustainable, and how to avoid the micromanagement trap — download our free guide, How to Work with Your Virtual Assistant. It covers everything the audit surfaces in practical, operational terms.
THC Pricing
- Part-Time VA: $700/month — 20 hours/week, ideal if your delegation audit reveals 10–20 hours of Tier 1/2 tasks
- Full-Time VA: $1,300/month — 40 hours/week, appropriate when sub-$50 tasks are consuming 20+ hours of your week
No long-term contracts. Month-to-month. If the math works — and after a thorough delegation audit, it almost always does — you start, see results, and stay because it is working.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I know if I'm delegating the right tasks?
The right tasks to delegate are those that: (1) do not require your specific expertise or judgment, (2) can be documented into a repeatable process, (3) happen frequently enough to justify the training investment, and (4) are genuinely consuming time you should spend on higher-value work. After your audit, sort your candidates by these four criteria. If a task passes all four, it belongs on your delegation list. If it fails on number one or two — meaning it genuinely requires your judgment or cannot be documented — keep it. Most tasks that founders think require their judgment turn out not to, once they actually try to delegate them.
What if I'm not ready to delegate fully?
Start with one or two tasks that are clearly routine and well-defined — inbox management, calendar scheduling, or CRM data entry are common starting points. Delegation is a skill that improves with practice. The first month is always slower than expected because you are building documentation and training your VA. By month two, most clients have recovered the full expected time savings. The mistake is waiting until everything is perfectly documented before starting — that documentation gets built through the process of delegation, not before it. THC's onboarding process is specifically designed to structure this ramp-up efficiently.
How long before I see ROI from a VA?
For most THC clients, net-positive ROI is visible by the end of the second month. The first month involves onboarding, system setup, and initial training — the VA is learning your preferences and building the muscle memory for your workflows. The second month is when throughput normalizes and the time savings become consistent and measurable. If you have done your delegation audit and started with the highest-priority tasks, you will likely see meaningful time recovery within the first two weeks — even before the VA is fully ramped. The ROI sharpens as the relationship deepens and handoffs become seamless.
The delegation audit is uncomfortable the first time you run it. Seeing 22 hours of your week quantified as sub-$50/hour work, in writing, is not pleasant. But that discomfort is the whole point. The information changes decisions.
Most founders who complete the audit are ready to start delegating within a week. The math makes it obvious. The question stops being "should I get a VA?" and becomes "why haven't I done this yet?"
Book a free 15-minute strategy call and walk us through your audit results. We will help you identify your highest-priority delegation candidates and match you with a VA who can start recovering those hours immediately.