The numbers behind the trade
How many hours does a plumber really lose to admin?
Ten hours a week, on average, for a tradesperson running their own business. That's 22% of a working week of 46 hours, and it's the only time in the week that brings in nothing.
This figure comes from a survey run by the Asterès consultancy for FAFCEA among more than 1,200 tradespeople running their own businesses. It matches what the CAPEB's ARTISANTE barometer found, carried out with the CNATP and IRIS-ST among 3,029 construction and landscaping business owners: admin is the third biggest source of stress in the trade, cited by 41% of business owners, and almost one in five works more than 60 hours a week. These ten hours of paperwork don't come out of time on site. They get added on, in the evenings and at weekends.
10h/week
Out of 46 hours worked, 10 go on admin, that's 22% of the time. In the detail of the Asterès survey, it's customer relations (20% of that time), purchasing and stock (16%) and marketing materials (15%) that weigh heaviest. For a plumber, that has a name: the quotes typed up at 9pm, the calls returned between two jobs, the invoices re-entered on a Saturday.
An honest caveat, because it's in the same study: tradespeople who use AI today gain around 2 hours a week from it. Two hours is what ChatGPT gives you, open in the corner, used by hand, when you remember to. My work starts after that: a system connected to your quoting software and your calendar, running without you having to think about it, plays on a completely different scale. And in construction, only 16% of business owners have taken it up, the lowest rate of any trade. In other words, the field is wide open.
Sources: Asterès for FAFCEA, “L'intelligence artificielle et les chefs d'entreprise artisanale”, December 2024 (more than 1,200 respondents) · CAPEB, CNATP and IRIS-ST, ARTISANTE barometer, 11th edition, June 2025 (3,029 business owners with 0 to 19 employees).