Q: How many hours in a week do accountants waste by manually checking client data for errors?
a. Two hours
b. Four hours
c. Ten hours
d. Twenty hours
A: While it might seem like you guys are spending 20 hours or more each week during busy season dealing with bad data from clients and making sure they don’t send you inaccurate numbers again, accountants in the US actually spend 4.15 hours each week dealing with client screw-ups, according to a recent survey from accounting software provider Dext (formerly Receipt Bank). So the answer is b.
But according to the results of the survey, you all don’t have it as bad as accountants in other parts of the world:
South African accountants spend the greatest number of hours checking for bad data (5.3 hours each week) closely followed by French accountants (4.71). British accountants spend 4.4 hours but it is US accountants who spend the least time by comparison, at 4.15 hours each week.
All told, the survey found that, using a firm of 15 staff as an average, accountants spend 4 hours and 15 minutes a week worldwide checking bad client data, which equates to 3,031 hours or 18 weeks every year.
Accountants spend over 3,000 hours checking bad client data, study finds [Accountancy Today]
The British number looks low. I think you forgot to translate from pounds to dollars.