Why does it matter which department absorbs your admin time?
If your business puts all its energy into operations, sales and marketing will collapse. You end up running efficient jobs with nothing booked for next month. Greg describes running exactly like that for years, chasing whoever shouted loudest and then watching the pipeline dry up whenever he stepped away from the office. Tracking departments by time spent is how you stop that cycle and see clearly where the cracks are before they become crises.
How do you set up department tracking in your business management software?
Build activities inside your job management or business management software that match your departments. Greg uses categories such as admin and HR, on-site value delivery, operation management, work generation (marketing, social media, email campaigns), and systems and strategy. Name them consistently so they sort together in reports, for example by starting each activity name with the same word and a hyphen. Colour-code them to match the colours you already use in your workflow so everything lines up visually.
Once the activities exist, put your admin team on the schedule and have them block out their time against those activities. Greg's approach is for the team to lock in what they worked on at lunchtime, add a couple of brief notes, then block out the second half of the day at the end of it. The notes tell you where they got up to, not just how long they worked.
What is the 75% capacity rule and why does it exist?
No department should run above 75% capacity. Greg's own operations department is sitting at 82% while he covers that role himself during a business reconstruction, and he flags that as a problem: at 82% there is almost no wiggle room for anything unexpected. The non-negotiable recurring tasks will always take their share of time, but fires, ad-hoc requests and unplanned work will always arrive on top of them. If a department is already at or above 75%, there is nowhere to absorb those extras without something else breaking.
Keeping departments under 75% is not about being relaxed. It is about being consistent. The tasks that get dropped when capacity is blown are usually the ones that matter most for long-term growth, such as financial reporting, charge-out rate reviews, and marketing activity.
How do you run a report to see the breakdown?
At the end of the month, go into your business management software, filter by your office or admin activities, select the relevant team members, and run an activity breakdown report. You can then see, by department, how many hours each person recorded and where that time went. Greg checks his own numbers this way and uses it to confirm whether he is spending time on systems and strategy (where business growth happens) or buried in operations (where it gets consumed).
This approach also works for virtual assistants. Because a VA is not physically present, the schedule log and activity breakdown give you visibility into what they are working on and whether it aligns with what you actually need from them.
How do the workflow and the hit list connect to department tracking?
Your workflow holds the non-negotiable recurring tasks for the business, organised by department and assigned to a person. Each person's tasks from the workflow flow through to their individual hit list, which is the instruction manual they work from day to day. The department tracker in your business management software then sits on top of that: it tells you whether the time being logged actually matches the departments and tasks that are supposed to be running.
If someone leaves, the workflow also holds the instructions and videos for how each task is done, so a replacement can pick it up without you having to explain everything from scratch. The system keeps running even when the person changes.
What tasks belong in each department?
Greg breaks his business into these departments:
- Admin and HR: inbox management, staff administration, general office tasks
- On-site value delivery: anything that supports field staff directly, such as dropping materials to a job
- Operation management: scheduling, job management, day-to-day coordination
- Systems and strategy: financial reporting, forecasting, cost of operations reviews, charge-out rate checks
- Work generation: marketing, social media, email campaigns, SMS campaigns
Reviewing cost of operations and charge-out rates is flagged as a non-negotiable quarterly task that sits under systems and strategy. If you are a business owner, spending the majority of your time in systems and strategy is where growth comes from. Time buried in operations is time not spent working on the business.
