The five tools
Wheel of Business
Score nine areas of your business out of ten. You get a total out of 90, how many areas sit below your own average, and the lowest one with the first thing to do about it. It is a self-assessment.
Open the scorecardOwner Time Audit
Log last week in five categories. You get your effective hourly rate, the hours a week someone else could be doing, and what those hours cost at your own rate.
Open the time auditProfit Improvement Calculator
Move five levers — leads, conversion, average sale, purchase frequency and margin — and see what each is worth on its own and what all five are worth together. The result is illustrative arithmetic rather than a forecast.
Open the calculatorTrue Cost of a Hire
Adds employer National Insurance and the pension minimum at 2026/27 rates, then your own figures for kit, recruitment and ramp-up — and the revenue the role has to cover at your gross margin. Statutory rates are linked to GOV.UK.
Open the calculatorTeam Health Check
Twelve statements about your team, scored out of ten across four areas. You get the weakest area with the first thing to do about it, the three lowest statements, and what the people who left last year cost in recruitment and lost output.
Open the checkWhy these five tools
“I know what the problem is.”
The Wheel of Business scores nine areas and often points somewhere other than where the owner was looking. More leads is a common wrong answer to a conversion, pricing or delivery problem.
“I do not have the time.”
The owner time audit asks where fifty hours went and puts your own effective hourly rate against each block. It shows how few of those hours were work only you could do.
“We need a big push on sales.”
The profit improvement calculator shows what a five per cent move on each of the five levers does, and how much more leads alone would have to rise to match it.
“Can I afford someone at thirty grand?”
The true cost of a hire calculator adds employer National Insurance, the pension minimum, kit, recruitment and ramp-up, then tells you the revenue the role has to cover at your margin.
“I cannot get the staff.”
The team health check often finds that nobody knows what they own, or that the last two people left for a reason nobody asked about — and it puts a figure on what those two cost to replace.
How do the five fit together?
They are in the order a coaching conversation often runs. The scorecard finds where the business is constrained. The time audit explains why the constrained area is not getting fixed, often because the owner’s week has no room in it. The profit calculator sizes the prize, so the effort goes at the lever worth the most for the least. The hiring calculator puts the right number on a hiring decision. The team check is for the constraint that turns out to be people rather than arithmetic.
You can run any of them on its own. If you already know the answer to the first question, skip to the tool that matches the decision in front of you.
What happens to the numbers you type?
Nothing leaves your browser. There is no database behind any of these pages and no score, salary or set of hours is stored anywhere. The calculations run in JavaScript on your own device, which is also why every tool works instantly as you type rather than after a submit button.
Under each tool there is an optional email box, and it sits after the answer rather than in front of it. If you use it, what gets sent is your email address, your first name if you gave one, and a short summary of your own result — so the follow-up is about your numbers rather than a generic newsletter. You can also print any result or save it as a PDF straight from the result panel without giving an address at all.
What should you do with the answer?
Pick one thing and put a date on it. Each tool produces a single starting point rather than a list. The scorecard names one area. The time audit names one block of hours. The profit calculator names one lever. The hiring calculator gives you one monthly number to test the decision against.
Then work out whether the change is one you can make on your own. Some are: writing down this quarter’s three priorities, or counting last quarter’s quotes, are jobs for a quiet Friday afternoon. Others — a price rise, a first hire, handing over work you have always done yourself — are the ones owners tend to circle for months. The first coaching conversation is free.
The guides behind the tools
Each tool has a written guide sitting behind it, and the guides carry the judgement the arithmetic cannot. Understanding your numbers covers the six financial figures that matter and how to read them without being an accountant. Price for profit works through what a price move does to profit and how many clients you could lose and still be better off. When to hire and who to hire first covers the decision the hiring calculator only costs. All of them, and the rest of the library, are in Resources.
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Frequently asked questions
Do I have to give an email address?
No. Every tool gives you the full answer, the working and the recommendation on the page, with no email and no account. There is an optional box under each one if you want the longer write-up sent to you, and that is the only point at which an address is captured.
Where do the tax figures come from?
Only the true cost of a hire calculator uses statutory figures, and both are 2026/27, applying from 6 April 2026: employer National Insurance at 15 per cent above a £5,000 secondary threshold, and the automatic enrolment employer minimum of 3 per cent of qualifying earnings between £6,240 and £50,270. Both are linked to the GOV.UK page they came from on the tool itself. Nothing else on these pages is a rate, a threshold or a statistic — the other four tools work entirely on the numbers you type in.
Are the results a forecast?
No. The profit calculator in particular is illustrative arithmetic: it models how five variables interact, holds fixed overheads still and takes no view on cash or capacity. It is useful for working out which lever deserves your attention and why five small moves beat one large one. Do not put it in a budget.
Is anything I type stored?
No. All five run entirely in your browser, and there is no database behind any of these pages. Nothing is sent anywhere unless you deliberately fill in the optional email box, in which case what is sent is your email address, your first name if you gave it, and a short summary of your own result so the follow-up is about your numbers rather than generic. You can print or save any result as a PDF from the result panel without giving an address at all.
Can I use these with my team, or with clients?
Yes, and the scorecard in particular works better with more than one person filling it in. Give the nine areas to two or three people who see the business from the inside, have them score independently and compare where you are more than two points apart. If you are an adviser and want to use these with your own clients, that is fine too — a link back to the page is appreciated rather than required.
What does coaching cost?
Coaching is priced in public, on the programmes page: five monthly one-to-one programmes running from £495 to £1,950 a month plus VAT, with no minimum term and no joining fee, plus four one-off pieces of work at fixed fees. You still get a specific figure for your own situation on the 30-minute discovery call, before committing to anything. If the fee would be tight for the business right now, say so on the call; we may suggest fixing something else first and coming back next quarter.