Gloucestershire IT and cyber security specialist System Force IT has launched a free online calculator that puts a pound figure on IT downtime, a cost most business owners never measure.
The tool counts two things: the idle time of staff who cannot work, and any revenue lost while systems are down. The results can be sobering. A ten-person office loses around £300 an hour in idle time alone, so a single half-day offline costs roughly £1,200. For a manufacturer or distributor, where production or dispatch stops, the figure can top £2,840 an hour, meaning a single morning offline can cost more than £11,000.
The estimates are deliberately conservative, excluding overtime to catch up, reputational damage and lost data, which usually push the real figure higher.
“Most owners have never put a number on an hour of downtime,” said Jez Walton, Technical Director at System Force IT. “When they do, the business case for proper backup, monitoring and resilience writes itself.”
System Force IT has supported businesses across Gloucestershire and the surrounding counties since 2006, and is UKAS ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Certified.
The calculator is free, needs no sign-up and takes about a minute: systemforce.co.uk/downtime-cost-calculator/