HoursBack in brief
HoursBack runs AI workflow assessments for UK small and medium businesses - showing owners exactly where they are losing time to manual work, and a plain-English plan for winning those hours back. Everything a journalist, partner or prospect needs is on this page: boilerplate, facts, the founder, story angles and brand assets.
The admin problem, and why most SMEs have not fixed it yet
Small businesses lose serious time to admin, and most of those that have not adopted AI have not worked out where it would help them. HoursBack is built to show them where.
is what Sage’s research found the average UK small business loses to admin - close to four working days a month, getting on for 400 hours a year.
Sage, via the Small Business Charter
of UK firms not using AI say the reason is simply that they have not identified a need for it.
Government DSIT AI Adoption Research
of UK SMEs now use AI, up from 35% a year earlier.
British Chambers of Commerce with the University of Essex, March 2026
Every figure here is named, dated and linked in our UK small business AI statistics reference.
About HoursBack, ready to paste
Use whichever length fits. Both are approved for publication as written.
HoursBack runs AI workflow assessments for UK small and medium businesses. For a fixed £799, its assessment maps exactly where a business is losing time to manual work and returns a prioritised, plain-English plan for winning those hours back with AI - built from a single 60-minute interview into a roughly 22-page report. Founded in March 2026 by David Bevan, based in South East London.
HoursBack runs £799 AI workflow assessments for UK SMEs, showing owners exactly where AI can save them time and how to act on it. Founded March 2026.
Key facts
- Founded
- March 2026
- Founder
- David Bevan
- Based
- South East London, UK
- Product
- Fixed-scope AI workflow assessment, £799
- Delivery
- A 60-minute interview, then a prioritised report of around 22 pages
- Trademark
- UK trademark application filed June 2026, pending examination (classes 35, 41 and 42). An application in progress, not yet registered.
- Named client case studies
- Matt Watson, Michael Storey and Aaron Leary (published)
- Representative outcome
- Matt Watson - 9 hours a week back so far, of 23 identified (30-day verified)
The recoverable time is never where owners expect it
Every business we sit down with is sitting on more recoverable time than the owner realised - and it’s never where they expected. It’s in back-office admin and ops - invoicing, inbox triage, scheduling, knowledge stuck in people’s heads - not the customer-facing work owners assume AI is for.
This is what we consistently see in the businesses we assess. It is first-hand field observation from the assessments we run, not a study or a national sample. The proof is in the named, consented case studies rather than an average.
Matt Watson, owner of Watson Textiles, has 9 hours a week back so far, of 23 hours we identified across his week. Those savings are verified over 30 days and reported back to us by Matt himself. Michael Storey, a consultant and coach, left one session able to see the whole picture - what to fix, in what order, and with which tools, most of which he was already paying for.
The scale of the problem, from the published research, sits at the top of this page.
David Bevan
Founder, HoursBack
David Bevan is the founder of HoursBack. He has spent more than 20 years in creative and marketing operations, mostly inside large organisations - running creative teams, managing multi-million pound production pipelines, and building the systems behind them, at Coca-Cola, Betway and Korn Ferry.
He now runs two businesses, HoursBack and traidhand, using a fleet of custom AI agents and no employees. He started HoursBack after seeing the same pattern again and again: small business owners drowning in admin while the tools to fix it sat unused or unknown. He works in plain English and only recommends things he uses himself.
What David can talk about
Angles David is happy to be interviewed on or write about.
Why most SME AI pilots stall - and the diagnosis step nearly everyone skips.
Adoption sequence, not speed: the real reason many SMEs are not seeing AI return.
What running a whole business on a fleet of AI agents actually looks like, built in public.
Where SME AI returns actually come from - back-office admin and ops, not customer-facing content.
Bringing big-consultancy workflow assessment to businesses that could never afford it.
Named client case studies
9 hours a week back so far, of 23 hours identified across his week (30-day verified).
Read the case study →A full picture in one session: what to fix, in what order, and with which tools - most of them already paid for.
Read the case study →The assessment led to a bespoke build that turned about 10 weeks of manual report-writing into a single 60-second run (verified).
Read the case study →“Fundamentally eye-opening. You don't notice it when you're in the day-to-day, but you're spending hours on small tasks you don't have to be doing.”
“I'd been avoiding AI because I didn't know where to start. One session and I could see the whole picture - what to fix, in what order, with what tools.”
“Splendidly finished. The account management team have had their minds blown. Hundreds of reports done in 60 seconds - which would have taken us 10 weeks manually. Genuine game changer.”
The full list of published outcomes lives on the case studies page.
Logos, colours and fonts
- DM Serif Display - headings
- Outfit - body text
Need something specific - a higher-resolution logo, product screenshots or a one-page fact sheet? Email [email protected] and we’ll send it over.
Available for interview or comment
For interviews, expert comment on SME AI adoption, or anything else on this page, get in touch. We aim to reply to press enquiries within one working day.
or email [email protected]