Time studies sound corporate until you run one on your own shop. We sat behind five agents with a stopwatch and a simple rule: any action performed on one board that had already been performed on the other counts as duplicate time.
The shape of the day
Morning was posting: 14 new loads, each entered twice. Midday was repricing: the market moved, and every adjusted rate meant two edits. End of day was takedowns — the ones that happened, anyway. Four delivered loads were still live on one board when the office lights went off.
| Block | Duplicate actions | Time lost |
|---|---|---|
| Morning posting | 14 re-posts | 1:07 |
| Midday repricing | 22 edits | 0:58 |
| Afternoon status edits | 17 edits | 0:41 |
| End-of-day takedowns | 9 of 13 done | 0:26 |
| One Tuesday | 62 actions | 3:12 |
What the owner said
His first reaction was to defend the team — and he was right to. The point of the audit was never the people. Three hours of duplicate work is a process bill, and it arrives every single day. Over a month that’s roughly 66 agent-hours, or most of a hire.
I budgeted for software this year. Apparently I’d already been paying for it in payroll.
Run your own audit
You don’t need us. Pick a normal day, pick one agent, and tally every second entry, edit, and takedown. Multiply by your headcount. Then decide whether the number is a rounding error or a line item.