New research from Newcastle-based Sage shows the UK’s smaller businesses have embraced digital technology — but they are losing 19 working days every year moving and re-entering information between apps that do not talk to each other, costing the economy an estimated £31 billion.

Sage, a leader in accounting, financial, HR and payroll technology for small and mid-sized businesses, found the average SME now uses 52 digital tools and 27 separate logins across its business.

“But those tools frequently do not work together for business owners, with nine in 10 spending significant time manually moving and re-entering information between systems,” said Sage.

“Even sole traders juggle 44 tools on average, leaving many effectively doing a second job managing the technology that is supposed to make running a business easier.

“Across the year, the average SME loses 19 working days to manual tasks that technology should be automating, which adds up to £5,700 per business.

“Fragmentation is also making it harder for businesses to understand how they are performing, with more than four in ten (42%) admitting they regularly make financial decisions without all the information they need.

“Nearly two-thirds (62%) of SMEs say having information spread across different systems makes it harder to understand the financial health of their business, while only one in ten can see their full financial picture in one place.”

Sage CEO Steve Hare said: “At Sage, we’ve spent years helping small and mid-sized businesses adopt digital technology. Now, we need to make it work harder for them.

“Losing nearly a month a year moving information between systems is time Britain’s SMBs should be spending finding customers, investing and growing. The next big productivity opportunity is connecting the technology they already use, so information can move securely, AI can do more of the heavy lifting, and business owners can get that time back.”