Hidden Hours

Developed through my work at Sage. Updated October 2026.

Hidden Hours examines the work surrounding accountancy: client chasing, compliance preparation, administrative rework, expectation management and the responsibility that makes switching off difficult. Sage’s research gave that experience a quantitative foundation. Editorial interpretation helped turn the findings into questions that could sustain written coverage and practitioner conversations.

I was deeply involved editorially during a defined phase of this work. I interpreted the research, developed an editorial framework and wrote connected Sage Advice coverage. I then moved on to other projects while the wider team continued developing and delivering the programme. My later contributions sit within that longer history; I have not continuously owned the campaign.

The pattern beneath the research

The editorial starting point was a question about what connected the findings. Workload, unpaid support, changing client expectations and difficulty switching off could each have become a separate headline. Taken together, they suggested a broader problem: the scope of accounting work was expanding beyond the tasks firms formally recognised and priced.

I described this as the work around the work. A return or report may be the visible output, but producing it can depend on repeated requests for records, explanations of unfamiliar rules, corrections and reassurance. These activities carry a cost even when they never become a separate line on an invoice.

That framing gave the research a direction for further investigation. It created questions about service boundaries, workflow design and where technology removes friction. It also required us to ask what responsibility stays with practitioners after an individual task becomes faster.

The editorial groundwork

The June 2026 strategy set out a progression from the research to hidden work, continuous responsibility and possible operational redesign. Understanding the pressure was the beginning. The longer-term opportunity was to help firms recognise their own situation and identify what they might change.

I organised the broader editorial framework around five sources of hidden work:

• Client management, including expectations and the cost of chasing.
• Compliance administration, including preparation and interpretation.
• Workflow fragmentation across systems and handoffs.
• Operational firefighting, including payment problems and urgent requests.
• Always-on responsibility and its personal consequences.

These areas helped distinguish related stories rather than repeatedly summarising the same findings. The strategy identified specific opportunities around HMRC modernisation, late payments, event reporting and practitioner video. It also proposed practical extensions such as a diagnostic and a continuing home for the subject.

The video programme is organised around four core territories: how practitioners spend their time, work that is rarely charged, the personal reality of the profession and where it goes next. These overlap with the questions in my broader editorial framework, while the programme’s planning and delivery involved the wider team.

The five sources and four programme territories serve different purposes. One maps the problem; the other organises conversations. Both came from the effort to turn research into an editorial approach that could support more than a launch article.

Where the written work tested the thinking

The Accountex 2026 coverage on Sage Advice provided an early reporting foundation. Published in May, before the June strategy deck, it examined how accounting work was changing and how firms were responding. It helped establish the questions the later framework brought together.

The HMRC modernisation article developed a specific question from the strategy: would digital transformation reduce hidden work, or change where it appeared? The useful editorial connection was between policy direction and the practical burden of preparing clients, interpreting requirements and coordinating more continuous work.

The late-payments article explored a different mechanism. Payment delays create financial pressure, but also chasing, checking and advisory conversations. Looking at that surrounding work connects a familiar business issue with the experience of the accountant supporting the client.

These articles give the narrative different settings. Their value depends on whether the connection explains something specific, rather than merely attaching the Hidden Hours label to another topic.

The interval between thinking and activation

Much of my editorial groundwork preceded the resources behind the wider programme in its current form. I could develop the interpretation, structure the editorial framework and produce written coverage where there was an opportunity. Broader activation needed the business to commit resources and colleagues to bring their own expertise.

That is a normal distinction between an editorial proposal and a produced programme. Budgets, priorities, schedules and production capacity affect when an idea can develop. A clear framework makes an opportunity easier to carry forward, but does not supply everything required to deliver it.

My involvement also changed over that period. After the concentrated editorial phase, I moved on to other projects while the programme continued through the wider team. The work now visible combines that earlier foundation with subsequent campaign decisions, practitioner participation and production and distribution expertise.

The appropriate account of my contribution includes the early thinking as well as the published writing. It also recognises the substantial work required to turn those foundations into a programme an audience can experience.

Practitioner evidence and discovery

Research can show that a problem is widespread. Practitioners can explain how it happens, why familiar advice is difficult to follow and what changed when they tried a different approach. That specificity is what makes conversations valuable to the continuing editorial work.

The later GEO and evidence work adds another question: where are audiences receiving generic answers that better practitioner evidence could strengthen? Existing transcripts may already contain useful material. In other cases, a future conversation may need a more deliberate follow-up.

This is a direction for editorial judgement and testing. It does not mean every clip deserves publication or that embedding a video guarantees an improvement in AI discovery. A reusable answer needs context, attribution and an appropriate destination.

The Manchester reporting preparation extended this interest in live practitioner evidence. Events can challenge the framework as well as provide examples that fit it. A useful narrative must remain open to what practitioners actually say.

Where the work stands now

By October 2026, there is connected written coverage, a video programme organised around the research territories and a newly live Hidden Hours of Accountancy programme landing page on Sage Advice. The landing page provides a central destination for the programme, distinct from the supporting written coverage. My contribution can be traced through the earlier interpretation and structure, the writing and later evidence work.

The newest addition is Beyond the brief: Where do accountants’ hidden hours go?, the Sage Advice companion to the first video episode, which I wrote and published in October. It draws on the episode’s conversations with Andrew Dick of G W Dick & Co and Julie Young of Walter Dawson & Son Accountants, alongside Aaron Patrick’s account at Accountex Manchester of how the first MTD for Income Tax quarterly update forced him to rethink his capacity planning. It is a small test of two earlier arguments in this narrative: that practitioners can explain how hidden work happens in ways the research alone cannot, and that evidence gathered at an event should stay usable after the event. I’ve written about the work behind that article separately.

Some possibilities in the original strategy remain separate from that demonstrated progress. A diagnostic, maturity segmentation and more tailored operational guidance require their own implementation and evaluation. Their presence in a deck does not establish that the programme delivered them.

Publication is also distinct from impact. The visible work demonstrates editorial development and delivery. Claims about changed practice behaviour, commercial influence or improved GEO performance need further evidence.

What the case contributes to Editorial Intelligence

Hidden Hours illustrates the editorial work between receiving research and producing a continuing programme. That includes deciding what the findings mean, developing useful territories, connecting reporting with the research and retaining enough context for later work to build on it.

The case also shows that those stages can happen at different times and through different people. My deepest involvement belonged to a particular editorial phase. The business’s later investment and the wider team’s delivery allowed the programme to develop beyond that phase.

The useful test now is whether each addition improves what an audience can understand or do. That keeps the narrative accountable to evidence and usefulness as the work continues.

For the detailed account of my involvement and the resourcing sequence, read The editorial work that happened before the campaign.