£317 per minute — Atlassian pegs the small-business cost at $427/min; at today’s rate of $1 = £0.74 that’s £19 k an hour. atlassian.comexchangerates.org.uk
£3,350 per incident — the UK Cyber Breaches survey’s average for small firms. twenty-four.it
Up to £300 k lost each year through repeated tech glitches, missed meetings and deadlines, says a 2025 Samsung-commissioned survey of 1,000 UK SMEs.
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Total Cost = Direct Loss + Productivity Loss + Recovery Expenses + Penalty / Reputation Impact
| Cost bucket | What it covers | Typical range for an SME | One-hour example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lost sales | E-commerce, PoS takings, billable project time | £500 – £10 000/hr | £2 500 |
| New-business stall | Abandoned baskets, missed enquiries | 5 – 15 % of lost sales | £250 |
| Idle staff wages | Salaries & on-costs for employees who can’t work | £15 – £35 pp/hr × head-count | £450 |
| Catch-up overtime | Extra hours to clear the backlog | 1-2× normal wage | £300 |
| Technical recovery | MSP call-outs, replacement parts, cloud spin-ups | £300 – £2 000/incident | £700 |
| Penalty/SLA rebates | Refunds to customers, contract credits | 2 – 8 % of monthly contract value | £300 |
| Reputation & churn | Lost renewals, negative reviews, PR spend | 1 – 5 × daily marketing budget | £1 200 |
One-hour hit 👉 £5 700
Revenue at risk
(a) Last 90 days’ turnover ÷ operating hours = average £/hour.
(b) If you rely on web leads, add 10–20 % to capture lost opportunities.
People cost
Count everyone who would be blocked in an outage (front desk, sales, workshop).
Multiply by loaded hourly wage (salary ÷ 2 080 hours × 1.3 for NI/pension).
Catch-up premium
Estimate overtime or weekend rates to clear backlogs; even salaried staff often burn time you could spend on growth.
Recovery spend
Typical call-out fee from your IT support plus hardware/cloud resources.
Don’t forget courier surcharges for “need-it-now” parts.
Penalty & perception
SLA rebate clauses: percentage of monthly fee per hour of downtime.
Reputation: assume 1–3 % churn if customers experience a second outage within 12 months.
Pro tip: Keep this worksheet in a shared spreadsheet. Update quarterly so every stakeholder sees exactly what an avoidable business IT outage costs your firm.
Even a “small” £5 700 loss equals one week of profit for many UK micro-businesses.
Most SMEs suffer three to four outages a year, pushing the annual IT downtime cost above £20 k—enough to fund a robust backup, monitoring, and cybersecurity bundle that lifts overall IT reliability.
Goal: shrink Recovery Time Objective (RTO) from hours to minutes and drive Recovery Point Objective (RPO) towards zero, using tools that fit a small-business wallet.