UK businesses lose up to four days a month to manual finance admin

New research commissioned by Finexer found that just 10% of UK businesses have highly automated banking and payment workflows, while many still rely on manual reconciliation and data entry. The findings suggest finance teams are spending hours each month on avoidable admin as demand grows for faster payments and real-time visibility.

Why it matters: - The research points to a gap between wider digital transformation and day-to-day finance operations in UK businesses. - Manual banking and payment work still consumes time that finance teams could spend on higher-value tasks. - The findings matter because faster payments and real-time financial visibility are becoming standard expectations.

What happened: - Finexer commissioned research for a report called “The Open Banking Data and Payments Automation Landscape.” - The study surveyed 418 senior leaders at UK organisations with 10 to 500 employees. - Respondents worked across accounting and bookkeeping, payroll and HR, ERP and financial management, legal, property, lettings and PropTech, utilities, FinTech and B2B SaaS. - Fieldwork took place in August 2026. - The results were post-stratified and weighted to reflect the UK population.

The details: - Only 10% of businesses said they have highly automated processes across most banking and payment workflows. - 19% said they still rely mainly on manual processes to match bank transactions and payments against invoices, customers, cases or internal records. - 45% said they use a mix of manual and automated processes. - 24% said their organisation loses 20 to 29 hours each month to manual bank and payment administration. - 15% said the monthly time drain reaches 39 hours, or more than one full working week. - The manual tasks include collecting bank information, checking whether payments have arrived, matching payments to internal records and re-entering banking and payment data. - The report says integrating banking data into finance systems can involve complex integrations, regulatory requirements and legacy infrastructure. - Open Banking can connect banking data and account-to-account payments directly into the systems businesses already use. - Finexer is an FCA-authorised Open Banking infrastructure platform built for mid-market B2B platforms. - Finexer provides infrastructure for payments, financial data and verification through a single API. - Finexer was ranked No. 32 in the 2026 Sifted 100 fastest-growing startups in the UK and Ireland. - The company says it covers 99% of UK banks, uses usage-based pricing, offers white-label customisation and provides dedicated onboarding support over a 3- to 5-week deployment period. - Finexer is backed by SFC Capital and British Business Bank. - More information is available in Finexer's announcement.

Between the lines: - The research suggests many finance teams have modern software layered over old workflows, not fully automated systems. - That leaves staff to bridge gaps between platforms with manual checks and reconciliations. - The result is a clear case for infrastructure that connects payments and data more directly rather than adding another standalone tool. - Ravi Ranjan, Finexer co-founder and CEO, said too much manual finance admin is still treated as a normal cost of doing business.

What's next: - Finexer argues businesses will need infrastructure that supports real-time visibility and automated reconciliation as payment expectations rise. - The company says automating financial data movement could free finance teams for more strategic work. - Businesses evaluating automation may focus more on systems that reduce manual handoffs between banking data and finance software.

The bottom line: - UK businesses are still losing meaningful time to finance admin that technology was supposed to remove, and the biggest gap appears to be integration rather than software availability.