Adviser capacity calculator: how many ongoing clients one adviser can look after in a year

A firm that charges an ongoing fee has promised each of those clients a yearly meeting about their arrangements. Whether it can keep the promise is a question of hours. The calculator counts the hours one adviser has, the hours each client takes, and tells you where the line is.

Free tool

Adviser capacity calculator: how many ongoing clients one adviser can review in a year, and what changes when the preparation is done for them

Clients paying for an annual review Preparation for each review (hours)Valuations, letters of authority, the pack. The meeting (hours) Write-up and follow-up (hours)Notes, the report or letter, instructions, filing. Weeks the adviser works a year Hours a week Time on everything else (%)New clients, CPD, compliance, management. Hours of preparation and write-up someone else could draft (per client)

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The sum

Other work is everything that is not looking after existing clients: new business, professional development, compliance, managing people, running the firm. A quarter is a placeholder. An adviser who is also a director may spend half their time on it.

Hours for each client come in three parts. Preparation is collecting valuations, sending and chasing letters of authority, checking what has changed and assembling the pack. The meeting is the meeting. Write-up is the notes, the report or letter, any instructions to providers and the filing. Time each part on three real clients before you trust the total, and do not assume the meeting is the largest of the three.

When the answer is over 100%

Enter 200 clients for the same adviser and the hours needed are 1,400, which is 113.1% of the time available. The calculator says so in plain terms: 162.5 hours short, or about 24 clients who are paying for a service the adviser has no time to deliver.

That is not a theoretical problem. The FCA's review of ongoing advice services, published on 24 February 2025, found that the firms it surveyed had delivered 83% of the reviews due. Where a firm has charged for a review and not provided it, the regulator expects the firm to consider whether the client is owed redress. Our ongoing service tracker counts the meetings promised and missed for a single client, and the evidence pack guide lists what a firm should be able to show.

A firm in that position has four honest options, and the calculator will test each:

1. Fewer clients for each adviser. Recruit, or move clients to a colleague with room.
2. A different service. Agree with some clients, properly and in writing, a service without a yearly meeting and a fee that reflects it.
3. Less adviser time for each client. Have the preparation and the write-up drafted by a paraplanner, an administrator or software, with the adviser checking the result.
4. Less other work. Take management or compliance tasks off the adviser.

What it should not do is leave the numbers as they are and hope.

What handing over two hours does

The last input asks how many hours of preparation and write-up for each client could be drafted by someone else. It cannot exceed the preparation and write-up time; nobody else can hold the meeting.

On the example, two hours handed over turns seven adviser hours into five. Capacity rises from 176 clients to 247, and at 150 clients the adviser gets 300 hours a year back. Those hours are not free: a paraplanner's or administrator's time has a cost, and so does software. But the comparison is now a clear one. Three hundred adviser hours against the cost of whoever does the drafting.

Two cautions belong here. The adviser still has to read what was drafted, and that checking time stays in the adviser's hours; if you hand over three hours but checking takes one, enter two. And handing over drafting does not hand over responsibility. The adviser who signs the suitability report answers for it, whoever typed it.

Using it across the firm

Run the calculator once for each adviser with their own client numbers and their own share of other work. Three things usually show up:

• One adviser is well over 100% while another has room.
• The advisers who are also directors have far less client time than the firm assumed.
• The hours for each client vary widely between advisers for the same service, which is a question about process, not effort.

Our admin scorecard for advice firms looks at the same hours from the other side: which office jobs take the time, and which could be drafted and checked.

Limits

This is arithmetic on the figures you enter. It assumes every client gets the same service and takes the same time; if you run service tiers, run it once for each tier and add the hours. It does not say what service a client should receive or whether your charges are fair value. Those are for the firm and its compliance function.

The adviser, and compliance where the firm's procedures require it, reviews and signs anything a tool or a colleague drafts. This page is general information, not regulatory or financial advice.

Overlyft can set up an AI assistant that prepares packs, drafts reports and chases letters of authority for the adviser to check. In this calculator it is one way of filling the last input, alongside a paraplanner or an administrator.