How much time do people spend in spreadsheets?

The numbers

A survey of 1,000 office workers by Acuity Training found the average respondent spends around 20 hours a week in Excel, with a spreadsheet involved in about 38% of their total work. At the extreme, roughly 1 in 25 office workers spend 80% or more of their working time in a spreadsheet.

Put differently: the average office worker gives up around half a working day, every day, to spreadsheet work — entering data, fixing formulas, and rebuilding the same reports.

Source & methodology

The headline figure comes from Acuity Training's survey of 1,000 office workers, compiled in The State of Spreadsheets 2026. Self-reported time-use surveys carry the usual caveats, but the ~20-hours figure is consistent with other estimates of knowledge-worker spreadsheet use.

Source: Acuity Training, survey of 1,000 office workers, as summarised in The State of Spreadsheets 2026 (DataHub Pro).

Why it matters

Twenty hours a week is the single biggest argument for automating reporting. If even a fraction of that time is spent rebuilding the same monthly report by hand, a tool that generates it automatically pays for itself quickly. Estimate your own number with the cost-of-reporting calculator.