This is an illustrative example built from a composite business — not a real client. Your real audit will look like this.
Bus Factor Audit — Example Report
Riverside Trade Supplies Ltd
32 employeesBuilders' merchant, 2 sitesAudit conducted by Gilt Studio
41
Overall Bus Factor Score / 100
Three of your five key roles are single points of failure. If any one of them left with zero notice, this business would take between 8 and 21 working days to recover — at an estimated cost of £12,400–£31,000 depending which role.
Role-by-role breakdown
Operations Manager
22 / 100
Recovery time21 days
Est. cost of gap£31,000
Backup coverageNone
Runs supplier ordering, staff rota, and site compliance entirely from memory and a personal notebook. No written process exists for reorder points, and only this person has the login for the supplier portal.
Fix: SOP capture sprint — record and document the ordering process, rota logic, and compliance checklist; set up shared portal access with a second admin login.
Transport & Fleet Coordinator
30 / 100
Recovery time14 days
Est. cost of gap£18,600
Backup coveragePartial
Holds sole responsibility for vehicle maintenance scheduling and driver compliance records. One other person could cover deliveries, but not the compliance paperwork behind them.
Fix: Document the compliance calendar and maintenance scheduling logic as a standalone written pack — this is the highest legal-exposure gap in the business.
Accounts & Payroll
58 / 100
Recovery time6 days
Est. cost of gap£8,200
Backup coveragePartial
Some written notes exist and the external accountant has partial visibility, but nobody in-house could run a full payroll cycle unsupervised.
Fix: Short video walkthrough of the monthly payroll run, kept alongside the existing notes.
Warehouse Supervisor
74 / 100
Recovery time2 days
Est. cost of gap£1,900
Backup coverageFull
Two other staff are properly cross-trained on this role already. Low risk — flagged only for completeness.
What we'd recommend, in order
Start with the Operations Manager role — highest cost, zero backup, and the whole site depends on it.
Transport compliance next — the legal exposure here is real, not just operational.
Accounts can wait until the first two are documented — the accountant is a partial safety net already.
Total estimated sprint: 3 roles documented, written + video, delivered inside 3 weeks.