São Paulo, October 2026 - For Brazilian small business owners, running a business also means handling a range of financial and administrative tasks that eat up time and pull focus away from growth strategy. That is the finding of “Time is money: how much financial red tape costs Brazilian small businesses,” a new study commissioned by Nu Empresas from Bridge Research. In July, the study surveyed 1,200 small business owners across Brazil, both Nubank customers and non-customers.
The main finding is that business owners spend an average of nine hours a week on administrative and financial tasks such as payments, collections and reconciliation. That is more than one full working day lost to operational work. Over a year, this adds up to roughly 468 hours, the equivalent of almost three months of work without a single sale. The study also shows that red tape weighs differently depending on the type of business. Individual microentrepreneurs (MEIs) spend about 8 hours a week on it, while micro and small companies spend an average of 10 hours. For retailers the burden is even heavier, at 11 hours a week.
According to the survey, the tasks that take up the most time are tax obligations (43%), followed by tracking cash inflows and outflows (41%), issuing invoices (40%) and, further down the list, reconciling incoming payments (30%). The weight of these operational tasks falls directly on business growth. The study found that 85% of business owners say they skipped something strategic in the past three months because they were overwhelmed, and 68% say their business would be more profitable with less red tape to deal with.
“The data confirms what we were already seeing up close: the problem isn’t just the time spent on red tape, it’s what business owners can’t do with that time. Every hour spent checking a payment slip or issuing an invoice is an hour taken away from planning, from customers or from growing the business. That’s exactly the math we had in mind when we built Nu Empresas’ solutions. Tools like the Payments Assistant and the Collections Assistant exist to automate these operational tasks and give business owners back the time that red tape takes from them,” says Maximiliano Damian, Vice President of Nu Empresas.
The Artificial Intelligence disconnect
The study also shows that Brazilian small business owners have brought innovation into how they communicate with customers, but still rely on traditional processes to manage their finances. Although 66% of business owners already use Artificial Intelligence tools, they use them mostly for content creation: among them, 68% use AI to write copy and 63% to produce images and videos. For management, use is much lower: only 30% use these tools for financial or administrative tasks.
The same gap shows up in the tools business owners use day to day. More than half (53%) still manage cash flow in spreadsheets, and 23% keep handwritten records on paper or in notebooks.
Caixinhas PJ
Data from Nu Empresas’ own customer base, as of September 2026, shows how business owners use this financial organization tool. Among customers who use Caixinhas PJ (business savings pockets), more than three in four businesses (77%) have at least one Caixinha set aside for a specific goal: 63% are tied to planning, such as “emergencies” and “improvements,” and 18% to day-to-day finances, such as “cash flow,” “working capital” and “payments.”
The data also shows that money kept in a Caixinha isn’t just passing through: 86% of these customers have kept funds saved for more than 30 days. It is the same kind of organization many still do in spreadsheets, but inside the account, earning 100% of the CDI with immediate liquidity for daily cash needs. For those who can lock in funds for 6 months or more, returns start at 102.5% of the CDI.
What’s new at Nu Empresas: Transaction limits
Beyond financial organization tools like Caixinhas, Nu Empresas is also expanding features for businesses at more advanced stages of growth. The company is rolling out its transaction limit feature to 100% of its eligible base, allowing business account owners to set how much each employee can move.
With this feature, account owners can delegate tasks such as payments and transfers with more control, without giving authorized users unlimited financial autonomy. The feature isn’t related to credit limits. It manages transactions such as supplier payments or expense control, which makes operations safer and more organized.
“We saw in the study itself that growth makes running a business more complex. Transaction limits respond directly to that: they give business owners the confidence to delegate tasks without losing visibility and control over the company’s cash,” adds Damian.