NorthGate Collective helps small businesses and community organisations in Reading spend less time on admin — through better processes, sensible automation, and tools that are usually free.
The average UK small business owner spends over 33 hours a month on internal business admin (Department for Business and Trade, 2025). If you run a shop, a trade, a practice or a charity in Reading, you'll recognise where those hours go: chasing invoices, retyping the same details into different systems, and evenings lost to paperwork.
NorthGate Collective is an operational consultancy based here in Reading. We look at how your organisation actually runs day to day, fix the processes that waste your time, and set up low-cost or free software that does the repetitive work for you. Then we train you to run it yourself — we don't build things you'll depend on us to maintain.
Four straightforward ways to get your time back.
01
We sit down with you — in person if you like — and work out what's actually eating your time.
02
We redesign the processes that aren't working, from quoting to invoicing to rotas.
03
We set up low-cost tools that talk to each other, so information only gets typed once.
04
We make sure you and your team are confident running everything without us.
Being local matters for this kind of work. Watching how a job moves through your workshop, shop floor or office is often the quickest way to spot what's slowing you down — and that's easier when we can just come to you. We work with organisations across:
Plenty of our work also happens remotely, so if you'd rather do everything by video call, that works too.
Our pricing is flat and published — the same for every client, wherever you are. It starts with a free 30-minute intro call, a £300 strategy session if you want a full review with a written report, and £100 an hour for hands-on work. No retainers, no long contracts. See the full breakdown on our pricing page.
Yes. NorthGate Collective is based in Reading, so if you'd rather talk across a table than a screen, that's easy to arrange. The free intro call usually happens by phone or video, but hands-on work can happen wherever your business does.
Our pricing is flat and published: a free 30-minute intro call, a £300 strategy session with a written report, and £100 an hour for hands-on work. No retainers, no long contracts.
All of Berkshire — Caversham, Earley, Woodley and Tilehurst, plus Wokingham, Bracknell and Newbury. We also work with businesses in Swindon and Wiltshire, and remotely across the UK.
Yes. Charities, social enterprises and community groups make up a large part of our work — see how we help charities reduce admin time. Hourly billing with no retainer is designed to suit small budgets.