Billable Hours Calculator

About the Billable Hours Calculator

For anyone who sells their time — freelancers, consultants, designers, developers, lawyers, accountants — the number that decides income is not how many hours they work, but how many they can bill. Every business also needs time for things no client pays for directly: answering emails, sending invoices, writing proposals, marketing, learning, and the gaps between one project and the next.

This billable hours calculator works out how many hours you can realistically bill in a year. From your hours per week, the weeks you work and the share of time that is non-billable, it gives your billable hours per year and per week, your utilisation rate, and — if you enter an hourly rate — the revenue those hours will bring in.

How to Use the Billable Hours Calculator

Enter the hours you work per week, counting all working time, billable or not.

Enter the weeks you work per year: 52 less holidays, public holidays and a realistic allowance for illness.

Enter your non-billable time as a percentage of working hours.

Optionally, enter your hourly rate to see the yearly revenue.

How Billable Hours Are Calculated

  working hours    =  hours per week × weeks worked
  billable hours   =  working hours × (1 − non-billable %)
  utilisation      =  billable hours ÷ working hours
  revenue          =  billable hours × hourly rate

Step-by-Step Example

40 hours a week, 46 weeks a year, 30% non-billable, at 75 an hour.

  Working hours:   40 × 46               =  1,840
  Billable hours:  1,840 × (1 − 30%)     =  1,288
  Per week:        1,288 ÷ 46            =  28.0
  Utilisation:                              70%
  Revenue:         1,288 × 75            =  96,600

A full-time year is often quoted as 2,080 hours, but in this example only 1,288 can be billed — about 62% of that headline figure.

Where Non-Billable Time Goes

The mix differs by person and by year. A freelancer with a full pipeline of repeat clients spends less time selling; one who is just starting spends much more. Tracking time for a few weeks is the best way to find your own figure.

Improving Utilisation

Batch admin. Handle email and invoicing at set times rather than all day.

Use templates for proposals, contracts and reports.

Build repeat business. Existing clients need far less selling.

Keep a pipeline. Line up the next project before the current one ends to avoid gaps.

Bill for what you do. Client meetings, travel and revisions are often billable if the contract says so.

But utilisation cannot reach 100%, and trying to get close usually means cutting the marketing and learning that keep the business healthy. A steady 65–75% is a realistic target for most independent professionals.

Billable Hours and Your Rate

Your billable hours are the hours your rate must pay for everything: your income, tax, expenses and all the time you cannot bill. That is why freelance rates look high compared with salaries. The hourly rate calculator uses the same inputs to work out the rate you need to charge, and the freelance rate calculator turns that rate into day and project prices.

Tracking Your Time

The non-billable percentage in this calculator is only as good as the number you put in. Most people underestimate it. Tracking every working hour for two to four weeks — billable and non-billable alike — usually reveals more time on email, admin and unpaid client requests than expected.

Simple time-tracking apps make this easy, and the habit has other benefits. It shows which clients and projects are really profitable, gives evidence when a client questions a bill, and makes future estimates more accurate. Many freelancers keep tracking permanently for exactly those reasons.

Planning Holidays and Time Off

Every week of holiday removes a week of billable hours, so it is worth planning for it rather than feeling guilty about it. Decide how many weeks off you want in the year, build them into the weeks-worked figure, and set your rate so that the remaining weeks cover a full year's income.

It also helps to spread income across the year. Setting aside part of each month's earnings for holiday weeks, tax and quiet periods smooths out the uneven cash flow that comes with self-employment, and makes it much easier to take proper time off without worrying about the bills.

Treat illness the same way. Nobody plans to be ill, but most people lose a week or more a year to it, and without sick pay those weeks earn nothing. Allowing for them in the weeks-worked figure keeps the plan realistic.

Understanding Your Result

Billable hours is the number of hours you can bill in a year.

Working hours is your total working time.

Billable hours per week spreads the total over the weeks worked.

Utilisation is the share of working time that is billable.

Revenue is billable hours times your rate, if entered.

Worth knowing gives typical utilisation for freelancers.

When Should You Use This Calculator?

Starting out as a freelancer and setting expectations.

Setting your hourly rate.

Planning holidays and their effect on income.

Setting utilisation targets for a team.

Checking whether a revenue goal is realistic.

Common Mistakes

Assuming 2,080 billable hours a year.

Forgetting holidays and sick days.

Ignoring gaps between projects.

Leaving marketing and admin out of the week.

Setting a rate on working hours instead of billable hours.