How much of the time you pay for actually gets billed? Enter a technician’s paid hours and billable hours to get billable utilization, yearly capacity, and what a higher utilization would add.
Calculate utilization
Calculated from your inputs. Yearly figures assume 52 working weeks.
See how this was calculated
| Paid hours / week | — |
| Billable hours / week | — |
| Non-billable hours / week | — |
| Billable utilization | — |
| Billable hours / year | — |
| Non-billable hours / year | — |
| Target utilization | — |
| Extra billable hours / year at target | — |
Utilization = billable hours ÷ paid hours × 100. Yearly figures = weekly hours × 52. Extra hours at target = (target% − utilization) × paid hours × 52, shown only when the target is above current utilization.
How to read your result
A technician is available for 40 hours in a week and records 26 billable hours:
- Utilization: 26 ÷ 40 × 100 = 65%
- Non-billable time: 40 − 26 = 14 hours that week
- Billable hours per year: 26 × 52 = 1,352 hours
Placeholder numbers to show the math — enter your own hours above.
Assumptions & limits
- Billable means invoiced to a customer. Wrench time on site counts; drive time, uninvoiced callbacks, training and idle time do not.
- Available hours means paid hours — the time you pay the technician for, including everything non-billable.
- The “where it goes” breakdown is a diagnostic aid. It reconciles against your non-billable total but doesn’t change the utilization calculation.
- Utilization moves with service mix, territory and season. Compare a technician against their own history rather than against other trades or other shops.
Common questions
What counts as a billable hour?
Time you invoice to a customer — the work on site that appears on the ticket. Drive time between calls, callbacks you can’t invoice, training, paperwork and waiting for the next job are paid hours, not billable hours.
My “where it goes” hours don’t add up to my non-billable total. Is that a problem?
No — that gap is unaccounted time, and it’s normal. Most shops can’t categorize every hour on the first pass. The gap itself is useful: it’s the first place to investigate when utilization looks low.
What utilization should I target?
Set it from your own history. Pick a realistic step above where you are now — closing even a few points recovers real hours over a year, as the what-if line above shows.
Should I compare technicians against each other?
Only technicians with a similar service mix. A residential service tech and a commercial install tech will never have comparable numbers. Use utilization to diagnose — routing, truck stock, dispatch gaps — not to rank.