Agency utilisation calculator
Work out billable utilisation (utilization, if you spell it the American way) for your team: what share of the hours people were actually available went on billable work, and how many hours you are over or under the target you set. It runs in your browser. Nothing you type is sent anywhere.
| Person | Available | Billable | Utilisation | vs target |
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How this is worked out
Utilisation compares billable hours with the hours a person was actually there to work. Billable hours are hours spent on client work. Available hours are what is left of their contracted hours once leave and public holidays are taken out.
- Contracted hours = contracted hours a week x weeks in the period
- Available hours = contracted hours - leave and holidays
- Utilisation = billable hours / available hours
- Target billable hours = target utilisation x available hours
- Over or under target = billable hours - target billable hours
For the whole team, every figure is added up first and then divided: total billable hours over total available hours. That weights each person by the hours they actually had, which a simple average of percentages does not. The calculator also shows utilisation against contracted hours, which is billable hours over contracted hours. It is always the same or lower, and tells you how much of the time you pay for turned into billable work, leave included.
The money figure, if you add a billing rate, is the hours over or under target multiplied by that rate. It is only revenue you missed if there was client work to sell those hours to, so read it as the size of the gap, not as lost income.
Your numbers, worked through
Questions
What is billable utilisation?
Billable utilisation is the share of a person's available hours that went on billable work. It is billable hours divided by available hours, where available hours are contracted hours minus leave and public holidays. Someone available for 144 hours who logged 98 billable hours is at 68 percent.
What is the difference between available hours and contracted hours?
Contracted hours are what the person is employed for, for example 40 hours a week. Available hours are contracted hours minus leave and public holidays, which is the time they were actually there to work. Utilisation against available hours tells you how well the time you had was used. Utilisation against contracted hours is always the same or lower, and tells you how much of what you pay for turned into billable work. This calculator shows both.
Should utilisation be 100 percent?
No. Reviews, pitches, training, admin and internal meetings are real work that no client pays for directly, so a person at 100 percent has no room for any of it. Above 100 percent usually means overtime or a timesheet error. The right target depends on the role: a designer who spends most of the week on client work and an account lead who runs the team will have very different targets, so set the target yourself rather than borrowing someone else's.
Why is team utilisation not the average of each person's utilisation?
Because people have different available hours. A part-timer at 90 percent and a full-timer at 50 percent do not average to 70 percent. Team utilisation is total billable hours divided by total available hours, which weights each person by the hours they actually had.
What counts as a billable hour on fixed-fee or retainer work?
Most agencies count time spent on client deliverables as billable even when the client pays a fixed fee or a monthly retainer rather than by the hour, and count internal work, pitches and admin as non-billable. Either convention works as long as you apply it the same way every month, otherwise the trend means nothing.
Related tools and guides
A month-end utilisation figure tells you what already happened. Ancor shows each person's load in hours for the week ahead, from the work actually assigned to them, so you can see who is over 100 percent before you promise a deadline. Hours are logged against the tasks themselves, so the billable figure is there without a spreadsheet.