A full working week can still leave your practice short of billable hours. Client work competes with admin and supervision, while business development needs time of its own. The challenge is to make enough room for paid work without pushing the rest of the job into evenings.
Billability, also called billable utilisation, shows how much of your available time goes into chargeable client work. Comparing it by role and against the hours you planned helps you decide where to free up time or redistribute work, and whether you can take on another client.
Billability / billable utilisation rate
(Billable hours ÷ available hours) × 100
How to calculate billability
To calculate billability, divide logged billable hours by available working hours and multiply by 100. If an accountant logs 112 billable hours from 160 available hours in a month, their billability is 70%. Some firms call this measure chargeability.
For most small professional-services firms, contracted hours less leave and public holidays provide a useful basis for a monthly review.
| Calculation basis | Hours counted as available | Best used for | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard working hours | Contracted weekly hours × weeks in the period | Simple external benchmarking | Leave and public holidays can make individuals or periods look artificially low |
| Available working hours | Standard hours minus leave and public holidays | Day-to-day team and capacity reviews | Keep the leave rules consistent across people and periods |
| Role-adjusted capacity | Available hours minus agreed non-client responsibilities | Planning a role with substantial management, review, or business-development duties | Subtracting internal time raises the percentage without adding client work |
| Paid hours | All paid time, including leave where applicable | Labour-cost or workforce analysis | It is rarely comparable with benchmarks based on a fixed working year |
If a role has a fixed allowance for management or review, agree that adjustment before the reporting period starts. Otherwise, keep the calculation simple and account for those duties when you set the role’s target. Avoid allowing for the same duties twice, through both a reduced denominator and a lower target.
Some organisations also track productive utilisation, which can include client delivery that is not billed and sometimes training, mentoring, or process improvement. TSIA’s utilisation framework recommends defining each category before comparing results. Whatever your firm calls the measure, write down what it includes so the number keeps the same meaning from month to month.
Weekly, monthly and annual calculations
The formula works at any interval. These separate examples each produce 70%:
| View | Example calculation | Best used for |
|---|---|---|
| Week | 28 ÷ 40 = 70.0% | Current scheduling and work allocation |
| Month | 112 ÷ 160 = 70.0% | Management reviews and short-term trends |
| Year | 1,344 ÷ 1,920 = 70.0% | Pricing, staffing, and external comparisons |
Weekly results can jump around because of leave, training, project delays, and late timesheets. A monthly or rolling-quarter view is usually more useful for staffing and pricing decisions. If you start from an annual target instead, our calculator can turn annual billable hours into a weekly and daily number.
What is a good billability rate?
A useful target leaves room for the rest of the role. Benchmarks provide context, but the surveys below count working time in different ways and cover different professions. These are dated reference points, not universal targets.
| Source | Reported result | What it measures | Comparison limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 SPI Professional Services Maturity Benchmark | 68.9% overall; 64.3% for organisations under 10 people; 65.4% for 10–30; 69.2% for 31–100 | 2024 billable hours divided by a fixed 2,000-hour year | IT and management consultancies accounted for about 45% of the 403 respondents; only one accounting organisation took part |
| 2025 AICPA PCPS/CPA.com National MAP Survey | Firmwide medians ranged from 48.1% to 61.5% across the five fee bands below $5 million | US public-accounting practices; fiscal-2024 data, with 1,073 completed responses and partial responses also included | The executive summary does not specify the utilisation denominator or leave treatment, so do not assume a direct match to your calculation |
| 2025 Clio Legal Trends Report | 38%, or about 3.0 billable hours per day | Share of an eight-hour day recorded as billable work in Clio’s US legal customer sample | Legal-sector context, not a target for other professions or a measure of unrecorded time |
The SPI figure for organisations under 10 people may help a small consultancy put its results in context. It says little about the right target for an accounting partner or a junior bookkeeper.
Accounting partners and directors
The AICPA MAP Survey reported median utilisation of 58.1% for equity partners and 59.4% for directors. Practices in the top quartile for net remaining per partner reported a lower equity-partner median of 52.9%.
That does not show that reducing partner hours improves results. It does show why delivery time alone is a poor target for a partner who also reviews difficult work, coaches managers, reprices engagements, and brings in new clients.
Managers and senior accountants
The same survey reported medians of 64.9% for senior managers, 66.9% for managers, and 70.0% for senior associates. These roles often carry more client delivery than partners, but their targets still need to allow for review and supervision.
Compare managers with people doing a similar job. A manager responsible for a large team should not be judged against one who spends nearly all week delivering work.
Junior accountants and bookkeepers
Associates in the AICPA survey recorded a median of 66.0%. Treat that as context when setting targets for comparable people in your own practice. New starters need training, and fixed-fee bookkeeping may require a different target from tax or advisory work.
Use the first few months to establish an internal range for comparable roles. If someone falls outside it, check their workload and time records before treating the result as a performance issue.
Consultants, lawyers and solo owners
Accounting benchmarks do not transfer neatly to every profession. A consultancy can group people by delivery and management responsibility; a law firm can compare partners separately from other fee earners. If you work alone, use your own monthly trend and leave enough time for proposals, administration, professional development, and review.
Worked example: planned versus logged billable hours
Consider a hypothetical four-person accounting practice. It removes leave and public holidays from available hours, with no further role adjustments. The manager has 160 available hours and 120 hours of client work scheduled for the month.
| Manager’s month | Billable hours | Available hours | Billability |
|---|---|---|---|
| Planned | 120 | 160 | 75.0% |
| Logged | 104 | 160 | 65.0% |
| Shortfall against plan | 16 | — | 10 percentage points |
Planned billability is scheduled billable hours divided by available hours. Actual billability uses logged billable hours. Use the same period and available-hours basis for both. The plan reflects work booked into the month; it is separate from the role’s target range.
The 16-hour gap needs an explanation before the manager takes on more work. A client may have delayed sending records, time entries may be incomplete, or review duties may have displaced scheduled delivery. A logged rate of 65% does not establish that the manager has spare capacity.
Calculate the practice total from hours
The whole practice logs the following results:
| Role | Logged billable hours | Available hours | Billability |
|---|---|---|---|
| Partner | 75 | 150 | 50.0% |
| Manager | 104 | 160 | 65.0% |
| Senior accountant | 112 | 160 | 70.0% |
| Accountant | 104 | 160 | 65.0% |
| Practice total | 395 | 630 | 62.7% |
The practice rate is 395 ÷ 630 × 100 = 62.7%. Sum billable hours and available hours first; averaging the four individual percentages would give each person equal weight despite their different available hours.
Suppose two fixed-fee compliance jobs have also run over budget. The owner can review scope and pricing, then reassign delivery only if the manager’s workload and time records confirm there is room. Raising everyone’s utilisation target would not fix an underpriced package.
For scale, a five-percentage-point increase across 630 available hours would mean 31.5 additional billable hours. At an illustrative $150 per hour, that is $4,725 of billable value before write-downs or collection. It is not promised revenue or profit, and extra hours on an unchanged fixed fee do not increase the fee.
Copyable billability worksheet
Use the two tables together for one reporting period. Add a row per person to each, then a practice total. Keeping capacity and delivery separate makes it easier to check where a percentage came from.
1. Establish available hours
| Person or role | Standard hours | Leave and holidays | Agreed role adjustment | Available hours |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Example manager | 168 | 8 | 0 | 160 |
Available hours = standard hours − leave and public holidays − agreed role adjustment. Use your team’s standard working hours and recorded leave, with any role allowance agreed before the period starts.
2. Compare the plan with logged delivery
| Person or role | Planned billable hours | Logged billable hours | Planned billability | Actual billability | Hours gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Example manager | 120 | 104 | 75.0% | 65.0% | −16 |
When your team records its full hours in MinuteDock—including billable work, non-billable work, and leave—Reports can provide the hours for both sides of the calculation. Filter by person and period, exclude leave and any agreed role adjustment from available hours, and export the totals for your worksheet. Take planned billable hours from your work schedule.
Divide each billable-hours figure by the available hours in the first table and multiply by 100. The hours gap is logged minus planned billable hours. For practice totals, sum each hours column before calculating planned and actual percentages. Do not average individual rates.
Record the role’s target range and decision or action alongside each result. For this manager, the first action is to reconcile the 16-hour gap with the schedule and time records before assigning more delivery. Reuse the same definitions each month, and note the date if a role or its calculation changes.
A consultancy or law firm can use the same worksheet with its own role names. If you work alone, keep one row for yourself and record the change you intend to make next month.
Diagnose the pattern before changing targets
Read billability alongside the forward workload, margin, and realization rate, which measures how much recorded billable value reaches an invoice after write-downs and discounts.
| Pattern | Investigate first | Possible action |
|---|---|---|
| Low utilisation and a thin forward workload | Pipeline and expected demand | Protect time for business development |
| Low utilisation despite scheduled client work | Delayed jobs, incomplete time records, work allocation, or competing duties | Reconcile planned and logged hours before reallocating work |
| Within the role’s range, with acceptable margin and realization | Whether review, learning, and new work still have enough time | Keep the target and watch the trend |
| High utilisation and weak margin or realization | Scope, price, rework, or work assigned at the wrong level | Reprice, narrow scope, or change who delivers the work |
| Sustained high utilisation and after-hours review | Too little capacity for review or management | Protect review time and reduce delivery commitments |
SPI’s 2025 report associates utilisation above 80% with stronger financial results, but also warns about burnout and attrition at sustained high levels. That is not a reason to set every individual’s target above 80%.
Keep an eight- or twelve-week workload view beside the monthly rate. The capacity trap for small firms appears when every diary is full and there is no room for review, onboarding, or worthwhile new work. When utilisation rises while margin falls, check write-down patterns and client profitability before adding more work.
Incomplete time records can distort every pattern in the table. Agree what counts as billable, track fixed-fee work as carefully as hourly work, and review missing entries while the work is fresh. The billable and non-billable hours guide covers classification decisions in more detail. Keep necessary training, business development, and review work visible too.
At each monthly review, record the action that follows: fix missing time, unblock a job, revisit a price, or protect review capacity. The percentage is useful when it helps you make that decision.
