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FREE AGENCY VALUATION CALCULATOR
Calculate Your Billable Hours
Find out your billable hours, team utilization rate, and ideal billable hourly rate, and gain insights through a personalized report with our free billable hours calculator.
Measure Your Billable Hours
Check out how effectively your agency’s employees are spending their time on billable tasks.
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Find Out Your Ideal Billable Rate
The optimal billing rate for a professional services agency allows it to cover its costs, generate profit, and stay competitive.
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Is Productive For Agencies?
Productive is an agency management system that arms 1,500+ agencies with a real-time overview of their business.
AGENCY UTILIZATION RATE CALCULATOR
How Productive Calculates Your Billable Hours and Utilization Metrics
Do you run a marketing agency? If you’re in the business of software development, consulting, or other digital services, we’ve also got you covered. To calculate your billable time, team utilization rate, and ideal billable hourly rate, we use our custom-made methodology built by agency industry experts. Key input includes both quantitative and qualitative data.
BILLABLE HOURS RATE CALCULATOR
What Data We Need To Calculate Billable Hours Rate Metrics
To calculate your Billable hours and other metrics, we need data on:
Your average number of available and billable hours per employee
Your average labor cost per employee
Your average overhead cost per employee
Your optimal profit margin per employee
Reputation score
FREE BILLABLE HOURS CALCULATOR FOR AGENCIES
Security, Privacy and Benchmarking
Any information you enter into the calculator will be stored on secure servers. Productive does not disclose or sell any information provided by your agency. The data you submit for the calculator may be used for benchmarking purposes in the future.
Switch from multiple tools and spreadsheets to one scalable agency management system.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is tracking billable hours important?
Billable hours requirements and time tracking processes can vary significantly depending on your industry. For example, in a law firm, specific billable hours requirements need to be met. Minimum billable hours targets are set annually, and hours for lawyers are managed in a billable hours chart, usually through time increments.
Professional services usually face other challenges. Often, a project manager must ensure employees know how to track billable hours. For example, in a design agency, designers should factor in their brainstorming and R&D. Otherwise, if they opt to put in untracked overtime hours instead, you’ll be unable to get reliable estimations for future projects.
Billable hours at professional services vs law firms
Billable hours requirements and time tracking processes can vary significantly depending on your industry. For example, in a law firm, specific billable hours requirements need to be met. Minimum billable hours targets are set annually, and hours for lawyers are managed in a billable hours chart, usually through time increments.
Professional services usually face other challenges. Often, a project manager must ensure employees know how to track billable hours. For example, in a design agency, designers should factor in their brainstorming and R&D. Otherwise, if they opt to put in untracked overtime hours instead, you’ll be unable to get reliable estimations for future projects.
Key features of billable hours calculator apps
Productive can be your all-in-one tool for day-to-day agency management. It offers essential time-tracking features such as:
- Desktop widget: Simplify your time entry by managing your time tracker from your desktop.
- Easy approvals: Project managers can view time entries, approve them, or request changes.
- Automatic entry: Get advanced time tracking by syncing your entries with Resource – Planning.
- Time off management: Account for vacation days and sick leave for correct capacity planning.
- Billing practices: Streamline billing by creating brand-friendly invoices on the platform.
- Integrations: Connect Productive to popular accounting software such as QuickBooks, Exact, or Xero.
Billable and non-billable hours management
One of the main pitfalls agencies can fall into is overemphasizing their billable hour requirements. Client work is crucial to your agency’s sustainable growth, as it brings in profit that covers direct salary costs and growth initiatives. However, non-billable activities can be just as important. Non-billable hours can include administrative tasks such as client billing, pitching for new projects, entertaining clients and their requests, or building your employees’ skill sets.
Optimizing your billable utilization rate
The billable utilization rate is a key agency metric. According to The Wow Company’s 2023 Benchpress Report, the agency-wide average is around 65%. This varies across specific roles, with junior-level staff having the highest utilization (75%), and director roles having the lowest (33%). It’s important to keep your agency and employee context in mind when setting targets for utilization rates.
Ensuring a proper balance between billable vs non-billable time leads to increased employee satisfaction and better performance on individual projects. It ensures that your employees are not burned out and that you’re handling crucial day-to-day agency operations.
The benefits of billable hours software
If you enjoyed our billable hours calculator, consider investing in billable hours software to automate the process. Using billable hours software to track time can help:
- Optimize employee hours per week spent on tasks
- Replace manual calculations with real-time data
- Get detailed reports on productivity and utilization
- Manage daily administrative burden
- Support project management for improved outcomes
What is the billable hours calculator by Productive?
It is a qualitative and quantitative tool and customized interpretation of results intended for agency businesses to learn more about their billable metrics.
Are there any cost associated with the calculator?
The calculator and all associated content derived from survey results is free of charge for any agency business that wants to participate.
Who is behind the calculator?
Productive, an end-to-end agency management software, launched the calculator in 2024 to support agencies in their growth and profitability.
What happens to my data if/when I use the calculator?
Productive treats any data submitted and processed safe and highly confidential.
Can you guarantee that metrics from the calculator are precise?
No, the output generated by the calculator is intended to inform and assist you with your billable hours and utilization metrics as the input we ask for is only estimates of your average billable hours, labor cost etc. To get a strong grip over your agency’s utilization rate and profitability we suggest using a tool like Productive.
