Billing & utilisation
Realisation rate calculator
Utilisation tells you how much client work happened. Realisation tells you how much of it you dared to put on the invoice.
- Realisation rate
- 85.0%
- Hours written off
- 18h 0m
- Revenue written off
- ₹27,000
Runs entirely in your browser — nothing you type is sent or stored. Indicative arithmetic, not legal, payroll or tax advice.
The formula
- Realisation % = hours invoiced ÷ hours worked on client engagements × 100
- Revenue written off = (hours worked − hours invoiced) × bill rate
Where the written-off hours go
Realisation falls every time a partner trims a timesheet before invoicing: hours that ran over the estimate, rework the team absorbed, small requests nobody scoped, time recorded so vaguely that it cannot be defended. The work happened and was paid for in salaries — it just never reached revenue.
Law firms and consultancies have tracked realisation for decades; agencies mostly have not, which is why fixed-fee overruns feel mysterious. If your utilisation is healthy but margins are not, realisation is almost always where the money is leaking.
Raising realisation without fighting clients
The fix is rarely tougher negotiation — it is defensible records. Hours logged as they happen, attributed to a named deliverable and approved by a lead within days, survive invoice review. Hours reconstructed at month-end as a block of “development — 40h” get trimmed, because nobody can stand behind them. Contemporaneous, approved session records are what turn worked time into billed time.
Stop calculating this by hand
Workclave's approval trail — session → project → manager sign-off — is exactly the evidence that stops invoice-time write-offs. Hours that are approved in-week rarely get trimmed at month-end.
Realisation rate calculator — common questions
What is a good realisation rate?
Professional-services benchmarks put healthy realisation at 85–95%. Below 80%, roughly one day in five of client work is going unbilled — usually a scoping and record-keeping problem rather than a pricing one.
How is realisation different from utilisation?
Utilisation compares billable work to capacity — did we sell enough work? Realisation compares invoiced hours to worked hours — did we get paid for the work we did? A team can be 85% utilised and 70% realised, which quietly gives away the utilisation you fought for.
Does fixed-fee work have a realisation rate?
Yes, and it matters more. Divide the effective hours the fee covers (fee ÷ standard rate) by hours actually spent. It is how you learn which fixed-fee projects are profitable and which are subsidised by your best clients.
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