Billing & utilisation
Utilisation rate calculator
Utilisation is billable time against available capacity — the single number services leadership watches. Find yours and the distance to target.
- Utilisation rate
- 70.0%
- Gap to target
- 5.0%
- Billable hours needed to hit target
- 8h 0m
Runs entirely in your browser — nothing you type is sent or stored. Indicative arithmetic, not legal, payroll or tax advice.
The formula
- Utilisation % = billable hours ÷ available capacity × 100
- Gap to target = (target % × capacity) − billable hours
Utilisation is a capacity metric, not a productivity score
Utilisation measures how much of the time you are paying for turns into time a client pays for. It says nothing about how hard anyone works — a brilliant engineer on the bench has 0% utilisation through no fault of their own. Treat it as a staffing and sales-pipeline signal: sustained low utilisation means too much capacity or too little sold work.
Delivery roles in Indian IT services and agencies typically target 70–85%. Leadership, sales and ops naturally sit far lower. Averaging the whole company into one number hides the story; compute it per role or per team.
The trap of chasing 100%
Utilisation near 100% looks efficient and is usually a warning. It leaves no room for estimation error, code review, learning or the unbillable glue work that keeps clients renewing. Firms that run delivery staff above 90% for long stretches tend to pay for it in attrition and quality escapes — both of which cost more than the extra billed hours earned.
Stop calculating this by hand
Workclave computes utilisation live from approved sessions, per person and per team — capacity, billable share and trend, without a spreadsheet.
Utilisation rate calculator — common questions
What is the difference between utilisation and billable percentage?
Billable percentage divides by hours actually worked; utilisation divides by available capacity (contracted hours). Someone working 50-hour weeks can have a high billable percentage and still mask a capacity problem. Utilisation against a standard 160-hour month is the comparable number.
Should paid leave reduce capacity?
Yes. Capacity is hours genuinely available to work, so approved leave and public holidays come out of the denominator. Otherwise every December looks like a utilisation crisis.
What target should a small agency set?
70–80% for delivery roles is realistic and sustainable. Set the target per role, review it quarterly against realisation (what actually got invoiced), and resist the urge to push it up just because one good month hit 90%.
Ihr Team arbeitet. Fangen Sie an zu verstehen, wie.
Schließen Sie sich Teams an, die Sitzungen erfassen statt bloßer Zeit. Kostenlos bis 3 Nutzer — ohne Kreditkarte, ohne Mindestabnahme, ohne Bindung.