Put in your team, your hours and how much of them you bill. You'll see the hours you bill a year, and what the ones you don't cost you.
The hours you don't bill
Client back-and-forth costs you
$133,860a year
6 hours a week each of rewriting briefs, chasing files and writing status updates is 1,380 hours a year your team works and can't bill. If that time went back to client work, you'd bill 80% of your hours instead of 65%.
Dora is an AI account manager that takes that back-and-forth off your team. She writes the brief from a client's first message, asks for what's missing, follows up with quiet clients and gets work signed off. Your first client is free, then it's $10 a month per client. See how Dora works
How billable hours are worked out
- 1.
Count the hours worked
People × hours a week each × working weeks a year.
- 2.
Take the share you bill
Hours worked × the time you bill. That's your billable hours.
- 3.
The rest goes unbilled
Hours worked minus billable hours: meetings, admin, sales and client back-and-forth.
- 4.
Price the client admin
People × hours a week on client back-and-forth × working weeks × your hourly rate.
Example
A team of 5 works 40 hours a week for 46 weeks a year: 9,200 hours. Billing 65% of them makes 5,980 billable hours, worth $580,060 at $97 an hour.
That leaves 3,220 hours a year unbilled. If each person spends 6 hours a week on briefs, chasing and status updates, that's 1,380 of them, or $133,860 at the same rate.
With that time back on client work, the team would bill 80% of its hours instead of 65%.
Questions
Billable hours are the hours spent on work you charge a client for. Everything else, like internal meetings, sales, admin and chasing clients, is non-billable time.
Multiply the people doing client work by the hours each works a week and by the working weeks in a year. Then multiply by the share of time you bill. That's your billable hours for the year.
Many agencies aim to bill 60 to 75% of working hours. Senior people and founders usually bill less, because sales and management take part of their week.
Internal meetings, sales and proposals, hiring, training, and the admin around client work: rewriting vague requests into briefs, chasing files and approvals, and writing status updates. That last group is the easiest to cut.
Both. Billable hours tell you what you earn. Non-billable hours tell you where the rest of the week goes, and which part of it you could take off your team.
Take repeat admin off the team before asking anyone to work longer. Get complete briefs up front, keep every request in one place, and let quiet clients be followed up automatically. Dora handles that client side for you.
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