How to use this calculator
- Enter or choose team members.
- Enter or choose scheduled hours per person per week.
- Enter or choose weeks in the period.
- Enter or choose time off and holidays (whole team).
- Enter or choose billable hours logged.
- The utilisation updates as you type. Use Copy result or Share to keep it.
Method
Available = Members × Hours per week × Weeks − Time off; Utilisation = Billable ÷ Available × 100
- Time off
- holidays, leave and sickness for the whole team in the period
- Billable
- hours charged to clients or projects
Worked example
- Available = 5 × 40 × 4 − 40 = 760 hours.
- Utilisation = 570 ÷ 760 × 100 = 75%.
- At 80% the team would bill 608 hours, 38 more than now.
Five people billing 570 of 760 available hours are 75% utilised, 38 hours short of an 80% target.
What the result means
Very high utilisation leaves no time for training, sales support or internal work and tends to cause burnout; very low utilisation suggests too much capacity or work not being logged.
Assumptions and limits
- Time off is subtracted from capacity, so utilisation measures billable time against hours people were actually available.
- Some firms divide by total scheduled hours instead of available hours, which gives a lower figure. Compare like with like.
Questions
Should holidays be removed from capacity?
Most professional-services firms do, so the rate reflects how well available time is used. Enter 0 time off to measure against total scheduled hours.
What utilisation should I target?
There is no universal figure. Set it from your pricing and the non-billable work each role is expected to do.