Billable Hours Calculator
Enter your hourly rate, hours worked, and billable percentage. See your total billable amount, effective rate, and annual projection instantly.
Weekly Billable
$7,875
Effective Rate
$175.00/hr
Annual Billable
$393,750
50 weeks
Annual Non-Billable
$168,750
If you recovered just 10% more billable time (moving from 70% to 80%), you would bill an additional $56,250/year. Automatic time tracking typically recovers 15-30% of lost billable hours.
Billable Hours by Industry
Billable hour targets vary by profession. Here are the benchmarks that matter for law firms and accounting firms.
Law Firms
Most law firms require associates to bill 1,800-2,000 hours per year. At a $350/hour billing rate, the difference between 1,800 and 2,000 billable hours is $70,000 in annual revenue per attorney. The biggest leak is time spent on case research, internal meetings, and administrative work that never reaches the timesheet.
Time tracking for law firms →Accounting Firms
CPA firms target 1,600-1,900 billable hours per year, with utilization rates of 60-75%. During tax season, billable hours spike but non-billable admin work increases too. The firms that track time automatically during busy season recover 20%+ more billable hours than those relying on end-of-day timesheets.
Time tracking for accounting firms →How to Calculate Billable Hours
Calculating billable hours comes down to three numbers: your total hours, your billable percentage, and your hourly rate. Here is how each step works.
Track total hours
Record every hour you work in a week, including non-billable tasks like emails, meetings, and admin. This is your denominator.
Identify billable work
Separate client-facing, revenue-generating hours from internal work. Your billable percentage is billable hours divided by total hours.
Calculate revenue
Multiply billable hours by your hourly rate. Your effective rate (total billable revenue divided by total hours worked) shows your true earning power.
Tired of Calculating Manually?
Rize captures billable hours automatically. No timers, no timesheets, no end-of-day guessing. Every work session is tracked and categorized by project and client.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Multiply your total hours worked by your billable percentage to get billable hours, then multiply by your hourly rate for total revenue. For example, if you work 45 hours per week with a 70% billable rate at $250/hour, your billable hours are 31.5 and weekly revenue is $7,875. The biggest variable is your billable percentage, which drops when non-billable work like admin, meetings, and context switching goes untracked.
A good billable hours percentage is 65-80% depending on your industry. Law firms target 70-85% for associates, accounting firms target 60-75%, and consulting firms target 70-80%. Below 60% usually means too much administrative overhead or poor time capture. Automatic time tracking improves billable percentages by 10-20 points because it captures short tasks and context switches that manual methods miss.
Most law firms require 1,800-2,000 billable hours per year from associates. At a typical 70% billable rate, that means working 2,500-2,850 total hours. The gap between billed and worked hours is where revenue leaks. A lawyer billing at $350/hour who captures just one additional billable hour per day recovers $87,500 in annual revenue. Automatic time tracking helps capture the research, drafting, and client communication that often goes unbilled.
Total hours worked includes everything you do during the workday, while billable hours are only the portion you can charge to a client or project. Non-billable hours include internal meetings, email, administrative tasks, business development, and training. The ratio of billable to total hours is your utilization rate. Most professionals overestimate their billable percentage by 10-15% because they forget to count non-billable tasks that consume their day.