How Much of Your Team’s Time Is Actually Billable?
If you run a service-based business with contractors or employees, here’s a quick gut-check: What percentage of your team’s time is billable?
Most business owners think it’s 70 to 80 percent. The reality? It’s often closer to 50 percent.
Case in point: A mid-sized creative agency with a 12-person team assumed employees were billing 35 or more hours each week. But after tracking time, here’s what they found:
Actual billable hours per employee: 22 hours per week
Non-billable time lost to:
Client emails and revisions: 9 hours
Internal meetings: 6 hours
Software troubleshooting: 3 hours
The fix: They didn’t need to hire. They needed to optimize. Here’s what worked:
Automated client updates, saving over 3 hours per week
No-Meeting Wednesdays, freeing up 6 hours per week for deep work
Standardized onboarding documents, reducing troubleshooting by 80 percent
The result:
Increased billable hours to 32 per week
Added $15,000 in monthly revenue with the same team
Your turn: Calculate your non-billable time rate
Use this simple formula:
(Non-billable hours ÷ total hours) × 100
Example:
Total hours: 40
Non-billable time: 18
Non-billable rate: 45 percent (Goal: less than 30 percent)
Small improvements can make a big difference.
Want to learn the one metric that helps you break this pattern?
→ Read the full blog: How to break out of a revenue plateau with one simple metric
Even if your revenue feels stuck, tracking the right number can help you move forward faster with the team you already have.