Find out how much of your week is really billable.
Track all of your working time for a few typical weeks, including both client work and unpaid tasks such as proposals, scheduling, and bookkeeping. Divide the client hours by the total hours to find your billable share. Use that real percentage when setting your rate instead of relying on a broad industry average.
Nobody pays you for the whole week.
Email, proposals, scheduling, bookkeeping, and maintaining your own tools all take time. They are necessary working hours, but no client pays for them directly.
The hours you can charge for must cover the hours you cannot. Track a few complete weeks to learn your real billable share, then use that figure when you set your rate.
How long do you have to track for?
Track a few typical weeks from start to finish. Record both client work and non-billable work. Use one project for each client job and an internal project for tasks such as proposals, bookkeeping, and studio administration.
Add entries during the day so small tasks are not forgotten. Once you have several representative weeks, you can return to your normal routine and repeat the exercise whenever the shape of your work changes.
How do you calculate your billable share?
Add the hours spent on client projects, then divide them by all working hours in the same period. Twenty client hours in a forty-hour week gives you a 50% billable share.
The complete week matters because administration often arrives in small pieces that are easy to forget. Recording it shows how much of your available time can realistically earn client revenue.
What rate covers the unpaid hours?
Divide the income you need by the hours you can actually charge for, not by every hour you work. If half of your week is billable, each client hour must also help pay for one non-billable hour.
For example, 20 billable hours a week is about 85 billable hours a month. To bring in €4,000, you need roughly €47 per billable hour before tax, expenses, holidays, and quieter months. Using all 40 working hours in the calculation would cut the rate in half even though only 20 hours earn revenue.
How often should you check again?
Measure again when your work changes: for example, when you take on more simultaneous projects, spend more time writing proposals, or change how you run the practice.
The result may show that administration needs to be reduced. It may show that your billable share is already realistic and the rate needs to rise. Either decision is based on your own recorded time rather than a generic benchmark.
Common questions
What counts as billable time?
Billable time is work a client agreed to pay for, whether you charge a fixed price, an hourly rate, or a separate price for Additional Work. Internal work can be valuable and necessary while still being non-billable because no client pays for it directly.
Do I really have to track the admin too?
Yes, during the measurement period. The calculation needs total working hours as well as client hours. If administration is missing, the billable share will look higher than it really is. After a few representative weeks, return to your normal routine and repeat the exercise when the practice changes.
Is there a normal percentage I should compare against?
Benchmarks use different industries, business sizes, and definitions of billable time. They can provide context, but they cannot tell you what your own rate must cover. Several complete weeks of your own time give you the percentage that applies to your practice.
Is this on the free plan?
Most of this exercise works on Free: use the calendar, select ranges on the Time page, and review hours and client-work value. Free supports three active projects, so two client projects and one internal project fit at the same time. Pro removes the limit. Every account starts with a 30-day Pro trial.