Invoice generator › Billable hours
Billable hours
The input that decides your rate, and almost nobody measures it. Here is where the other 40% of the week goes.
What you need to live on
After tax and after business costs — the money that is actually yours.
Software, hardware, accountant, insurance, coworking, phone, training, bank fees.
A rough combined figure. If you have no idea, 30% is a common starting point in Europe — your accountant knows the real number.
How much you can actually bill
Holiday, illness, public holidays. Seven weeks is the honest figure for most people, not four.
This is the number people get wrong. Admin, proposals, invoicing, sales calls, email and dead time are not billable. Very few freelancers bill more than 60% of their working hours.
For quiet months, equipment, and the pay rise nobody is going to give you.
Where each billed hour goes
Nothing is uploaded. The numbers stay in this browser.
The honest arithmetic of a year
52 weeks
− 5 weeks holiday
− 1 week public holidays
− 1 week illness
= 45 working weeks × 5 days = 225 working days
× 8 hours = 1,800 working hours
× 60% billable = 1,080 billable hoursEleven hundred hours, not two thousand. Every rate calculation that starts from 2,000 is already 45% wrong before it begins.
Where the unbillable time actually goes
Rough shares of a working week for an established solo freelancer:
| Activity | Share of the week |
|---|---|
| Billable client work | 55–65% |
| Sales: enquiries, calls, proposals, quotes | 10–15% |
| Admin: invoicing, chasing, bookkeeping, tax | 5–10% |
| Marketing: content, portfolio, networking | 5–10% |
| Learning and tooling | 5% |
| Gaps between projects | 5–10% |
None of it is avoidable and none of it is billable. A freelancer who wins work without selling is a freelancer with one client, which is a different risk entirely.
What a realistic share looks like
- First year: 35–50%. Most of the time goes to finding work.
- Established, mixed clients: 55–65%. The normal case.
- One long retainer: 70–80%. High, and it comes with the risk of a single client.
- Above 80%: either you are not counting properly, or you are not selling — which shows up as a cliff when the current project ends.
A high billable share is not automatically good. 80% with one client is more fragile than 60% with five.
How to measure yours in two weeks
Guessing is the problem, and the fix is small. For ten working days, log every block of 30 minutes or more against one of four buckets: client work, sales, admin, other. Any timer, or a notebook.
At the end, divide client work by total time. That is your billable share, and it will be lower than you assumed — this is the normal result, not a personal failing.
Then run the rate calculator with the real number instead of the optimistic one. The rate it gives you is the one you should have been charging.
Two ways to improve it, and one that does not work
Reduce admin time. The 5–10% spent on invoicing, chasing and bookkeeping is the most compressible block on the list, because it is repetitive work that tooling genuinely removes. This is the honest argument for any invoicing tool, including ours.
Win better projects, not more of them. Sales time is roughly fixed per project, so five projects of 20 days cost far less selling than twenty of five days. Larger engagements raise the billable share without you working differently.
What does not work: trying to bill more hours per day. Working ten hours instead of eight raises output for a few weeks and then stops. The lever is the share, not the total.
Should you track time even on fixed-price work?
Yes, and not for the client — for yourself. On a fixed price the tracked time tells you your effective hourly rate, which is the only way to know whether that kind of project is worth repeating. Freelancers who track fixed-price work invariably discover one client type that pays half of what the others do.
From the makers of InvoiceAbroad
Find out where your hours actually go
Most freelancers guess their billable share. Flowzivo has a timer and a timesheet, so next year you can use your own number instead of an estimate.
See Flowzivo →30-day trial, no card required. $8/month after that.
Frequently asked questions
How many billable hours are in a freelance year?
About 1,080 on realistic assumptions: 45 working weeks, five days, eight hours, and a 60% billable share. Not the 2,000 that a naive calculation assumes.
What is a good billable share for a freelancer?
55 to 65% for an established solo freelancer with several clients. Under 50% in a first year is normal. Above 80% usually means either mismeasurement or dependence on a single client.
What counts as billable time?
Only work a client is paying for. Proposals, quotes, invoicing, bookkeeping, marketing, learning and gaps between projects are all real work and none of them are billable.
How do I measure my billable share?
Log every block of 30 minutes or more for ten working days against four buckets: client work, sales, admin, other. Divide client work by the total.
Should I track time on fixed-price projects?
Yes, for yourself. It tells you your effective hourly rate on that project, which is the only way to know whether that type of work is worth taking again.