Billable Hours Calculator
Turn your time log into billable hours. Enter each task in minutes or as start and end times, pick 6 minute (0.1 hour), 15 minute or exact billing, and see the hours and amount. Or check your utilization: how much of your week is billable and what it brings in.
Billing increment
Time entries
- min
- min
- min
Billable hours
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Enter the time for at least one task.
Each entry is rounded on its own, then added. Amounts are before tax and expenses.
Worked out in your browser. The numbers sit in the page address so you can bookmark the result; task labels do not, and nothing is sent to ParrotNotes.
Not sure what to charge? The Freelance Rate Calculator works out a rate from your income goal. Totals for a work week are on the Time Card Calculator, and the contractor invoice template turns the hours into an invoice.
How to calculate billable hours
- 1
Log the time
One row per task: the minutes (17, or 1:20 for an hour and 20 minutes), or the start and end time. A short label helps you, and it never leaves the page.
- 2
Pick the increment
6 minutes (0.1 hour) is the common legal unit, 15 minutes (0.25 hour) another, or bill the exact minutes. Round each entry up, or to the nearest unit.
- 3
Read the bill
Each entry is rounded on its own, then added up. Add your hourly rate to get the amount, next to what the same time would bill if it were rounded only once.
How 0.1 hour billing works, with an example
A tenth of an hour is 6 minutes, so an hour has ten billing units. Many law firms record time this way, and the time is usually rounded up to the next unit. Say you make a 7 minute call, spend 22 minutes on a draft and send a 3 minute email. Rounded up, they bill 0.2, 0.4 and 0.1: 0.7 hours. At $250 an hour that is $175.
The same 32 minutes billed exactly would be $133.33. Rounded once on the total, 32 minutes becomes 0.6 hours, or $150. In quarter hours, each task bills at least 0.25: 0.25 + 0.5 + 0.25 is 1.0 hour, or $250. Rounding each short task on its own adds up fast, which is why the result shows both figures. Which method applies is set by your engagement letter or your contract with the client.
Minutes to tenths of an hour
With 6 minute billing rounded up, every started block of 6 minutes is one tenth.
| Minutes worked | Billed (hours) |
|---|---|
| 1 to 6 | 0.1 |
| 7 to 12 | 0.2 |
| 13 to 18 | 0.3 |
| 19 to 24 | 0.4 |
| 25 to 30 | 0.5 |
| 31 to 36 | 0.6 |
| 37 to 42 | 0.7 |
| 43 to 48 | 0.8 |
| 49 to 54 | 0.9 |
| 55 to 60 | 1 |
Utilization: billable hours against hours worked
Utilization is the share of your working time that you can bill. If you work 40 hours a week and spend 12 of them on email, admin, sales and invoicing, 28 hours are billable: 28 ÷ 40 is 70%. At $100 an hour that is $2,800 a week, and over 46 working weeks $128,800 before costs.
The weeks matter as much as the rate. Holidays, vacation, sick days and quiet weeks all come out, so the calculator asks how many weeks you actually bill and starts at 46 as an example. Set a target utilization to see how many hours it takes and how far you are from it. Billed hours are not the same as money collected: discounts, write-offs and unpaid invoices come off later.
What counts as billable time
Billable time is work done for a client that your agreement lets you charge for: the meeting, the research, the drafting, the call. Running your own business is usually not billable: bookkeeping, invoicing, marketing, training and chasing payments. Travel, short emails and quick calls are where agreements differ most, so write down how you bill them before the work starts.
Log time as you go. Time written down at the end of the week from memory tends to come out short, and the small tasks are the ones that go missing.
Billable calls deserve a record
If a client call is on the bill, a note of what was agreed helps. ParrotNotes records the call, transcribes it and summarizes it, so the notes behind each time entry are there when the client asks.
Get ParrotNotes freeRelated tools
- Freelance Rate CalculatorWork out the hourly, day and project rate you need as a freelancer or consultant from your target income, costs, time off and billable hours.Open the tool
- Time Card CalculatorAdd up the hours on a time card: start, end and break for each day, weekly total in hours and minutes and in decimal hours, and the gross pay.Open the tool
- Contractor Invoice TemplateBill a job with labor, materials and change orders, take off deposits and retainage, and print the invoice or save it as a PDF.Open the tool
- Hourly to Salary CalculatorConvert an hourly wage to a yearly, monthly, biweekly and weekly salary, or a salary back to an hourly rate.Open the tool
Billable hours questions
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