FIELDHIVE CALCULATOR
Billable Hours Calculator for Trades
Work out how many hours a year you can actually bill — built up from holiday, sick days, training, travel and admin, not a guessed percentage.
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Free tools for the job
Put these numbers to work — free FieldHive tools, no sign-up.
True Labour Cost Calculator
Work out what an hour of labour really costs before you price it.
work out your true labour cost →Employee Charge-Out Rate Calculator
The rate to bill an employee's time at to hit your target margin.
set a charge-out rate →Quote & Estimate Builder
Build a professional quote or estimate — line items, VAT and a valid-until date.
turn your rate into a quote →The rate foundation
The number every rate calculation depends on
Every rate or charge-out calculation starts with the same assumption: a billable percentage. Guess it too high and the rate that follows falls short of what the business needs; guess it too low and jobs get priced out of reach for no reason.
This calculator removes the guess. It builds billable hours up from what actually happens across a working year — statutory holiday, sick days, training, and the travel and admin time between paid jobs — so the percentage that feeds a rate calculation is real.
The working year
What eats into a working year
A working year is never all billable hours — several things reduce it before a single job is priced.
The hours you can actually bill are what is left after you take out:
Statutory holiday — 28 days (5.6 weeks) for a 5-day week
Sick days — an honest average, not zero
Training and CPD — toolbox talks, certifications, day-release
Travel between jobs that is not charged to any one customer
Admin and quoting — pricing, ordering materials, invoicing
None of these disappear just because they are inconvenient to count.
Left out, they turn into a rate that looks fine on paper and falls short in practice.
Worked example
A worked example
A tradesperson on a standard 5-day, 8-hour week — 28 days holiday, 5 sick days, 5 training days, 5 hours a week travelling and 4 hours on admin.
Working days a year
260
Productive days
222
Worked hours a year
1,776
Billable hours a year
1,376
Take out travel and admin across the working weeks — about 399.6 hours — and 1,776 worked hours become 1,376.4 billable hours. That is a billable percentage of 77.5%, or 31 hours a week and 6.2 in an 8-hour day.
At an example rate of £35/hour, that is a billable revenue capacity of £48,174 for the year — a ceiling, not a promise, since it assumes every billable hour is actually booked and invoiced.
This is an example only. Your result will depend on your working pattern, days off and how much travel and admin your week involves.
Two views
Billable hours vs billable percentage
Billable hours and billable percentage answer the same question two ways. This calculator gives both, from the same inputs.
Billable hours
The number itself — 1,376 hours a year in the example above. It is the figure that actually turns into invoiced work.
Billable percentage
The same number as a share of the hours worked — 77.5% in the example. It is the easy figure to compare across different working patterns.
Both numbers matter for different reasons — the hours figure is what turns into invoiced work; the percentage is what feeds a cost or charge-out rate calculation.
The cluster
How this fits with FieldHive’s other calculators
Billable hours is a foundation figure, not a finished one. It is the number that feeds the calculations below — each of which currently asks for a billable percentage as a direct estimate.
Billable Hours Calculator
This page — works out how many hours a year can actually be billed, the number that goes into everything else.
True Labour Cost
Turns an employee’s pay and on-costs into a true cost per chargeable hour, using a billable percentage as one input.
Employee Charge-Out Rate
Turns that true cost into the rate billed to the customer, again using a billable percentage as one input.
Reuse it
Reusable structure as the business grows
Once a realistic billable-hours figure exists for one working pattern, it is straightforward to reuse or adjust it — for a new starter, an apprentice on day-release, or a change in how much admin a growing business needs.
FieldHive keeps the pricing built on that figure connected to the quotes, bookings and invoices that follow, so the work of getting it right once does not need repeating from scratch.
Who it’s for
Who this is for
Built for sole traders, subcontractors, employed tradespeople and small trade business owners who want a realistic billable-hours figure before setting a rate.
It is not a full time-tracking system, and not a replacement for actually recording the hours worked on each job — it is the starting figure a rate should be built on.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Common questions about billable hours and billable percentage for trades.
Related tools
Turn billable hours into a rate
Use your billable-hours figure in the calculations it feeds.
True Labour Cost Calculator
Turn pay and on-costs into a true cost per chargeable hour.
Work out true cost
Employee Charge-Out Rate Calculator
Turn a true cost into the hourly rate to bill the customer.
Set a charge-out rate
Quote & Estimate Builder
Turn your rate into priced quotes and estimates for customers.
Build a quote
Stay connected
Get the billable-hours figure right first
Work out how many hours you can actually bill, and every rate or cost calculation that follows is built on something real instead of a round-number guess.
FieldHive keeps the pricing built on that figure connected to the quotes, bookings and invoices that follow — so the number you work out once carries through to the customer, booking and invoice instead of being rebuilt at each stage.
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