Employee Billable Time
Employee Billable Time
(OP)
Of course this is going to vary from firm to firm but I am curious what is considered to be an acceptable amount of unbillable time to have per week for an hourly employee in a consulting firm?





RE: Employee Billable Time
I've been at places where any overhead hours beyond vacation charges were looked at unfavorably. For my level where I am now (Senior Project Manager, limited BD activities) I am supposed to be about 92% billable. So I could charge 3 to 4 hours and meet my billable goals. But it's better if I charge 100% of my 40 hours to billable projects.
RE: Employee Billable Time
Thanks.
RE: Employee Billable Time
"Gorgeous hair is the best revenge." Ivana Trump
RE: Employee Billable Time
And by the way, it's the company's job to keep you billable. This is especially true for drafting/detailing positions. If you're not abusing sick time, they should provide you work that can be billed to.
RE: Employee Billable Time
RE: Employee Billable Time
Factoring vacations, time off, etc. are for the purposes of establishing the billing rate, not the billability. All such "downtime" must be considered when setting your rates, as well as equipment overhead, insurance, etc.
RE: Employee Billable Time
RE: Employee Billable Time
RE: Employee Billable Time
The second way is to base your goals on the 2088 hour year. If you do that, it's not possible to be 100% billable. About 92% is as high as you can expect.
As far as lump sum jobs, they're included as billable hours. After all, it's not the employee's choice what he works on. Plus it just makes all the accounting (job and company) more straight forward.
RE: Employee Billable Time
RE: Employee Billable Time
by the way, only 2080 hours per year assuming 40 hour weeks and 52 weeks per year.
[/q]
He was doing a calc based on Leap Year!
www.ellisconsultingengineers.com
RE: Employee Billable Time
RE: Employee Billable Time
If you have the work for them to do, their billable time should approach 100%. Any substantial deviation from that should be due to lack of work or important support tasks.
An employee at that level is dependent on you to provide them their tasks and workload. I would expect that any other non-billable time would be for completion of tasks you have assigned them that are of a non-billable nature like preparing proposals, implementing CAD standards, creating a detail library, fixing a computer, etc. These are all tasks that you are assigning so you should have a feel for how they affect their overall billable percentage.
For someone at this level seminars and training is minimal. Even if you give someone 5 days for training/seminars their billable percentage would still be greater than 98% (assuming 2-weeks vacation and 7 paid holidays).
As a side note I try to keep several non-billable but productivity enhancing tasks/projects on the back burner that I can have my people work on when the work load gets light or they are stuck waiting on me for some other reason.
RE: Employee Billable Time
I don't think so...works out to only 91.5% average billability, even if they are 100% billable for all the time other than what you have noted.
It's tough to keep someone in a professional capacity 100% billable.
RE: Employee Billable Time
He indicated that he was already taking into account vacation and holidays into the billing rate.
40*52 = 2080 hrs
2-Weeks Vacation - 80 hrs
7 Paid Holidays - 56 hrs
1944 hrs available to bill in the year
5 days training - 40 hours
1-(40/1944) = 97.9%
I did muck up the phrasing though, it should read about 98% not greater than.
RE: Employee Billable Time
Design offices are not assembly lines.
RE: Employee Billable Time
If you get 7 hours of production for 8 hours attendance you will be doing well.
B.E.
RE: Employee Billable Time
www.ellisconsultingengineers.com
RE: Employee Billable Time
RE: Employee Billable Time
Requires each department to be accounted for as a unit, having all roles on the books together.
Whatever your target billability is, your fee multiplier is adjusted to meet your target profit.