How many billable hours a year is realistic?
A full-time year holds 2,080 hours: 52 weeks of 40 hours. Realistic billable hours start there, minus holidays and leave, multiplied by your utilisation target. With 25 days off, one person has 1,880 working hours. At 60% utilisation that gives 1,128 billable hours, and at 75% it gives 1,410.
Most billable-hour targets are set top-down, from a revenue plan. A realistic one is built bottom-up, from the hours a person really has. The arithmetic takes four lines, and you should run it with your own numbers.
Line one is the ceiling. Fifty-two weeks of 40 hours is 2,080 hours. Nobody bills all of them, because nobody works all of them.
Line two removes time off. Count your company holidays from your own calendar and add the leave in each person's quota. In the worked example, 25 days of holidays and leave at 8 hours a day removes 200 hours, leaving 1,880 working hours.
Line three applies utilisation. Not every working hour is client work. Meetings, admin, sales support and learning take a share. At 60%, 1,880 working hours become 1,128 billable hours. At 75%, they become 1,410.
Line four sets the target per role. A delivery-focused developer might plan at the higher rate, and a lead who reviews and mentors at the lower. For an outside reference point, Deltek's Clarity study of architecture and engineering firms, published on 12 May 2026, put staff utilisation at just under 60%.
Then measure the real number. In PeopleMuster, people log their day by project and each project is flagged billable or non-billable. Managers approve the sheets, and the utilisation reports break hours down by project and department, so billable hours come from approved timesheets rather than estimates.
Watch the trend through the year. Leave clusters around holidays, so a simple annual target divided by twelve will look missed in some months and beaten in others. The week-over-week view shows whether you're drifting or just in a quiet week.
Related questions
How many working hours are in a year?
2,080 hours for a 40-hour week across 52 weeks, before any holidays or leave. Subtract your company's holidays and each person's leave to get the hours actually available.
Is 1,800 billable hours a year realistic?
For most people it is a stretch. With 25 days of holidays and leave, 1,800 billable hours means about 96% of the remaining 1,880 working hours. That leaves almost no time for meetings, admin or learning.
What utilisation rate should billable targets use?
One set per role, checked against your own logged hours. As an outside reference, Deltek's 12 May 2026 study of architecture and engineering firms reported staff utilisation just under 60%.
How do I track billable hours by project?
Flag each project billable or non-billable, have people log hours by project every day, and approve the sheets weekly. PeopleMuster does all three and reports the approved hours by project and department.