Billable hours tracker (Excel template)
A billable hours tracker answers two questions every client business asks each month: how many hours can be charged, and to whom? Every entry here carries a client, a project, a Y or N for billable, the hours and your own hourly rate. The formulas then give you billable hours, billable share and an amount per client, ready for the invoice.
Built for freelancers, agencies and consultancies that bill some or all of their time by the hour. Log non-billable time too: internal work, pitches, fixing your own mistakes. Without it the billable share has nothing to divide by, and the most useful number on the sheet disappears.
BILLABLE HOURS TRACKER Name or team: [NAME OR TEAM] Period: [FIRST DATE] to [LAST DATE] Hours available this period: [AVAILABLE HOURS] SHEET 1 - ENTRIES (row 1 is the header) A Date | B Client | C Project | D Task | E Billable (Y/N) | F Hours | G Rate | H Amount | I Invoiced (Y/N) [DATE] | [CLIENT] | [PROJECT] | [TASK] | Y | [HOURS] | [HOURLY RATE] | formula | N [DATE] | [CLIENT] | [PROJECT] | [TASK] | Y | [HOURS] | [HOURLY RATE] | formula | N [DATE] | Internal | [PROJECT] | [TASK] | N | [HOURS] | 0 | formula | - FORMULA FOR ROW 2 (fill down) H2 Amount: =IF(E2="Y",F2*G2,0) SHEET 2 - SUMMARY Total hours logged: =SUM(Sheet1!F:F) Billable hours: =SUMIF(Sheet1!E:E,"Y",Sheet1!F:F) Non-billable hours: =SUMIF(Sheet1!E:E,"N",Sheet1!F:F) Billable share: =Billable hours / Total hours logged Billable utilisation: =Billable hours / [AVAILABLE HOURS] Not yet invoiced: =SUMIFS(Sheet1!H:H,Sheet1!I:I,"N") BY CLIENT (client name in A) Client | Billable hours | Amount [CLIENT] | =SUMIFS(Sheet1!F:F,Sheet1!B:B,A2,Sheet1!E:E,"Y") | =SUMIFS(Sheet1!H:H,Sheet1!B:B,A2) [CLIENT] | =SUMIFS(Sheet1!F:F,Sheet1!B:B,A3,Sheet1!E:E,"Y") | =SUMIFS(Sheet1!H:H,Sheet1!B:B,A3)
What to put in each blank
- [AVAILABLE HOURS]
- Work out the hours a person could have worked in the period, after holidays and leave. 20 working days at 8 hours is 160.
- [CLIENT]
- Spell each client the same way on every row, or the by-client totals split one client into two.
- [TASK]
- Describe the work in words the client would recognise on an invoice line.
- [HOURS]
- Log in decimals: 1.5 for an hour and a half, 0.25 for a quarter hour.
- [HOURLY RATE]
- Enter your own rate for that client or project as a plain number. Non-billable rows take 0.
Before you send it
- Set the Hours and Rate columns to Number format before you paste. Imported numbers often arrive as text, and SUMIF skips text without warning you.
- Bringing the grid into a sheet takes two steps: paste it into column A, then split on the | character (Excel: Data, Text to Columns; Google Sheets: Data, Split text to columns).
- Mark a row as invoiced the day the invoice goes out. The Not yet invoiced line is the one that finds forgotten work.
- Review the billable share every week, not every month. A slide from 70% to 55% over three weeks is still easy to explain while the work is fresh.
PeopleMuster flags every client project as billable, fixed-price or hourly, and its utilisation reports total the logged hours by project and by department, ready to post to Slack.
Questions people ask about this letter
How many billable hours are there in a year?
Start from 52 weeks of 40 hours, which is 2,080 hours. Take out holidays and leave, then multiply by the share of time you expect to bill. With 20 days of leave and holidays you have 1,920 hours; billing 75% of those gives 1,440.
What is a good billable share?
It depends on the role, since leaders bill less than delivery staff. As one dated reference, Deltek's Clarity study of architecture and engineering firms, published 12 May 2026, put staff utilisation at just under 60%. Track your own trend first, then compare.
Is billable utilisation the same as billable share?
No. Billable share divides billable hours by the hours you logged. Billable utilisation divides them by the hours you had available. A person who logs 30 of 40 available hours, all billable, has a 100% share but 75% utilisation.