Solopreneur income depends on billable time, pricing model, and utilization. Everhour keeps rates and hours organized.
Track billable vs. non-billable time and see your real utilization rate and revenue potential in seconds.
Working hours in the period
Admin, meetings, internal work
Industry average is 75–80%
The calculator gives you the number — Everhour takes it from there.
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Measurement
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A solopreneur billable-hours calculation answers three practical questions: how many client-chargeable hours were completed, what invoice value those hours create, and what rate the project produced after non-billable work is considered. This matters whether you sell hourly consulting, day-rate work, fixed-fee packages, or a hybrid agreement with an hourly overage rate.
For U.S. work, totals are normally shown in USD. The United States has no federal VAT/GST or single national sales-tax rate for billed professional time, so tax treatment is state and local. If your service is taxable, add a jurisdiction-specific tax input instead of assuming one national percentage.
For time-and-materials work, the core formula is `billable hours × hourly rate`. If a solo consultant bills 22 strategy hours at $135 and 16 implementation hours at $95, the pre-tax invoice value is $2,970 plus $1,520, or $4,490. Separate rates are common when high-value advisory work and execution work appear on the same invoice.
For fixed-fee work, tracked hours still matter because the useful output is the effective hourly rate. A $4,490 project that takes 38 billable hours produces an effective rate of $118.16 per billable hour. If the project also includes unpaid sales calls, admin, and revisions, your effective return across the whole workweek is lower than the billable-hour figure.
Solopreneurs often focus on the quoted hourly rate, but utilization explains why revenue feels lower than expected. Freelancermap's 2025 survey sample reported a 40-hour average freelancer workweek with 5 hours on non-billable activity. That leaves 35 potentially billable hours before cancellations, unpaid revisions, marketing time, and scope changes reduce the total further.
Keep utilization, realization, collection, and rate separate. Utilization measures the share of available time that becomes billable. Realization measures how much billable value survives write-downs or fixed-fee pressure. Collection measures what actually gets paid. The effective billing rate combines utilization, realization, and the hourly rate, so one weak stage can erase a strong published price.
A one-off calculation is enough when you are pricing a small job, checking whether a fixed fee still works, or preparing a simple invoice from clean notes. It gives you the immediate math: billable hours, rate, pre-tax amount, and effective hourly return. That is enough for occasional projects with one rate and no approval or billing handoff.
A managed workflow is better when you serve repeat clients, change rates by project, split billable and non-billable work, or need past rate changes to stay tied to the right dates. Everhour separates cost and billable rates, supports per-person defaults and per-project overrides, preserves dated rate history, and prices work by project, member, or task.
This content is for general information only, may not be fully up to date, and is provided without any warranty or liability.
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Count hours that the client agreement allows you to invoice: client work, approved meetings, delivery tasks, research tied to the project, and agreed revisions. Do not count general marketing, bookkeeping, proposal writing, training, or unpaid admin unless the contract explicitly makes that time billable. For fixed-fee work, track all project hours anyway to measure the effective hourly rate.
Fixed-fee projects use billable-hour math to test profitability, not to create an hourly invoice. Divide the project fee by total billable hours spent on the project. If a $3,600 package takes 30 billable hours, the effective billable rate is $120 per hour before non-billable time and business expenses.
No. Non-billable time should stay out of the invoice total unless the client agreement says it is chargeable. Keep it in your internal calculation because it affects pricing. A project that invoices 20 billable hours but requires 8 non-billable admin or revision hours has a very different business result than a project that only takes 20 total hours.
Hourly pricing fits ongoing, meeting-heavy, or variable-scope work because the final effort is uncertain. Fixed fees fit defined deliverables with clear boundaries. A hybrid model works when you want a fixed project price plus an hourly overage rate for work outside the original scope, which protects both the client's budget and your time.
No. The United States has no federal VAT/GST and no single national sales-tax rate for billed professional time. Sales tax and similar taxes are handled at the state and local level, with different rules by jurisdiction and service type. Use the applicable state or local tax rule for the client work instead of adding a federal rate.
Everhour separates cost and billable rates so a solopreneur can compare internal cost, client-facing rate, and project return. It supports default rates, per-project overrides, dated rate changes, and project, member, or custom task rates when different types of work need different pricing.
Everhour Billing & Invoicing turns tracked billable time and expenses into invoices while excluding non-billable work. You can generate invoices from uninvoiced time, group line items by project, task, person, or date, and export invoices to QuickBooks Online, Xero, or FreshBooks.
Set project rates, track billable time, and keep dated rate changes attached to the right client work. Everhour preserves rate history for cleaner client billing.
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