Everhour tracks work hours and timecards, but capacity and utilization still need a clear denominator policy.
Measure billable utilization against total capacity and see exactly how many hours you're leaving on the table each period.
Working hours this period
Industry average for agencies: 75–85%
The calculator gives you the number — Everhour takes it from there.
One click and you're timing. Start a timer, add an entry, edit the details. This is exactly how it feels in Everhour.
Set a budget, assign rates, and get alerted before you're over.
Measurement
Track your budget through time or costs
Every report you need — configured your way, always up to date.
Tracked hours flow straight into a polished invoice — no copy-paste, no manual math.
Capacity is the amount of time a person, team, or firm has available before comparing work output against it. In a U.S. services context, many firms start with 40 hours per week because federal overtime rules require covered nonexempt employees to receive overtime pay for hours worked over 40 in a fixed 168-hour workweek. That 40-hour baseline produces 2,080 gross annual hours before company PTO, holidays, unpaid leave, or other absences.
Utilization is the ratio built on top of that capacity. A standard services formula is billable hours divided by available hours. The result answers a different question than capacity: capacity asks how much time can be planned, while utilization asks how much of the chosen time base turned into billable work. The denominator must be named every time because gross capacity, net working hours, and total logged hours produce different rates.
A U.S. utilization denominator is a firm policy choice, not a federal full-time rule. The FLSA does not define full-time or part-time employment. BLS classifies workers as full time in CPS statistics when they usually work 35 or more hours per week, but BLS states that this is a statistical definition, not a legal one.
A clean capacity policy names the starting point and the deductions. Gross capacity starts with scheduled hours, such as 40 hours per week. Net working capacity subtracts company PTO, holidays, unpaid leave, and similar nonworking time. The FLSA does not require payment for time not worked, including vacations, sick leave, or federal or other holidays, so private-sector leave deductions come from policy, contract, or another applicable rule.
Use this structure: capacity equals scheduled hours minus excluded time, and utilization equals billable hours divided by the chosen capacity denominator. If a consultant has 40 scheduled hours in a week, takes 8 hours of company holiday time, and records 28 billable hours, the gross-capacity utilization rate is 70%. The net-working-capacity utilization rate is 87.5%.
Both figures are mathematically correct, but they answer different management questions. The 70% rate shows billable work against the full weekly schedule. The 87.5% rate shows billable work against time actually available after the holiday. OECD annual-hours definitions exclude time not worked because of public holidays, annual paid leave, illness, maternity or parental leave, and similar absences, so actual-hours data is not the same denominator as gross capacity.
A 100% utilization result means the numerator equals the denominator you chose. It does not prove that the workload is healthy, profitable, or repeatable. A person can hit 100% of net available hours during a short delivery push and still have no room for training, internal meetings, sales support, mentoring, rework, PTO, or bench time.
A one-off calculation is enough for a quick staffing check or a proposal model. A managed workflow becomes necessary once utilization affects payroll review, staffing targets, billing, or capacity planning. Everhour timecards show daily, weekly, and monthly work-hour totals, while Team Hours can compare working hours, project hours, time off, and weekly capacity for ongoing review.
This content is for general information only, may not be fully up to date, and is provided without any warranty or liability.
High Performer
G2
Summer 2026
Best Ease Of Use
Capterra
Summer 2026
Rated in the top time trackers across G2, Capterra, and TrustRadius — with consistent praise for ease of use, integrations, and support.
Capacity is the available time base. Utilization is the share of that base used for billable or productive work. A team with 400 available hours and 300 billable hours has 400 hours of capacity and a 75% utilization rate. Mixing the two causes planning errors because one is an hour total and the other is a percentage.
Use gross capacity when you want to compare work against the full schedule. Use net available hours when you want to remove PTO, holidays, unpaid leave, and similar absences before measuring billable time. The chosen denominator must stay consistent across people and periods, or the rate will reward or penalize leave timing instead of work mix.
A 100% target leaves no planned room for non-billable work, PTO, training, business development, internal coordination, or recovery time. U.S. federal sources define work-hour and leave rules, but they do not set a professional-services utilization target. The target utilization rate is a firm or industry benchmark choice, not a country-level legal input.
The denominator changed. A person with 28 billable hours has 70% utilization against a 40-hour gross week and 87.5% utilization against 32 net available hours after 8 hours of holiday time. The numerator stayed the same, but the capacity definition changed the result.
Federal holidays do not automatically reduce private-sector capacity. OPM lists 11 federal holidays in 2026, but those are federal employee holidays. Private-sector paid holidays remain a matter of employer policy unless another law or contract applies. A firm should subtract holidays only when its own capacity policy treats those days as unavailable.
Everhour timecards record daily, weekly, and monthly work-hour totals for payroll review. Teams can compare project hours with working hours, review time off and weekly capacity in Team Hours, and export approved timesheet data when utilization needs an auditable hour base.
Everhour Resource Planning shows team capacity and workload on a visual timeline. Managers can set weekly capacity per person, see overallocated people, schedule time off, and compare planned capacity with actual tracked time when utilization targets need a planning check.
Use Everhour timecards to compare working hours, project hours, time off, and weekly capacity over time, then review utilization with cleaner payroll and planning records.
14-day free trial · No credit card · Cancel anytime
