Everhour timecards compare project hours with working hours, giving project managers cleaner inputs for utilization checks.
Measure billable utilization against total capacity and see exactly how many hours you're leaving on the table each period.
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Industry average for agencies: 75–85%
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Project manager utilization answers one practical question: what share of available work time went to client-billable project management work? The numerator is billable PM time. The denominator is the available-hours base your firm chooses, usually fixed weekly capacity or net working time after approved absences.
PM work includes goals, scope, tasks, deliverables, resources, stakeholder communication, risk control, reporting, and documentation. A calculator only gives a useful rate after you classify those activities under the client agreement. Client steering meetings may be billable on one engagement and internal overhead on another.
Use this formula: utilization rate = billable hours ÷ available hours × 100. A project manager with 29 billable client-project hours in a 40-hour capacity week has 72.5% utilization. The remaining 11 hours cover internal planning, status reporting, team coordination, and other non-billable work.
If the firm tracks standard billable value, multiply billable hours by the PM billing rate. At a $145 standard hourly rate, 29 billable hours carry $4,205 of recorded billable value before any write-downs, discounts, or unbilled client time. Utilization measures time use, while realization measures invoiced billable work divided by billable work.
A fixed-capacity denominator compares billable PM hours with a standard base such as 40 hours per week. That gives a stable planning view across people and periods. A logged-hours denominator compares billable hours with recorded hours, but under-recorded non-billable time inflates the rate and makes managers look more utilized than they were.
A net-working-time denominator excludes leave or illness from available hours, which reduces seasonal distortion. U.S. federal law does not define full-time employment, and the FLSA does not require payment for time not worked, including vacations, sick leave, or holidays. The denominator should follow employer policy, worker category, contract terms, and the reporting purpose.
A one-off calculation is enough for a weekly sanity check, a staffing discussion, or a rough comparison against a 70-80% project-resource planning band. That band leaves 20-30% of available time for non-billable work, learning, downtime, or contingency. It is a planning benchmark, not a universal PM-specific rule.
A managed workflow matters when utilization feeds capacity planning, payroll review, billing review, or client-margin reporting. Everhour timecards show daily, weekly, and monthly work-hour totals, compare project hours with working hours, and support approved exports before payroll or billing teams use the numbers.
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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Billable PM hours are hours tied to client-chargeable project management work under the engagement terms. Scope sessions, stakeholder meetings, delivery coordination, risk reviews, documentation, and reporting count only when the client contract treats them as chargeable project work. Internal status meetings, sales support, hiring, training, and general administration usually sit outside the billable numerator.
A 70-80% band works as a project-resource planning benchmark when project managers need time for coordination, internal reporting, learning, and contingency. It is not a statutory U.S. target or a universal PM rule. Senior PMs, delivery leads, and people managers often need a lower billable target because they carry more internal coordination responsibility.
Reporting time counts when the client engagement treats reporting as chargeable project work. Wellingtone's 2021 State of Project Management survey reported that about half of respondents spent at least one day per month generating reports, so teams should classify reporting clearly instead of burying it inside generic admin time.
Approved leave should reduce available hours when you measure working-time utilization. Counting vacations, illness, or similar absences in the denominator depresses the rate even though the project manager was not available for client work. For a gross-capacity view, keep the full 40-hour week and label the report accordingly.
Utilization is not the same as schedule performance index or cost performance index. Utilization measures billable PM hours divided by available hours. SPI equals earned value divided by planned value, and CPI equals earned value divided by actual cost. Those earned value metrics measure project schedule and cost performance, not the PM's billable use of capacity.
Everhour timecards support payroll review with daily, weekly, and monthly work-hour totals, project-vs-working-hour comparisons, Team Hours reporting, and PDF, CSV, or XLSX exports. That gives managers a cleaner record before utilization results move into payroll checks, billing review, or capacity reports.
Track working hours, project hours, approvals, and exports in Everhour so project manager utilization stays tied to payroll review, billing checks, and capacity planning.
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