France uses a 35-hour full-time reference and 1,607 annual hours. Everhour helps keep capacity and approvals organized.
Measure billable utilization against total capacity and see exactly how many hours you're leaving on the table each period.
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A utilization rate answers one practical question: out of the time a person or team was available to work, how much time went to billable work. In France, the denominator starts with the full-time private-sector legal working-time reference of 35 hours per week, 151.67 hours per month, and 1,607 hours per year unless a collective agreement sets a different weekly duration.
The numerator depends on your operating definition. Client-billable hours usually belong in the numerator for agencies, consultancies, and service firms. Internal admin, sales, training, and leave normally stay outside billable utilization. The denominator should reflect available working capacity after your policy handles paid leave, nonworked public holidays, part-time schedules, and any employee population measured under forfait-jours instead of hours.
Use this formula: utilization rate = billable hours ÷ available hours × 100. For one French consultant with 128 available hours in a month and 88 client-billable hours, the utilization rate is 68.75%. If the standard billing rate is €150 per hour, those 88 billable hours carry €13,200 of billable value before discounts, write-downs, taxes, or invoice timing.
Available hours need a clear source. A monthly shortcut can use the employee's scheduled capacity for that period, adjusted for approved absence and nonworked public holidays. An annual model can start from the 1,607-hour reference for a full-time hourly employee, then subtract or adjust only the items your policy treats as unavailable capacity. The formula stays simple; the denominator decides whether the result is useful.
France has 5 weeks of statutory paid leave, equal to 30 jours ouvrables for a full year. Employers may count leave in jours ouvrés only when the result is at least as favorable. That leave belongs outside available capacity when you are measuring the utilization of time a person was actually available to work, because paid time not worked should not reduce the employee's performance percentage.
Public holidays need careful handling. France has 11 national legal public holidays, but only May 1 is mandatorily nonworked for all employees except activities that cannot stop. Other public holidays reduce available hours only when a collective agreement, branch or company agreement, or employer makes them nonworked. Alsace-Moselle and overseas territories add local holidays, so a France-wide utilization model should not force one holiday calendar on every worker.
A one-off calculation is enough when you need a quick monthly check for one person, one team, or one client portfolio. It works when the available-hours base is already known, leave has already been removed, and billable hours have already been reviewed. The same formula also works for scenario planning, such as testing how 6 more billable hours would change a consultant's monthly utilization.
A managed workflow becomes necessary when utilization feeds staffing, payroll review, billing, or performance reporting. French capacity planning should respect the 48-hour weekly ceiling and the 44-hour average over 12 consecutive weeks instead of treating sustained higher availability as normal capacity. Everhour Team Management supports weekly capacity, approval workflows, lock rules, admin time correction, roles, project assignments, and team groups so approved hours stay usable after the calculator check.
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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Divide billable hours by available hours, then multiply by 100. For a full-time hourly employee in France, the annual capacity base commonly starts from the legal working-time reference of 1,607 hours. Adjust that base for the specific period, schedule, approved leave, nonworked public holidays, and any collective agreement that changes the weekly duration.
Paid leave should reduce available hours when you measure utilization against time the person was available to work. France provides 5 weeks of statutory paid leave, equal to 30 jours ouvrables for a full year. Including paid leave in the denominator makes utilization look lower even though the person was not available for billable work.
All French public holidays do not automatically reduce the denominator. France has 11 national legal public holidays, but only May 1 is mandatorily nonworked for all employees except activities that cannot stop. Other holidays reduce available hours only when a collective agreement, branch or company agreement, or employer makes them nonworked.
Forfait-jours employees need a day-based capacity model because working time is counted in days rather than hours. The annual forfait-jours arrangement is capped at 218 working days unless the applicable collective agreement sets a lower number. Translating those days into hours for utilization can distort the result unless your firm has a consistent internal conversion policy.
French official guidance sets working-time, leave, public-holiday, and forfait-day capacity inputs, but it does not set a country-level billable utilization benchmark. Target utilization remains a firm-level operating policy. A law firm, agency, consultancy, and implementation team can all use different targets if the denominator and numerator definitions stay consistent.
Everhour Team Management lets admins set weekly capacity, apply lock rules, correct time entries, approve timesheets, assign roles, and group teams for department-level reporting. That structure keeps the utilization denominator and reviewed hours aligned before managers use the numbers for staffing, billing, or payroll review.
Everhour Resource Planning shows team workload on a visual timeline with member and project views, weekly capacity, availability gaps, and scheduled time off. Managers can compare planned capacity with tracked time, then adjust assignments before leave, holidays, or overallocated weeks distort utilization reporting.
Set weekly capacity, approve timesheets, lock reviewed periods, and group teams by department. Everhour Team Management keeps utilization inputs consistent for billing, staffing, and payroll review.
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