September 2026
The sum I used to do by hand at the end of every month, and every time I forgot half the hours nobody pays for.
Write down the items of your week with the hours you put in and whether they're billable. Below, three numbers appear: how many hours end up on an invoice, how many don't, and what an hour of your time is really worth once you count everything.
| Item | Hours | Billable |
|---|
The real rate is revenue divided by all the hours you worked, not just the billable ones.
If you bill 50 an hour and half your week isn't billable, your real hour is worth 25. That's not an accounting detail: it's the number to use when you decide whether to take a job, what a quote that goes nowhere costs you, and whether the rate you set three years ago still holds.
The hours nobody pays for aren't wasted time: quotes, admin and finding clients are work. The problem is leaving them out of the sum, because then the week always looks more profitable than it is.
If you also want to know how many hours you need between now and a deadline, there's how many hours you need; to time a single session, the 25 minute timer.
I'm building an app for people who work or study on their own. It does two things: it times your sessions and writes them in a log, and it has a calendar where you book a quarter hour and, if someone else is in that quarter hour, you work together on a video call, each on your own things. Two people in the same quarter hour are enough for it to work.
I don't promise you'll work better this way: I don't know that, and neither does anyone who promises it. What I do know is that an appointment you've made is harder to cancel than a plan, and that hours written down somewhere are easier to discuss with a client than hours remembered.
In coworking the camera stays on for the whole session: you don't have to show your face, you can point it at your desk. If you'd rather not have it on, the timer opens no video call.
It's free, it has no ads and it doesn't sell your data. It opens in the browser, nothing to install.
For adults (18+). This calculator also works without an account.
The ones a client pays for: work on the project, agreed meetings, revisions the contract provides for. Non-billable are the hours the work needs but nobody pays for: quotes, admin, finding clients, training, email.
Revenue from billable hours divided by all the hours you worked, billable or not. It's what an hour of your time is really worth.
There's no right number for everyone: it depends on the job and the moment. Someone looking for clients has more non-billable hours than someone with a steady client base. This sum is for knowing your number, not for comparing it with an average that has nothing to do with you.
Into the memory of the browser you're using: it doesn't reach us and we don't keep it anywhere. The “Clear” button deletes it.