Track billable hours in a week.
Billable hours are what is left after admin, business development and unpaid revisions are taken out of the week you actually worked. Utilisation is that billable slice as a percentage of hours worked, and it is the number that explains why a healthy hourly rate can still produce a thin week. Dividing billable revenue by every hour worked gives the effective rate — the honest figure to compare against a salary.
Billable hours and utilisation
Billable hours = hours worked - admin hours - unpaid revision hours; utilisation = billable hours / hours worked x 100
Independent professionals typically land between 55% and 75%. Above 80% usually means admin is being deferred rather than eliminated, and below 50% signals that overhead work needs pruning or pricing in.
No. Tracking them separately is what makes scope creep visible; folding them into billable hours hides the cost of loose project boundaries.
Because it spreads billable revenue across every hour you worked, including the unpaid ones. That is the rate your week really earned.