Unbilled Time Calculator NZ
Some billable work never makes it onto a timesheet. A five-minute call, a quick reply to a client's email, a small fix done between other jobs: each is real work for a client, and each is easy to forget by the time the week is written up. None of it can be invoiced if it was never recorded. This unbilled time calculator puts a number on that gap. You enter the billable hours you log in a typical week, your own estimate of the share of billable work that never gets logged, your hourly rate and the weeks you work in a year. The calculator works out the billable hours you are really doing, the hours a week that slip through, and the revenue those hours would have earned in a week and over a year. The share never logged is your estimate, not a measured figure, so it is worth trying a few values: even a small percentage, repeated every week, adds up over a working year. The result is the revenue you could recover by logging time as you go, whether with a timer, a running log or a habit of recording each task before starting the next. It suits contractors, freelancers and anyone who bills clients by the hour.
From the same team as Calculate.co.nz
Your Timesheets at jobtracker.co.nz logs your hours on a week grid or a timer that keeps counting when your phone locks, free on every plan. Career and Timesheets turns those hours into projects and rates, fixed fees and retainers, numbered invoices with GST only when you are registered, expenses and mileage, and the tax to set aside, from $4.99 a month billed yearly.
Log your hours freeThe share never logged is your own estimate, and the result moves in step with it. Shares of 100% or more are treated as 99%.
How it works
The share never logged is a share of all your billable work, so the hours you do log are what is left: if 5% is never logged, your logged hours are 95% of the real total. Dividing your logged hours by one minus the share gives the billable hours you really work in a week. The unlogged hours are the difference between that and what you logged. Multiplying them by your hourly rate gives the revenue lost each week, and multiplying by the weeks you work gives the hours and the revenue lost over a year. Taking the share of your logged hours instead would understate the gap slightly, because it works from the smaller number.
Worked example
A freelancer logs 28 billable hours a week, charges $120 an hour and works 46 weeks a year. They estimate that 5% of their billable work never reaches a timesheet. Their 28 logged hours are therefore 95% of the work, so they really do 29.47 billable hours a week and 1.47 go unlogged. At $120 an hour that is $176.84 a week. Over 46 weeks it is 67.8 hours and $8,135 of revenue that was earned but never invoiced.
| Step | Result |
|---|---|
| Billable hours logged a week | 28 |
| Real billable hours: 28 divided by 0.95 | 29.47 |
| Unlogged hours a week | 1.47 |
| Revenue lost a week at $120 | $176.84 |
| Unlogged hours over 46 weeks | 67.8 |
| Revenue lost a year | $8,135 |
Related calculators
- Timesheet Rounding Calculator: how rounding each entry changes the hours you bill.
- Billing Increment Calculator: short tasks turned into billable units.
- Realisation Rate Calculator: how much of your standard rate you actually bill and collect.
- Contractor Effective Hourly Rate Calculator: what each hour you work earns once unbilled time is counted.