Painting
Painter Utilization Calculator
Measures utilisation, where exterior seasonality sets a ceiling.
Result
Not all unbilled time is waste. Travel, restocking, training and warranty calls are necessary and will never be zero. The useful question is whether the share is drifting, not whether it reaches 100%.
Get a Free Business AuditHow the calculation works
Billable hours divided by paid hours, with the unbilled hours costed. Painting has a structural unbilled share: travel between jobs, setup and cleanup that may or may not be billable depending on how you quote, material collection, and in exterior work days lost to weather. A business doing mostly exterior work in a cold or wet climate has a seasonal ceiling that no amount of scheduling discipline changes.
What moves the number
- Exterior against interior mix, which determines weather exposure.
- Travel and material collection time.
- Whether setup and cleanup is inside the billable figure.
- Season, since exterior work has a window in most climates.
Where this one goes wrong
The usual response to seasonal utilisation is to balance the work mix: interior repainting fills the months when exterior is impossible, and a business doing only exterior carries its crew through a dead season or lets them go and rehires, which costs more than it looks. Building an interior book deliberately is the structural fix. On travel and material runs, those are addressable rather than structural: grouping jobs geographically and keeping common materials stocked removes hours that nobody bills and everybody pays.
Before you quote
- Separate weather losses from addressable unbilled time.
- Build interior work deliberately to fill the exterior off-season.
- Stock common materials rather than collecting per job.
Questions
About this calculator
How do painting businesses handle the off-season?
By balancing interior against exterior work, since interior repainting fills the months when exterior is impossible. A business doing only exterior either carries its crew through a dead season or loses and rehires them, which costs more in recruitment and lost competence than it saves.
Should setup and cleanup be billable?
It has to be recovered somewhere, either as billable hours or inside the rate. What causes problems is treating it as neither, since protecting, masking and cleaning up is a substantial fixed cost per job and a business that does not price it funds it from margin.
How much travel time is normal?
Some is unavoidable and more of it is routing than people credit. Grouping jobs geographically and keeping common materials in stock rather than collecting per job removes hours nobody bills. Those are the addressable part of unbilled time, as distinct from weather.
The formula
utilisation = billed hours / paid hours
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How to use this calculator
- Paid hours per day. Enter your own figure; the page starts at 8.
- Hours that reach an invoice. Enter your own figure; the page starts at 5.2.
- Number of technicians. Enter your own figure; the page starts at 4.
- Rate charged per hour ($). Enter your own figure; the page starts at $68.
- Cost per paid hour ($). Wage plus burden.
- Working days per month. Enter your own figure; the page starts at 22.
The result updates as you type, so you can try a figure, see what it does to billable share of the day, and change it back. Nothing you enter is sent anywhere or saved.
A worked example
These are the figures the calculator opens with. Every number in the results column below is produced by the same calculation the page runs, so you can follow it through before putting your own figures in.
What goes in
| Input | Value |
|---|---|
| Paid hours per day | 8 |
| Hours that reach an invoice | 5.2 |
| Number of technicians | 4 |
| Rate charged per hour | $68 |
| Cost per paid hour | $34 |
| Working days per month | 22 |
What comes out
| Result | Value |
|---|---|
| Billable share of the day main result | 65.0% |
| Unbilled hours per month | 246 |
| Revenue those hours would have carried | $16,755 |
| What the unbilled hours cost in wages | $8,378 |
65.0% of the paid day reaches an invoice. The rest is 246 hours a month, costing $8,378 in wages and carrying $16,755 of revenue that never happened.
How sensitive the answer is
Holding everything else steady and changing only rate charged per hour, this is what happens to billable share of the day. It is worth knowing which of your inputs the answer actually hinges on, and which barely move it.
| Rate charged per hour ($) | Billable share of the day |
|---|---|
| $34 | 65.0% |
| $51 | 65.0% |
| $68 example above | 65.0% |
| $102 | 65.0% |
| $136 | 65.0% |
Every other input is held at the example value while this one changes, which is not how a real job behaves. Treat it as a guide to which number matters most, not as five separate quotes.
What each figure means
- Paid hours per day
- A number, between 0 and 24, starting at 8.
- Hours that reach an invoice
- A number, between 0 and 24, starting at 5.2.
- Number of technicians
- A number, between 0 and 500, starting at 4.
- Rate charged per hour ($)
- A money amount, starting at $68.
- Cost per paid hour ($)
- Wage plus burden.
- Working days per month
- A number, between 0 and 31, starting at 22.
What the results tell you
| Result | What it is |
|---|---|
| Billable share of the day | The headline result. A percentage. |
| Unbilled hours per month | A number. |
| Revenue those hours would have carried | A money figure. |
| What the unbilled hours cost in wages | A money figure. |
Estimating is the easy part
The jobs you never hear about cost more than the ones you mis-measure. BDEVY builds the marketing, systems and automation that bring them in.