Restoration
Restoration Technician Utilization Calculator
Measures technician utilisation, where standby time is the cost of being an emergency trade.
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 gives utilisation, with the unbilled hours valued at both what they could have earned and what they cost in wages. In restoration the unbilled share is structurally larger than in a scheduled trade, because crews are on call, travel to losses at short notice, and spend time on documentation, monitoring visits and equipment handling that is not always directly billable.
What moves the number
- On-call and standby hours, which are paid and not billed.
- Travel to losses, which on a dispersed service area is substantial.
- Documentation and monitoring time, which is real work and variably billable.
- Equipment handling, deployment and retrieval between jobs.
Where this one goes wrong
Do not chase a utilisation figure borrowed from a scheduled trade, because it is the wrong target. An emergency restoration business carries standby capacity deliberately, and a company running its technicians at very high utilisation has no capacity to respond, which is the service it sells. The useful question is whether the unbilled time is standby, which is a deliberate investment, or whether it is travel inefficiency, poor scheduling and administrative drag, which are not. Monitoring visits are worth examining too, since they are real work and whether they are billable depends on the estimating convention being used.
Before you quote
- Separate deliberate standby from avoidable unbilled time.
- Check whether monitoring visits are billable under your convention.
- Compare against emergency trades rather than scheduled ones.
Questions
About this calculator
What utilisation should a restoration technician run at?
Lower than a scheduled trade, deliberately. An emergency business sells the ability to respond, which means carrying crews who are not billing at any given moment. A company with very high utilisation has no capacity to take the next loss, which is the product rather than inefficiency.
Is standby time wasted?
No, it is the cost of the service. The useful distinction is between standby, which is a deliberate investment in response capability, and avoidable unbilled time from poor routing, scheduling gaps and administrative drag. The first should be priced; the second should be reduced.
Are monitoring visits billable?
It depends on the estimating convention in use, and it is worth knowing which applies because daily monitoring on a drying job is real labour. Where it is not separately billable it has to be recovered in the rate, and a company that does neither is absorbing it.
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 5.
- Rate charged per hour ($). Enter your own figure; the page starts at $135.
- Cost per paid hour ($). 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 | 5 |
| Rate charged per hour | $135 |
| 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 | 308 |
| Revenue those hours would have carried | $41,580 |
| What the unbilled hours cost in wages | $10,472 |
65.0% of the paid day reaches an invoice. The rest is 308 hours a month, costing $10,472 in wages and carrying $41,580 of revenue that never happened.
How sensitive the answer is
Holding everything else steady and changing only rate charged per hour, this is what happens to billable share of the day. It is worth knowing which of your inputs the answer actually hinges on, and which barely move it.
| Rate charged per hour ($) | Billable share of the day |
|---|---|
| $68 | 65.0% |
| $101 | 65.0% |
| $135 example above | 65.0% |
| $203 | 65.0% |
| $270 | 65.0% |
Every other input is held at the example value while this one changes, which is not how a real job behaves. Treat it as a guide to which number matters most, not as five separate quotes.
What each figure means
- Paid hours per day
- A number, between 0 and 24, starting at 8.
- Hours that reach an invoice
- A number, between 0 and 24, starting at 5.2.
- Number of technicians
- A number, between 0 and 500, starting at 5.
- Rate charged per hour ($)
- A money amount, starting at $135.
- Cost per paid hour ($)
- 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.