Calculate invoiceable hours per year

To work out a roughly how many hours and days will you actually be working as a contractor, ie invoiceable hours per year.

A non leap year consist of 365 days across 52 weeks. Take away weekends and you have a maximum of 260 days to invoice.

You need some holidays and you may be sick. You may want to take time off for training and conferences. You may have gaps between contracts. You will need time for administration and sales/interviews.

The US average for permanent employees are closer to 2000 hours per year, the OECD average is around 1750, while in Norway it is around 1400 hours.

Hour per day

How many hours would you work and invoice for per day. Not including lunch.

Default: 8 hours.
Holidays

How many days per year (5 days = 1 week) will you take as holiday?

Default: 5 weeks = 25 days. (Norwegian statuary holidays)
Public Holidays

How many days per year will you forced to take as holiday due to public/bank holiday?

Default: 9 days. (UK bank holidays)
Sick days

In a bad year how many days were you off sick? How many times was your kids sick and you had to take the day off work (if applicable) etc.

Default: 4 days.
Training days & conferences

How many days will you spend on training courses etc? 1 week's course per year? 2 days conferences?

Default: 1 week = 5 days.
Admin & sales

You might be able to do most of your admin (accounting, invoicing, legal, etc) in hours outside of your invoice hours. Keep in mind you are then working more than you planned, so you might prefer to do that in your regular working hours thus non-invoiceable time.

You will also need to allocate some time to find the next contract, for interviews, keep previous clients happy etc.

Default: 1 week = 5 days.
Utilisation lost

How many days do expect to be on "the bench"? As how many days will you be without a contract per year. Not every contract finish and start perfectly aligned. Also some times there can be longer gaps due to market reasons, or down periods in the year (summer, December).

Default: 3 weeks = 15 days.



Any questions?