Non-billable hours are real work, but no client invoice covers them directly. Admin, marketing, quoting, bookkeeping and chasing payments all take time, and that time has to be paid for somehow. Many small firms absorb it silently, working extra unpaid hours to keep the business running. This tool loads those hours into your hourly rate, showing the rate before and after the load so the cost is visible and fair.
Enter your base hourly rate, your non-billable hours per week and your billable hours per week. The tool calculates the loaded rate: the base rate multiplied by total hours divided by billable hours. It also shows the load as a percent and the non-billable share of your week. Those figures tell you how much of your week earns money and how much supports that earning work.
Here is an example. A base rate of 50 dollars, with 10 non-billable hours and 30 billable hours per week, gives a loaded rate of about 66.67 dollars. The load is about 33.3 percent, and non-billable time is 25 percent of the week. In plain terms, every billable hour must also pay for twenty minutes of supporting work. Once you see that, the higher rate stops feeling like a price rise and starts looking like honest arithmetic.
Why load the rate instead of charging admin separately? Clients rarely accept a separate admin charge on a small job, and itemising every email and phone call creates arguments. Loading the cost into the hourly rate is simpler and more honest in practice: the client pays one clear rate, and the business covers all the work that makes the job possible, including the work that happens before and after the visit.
Track your hours for two or three typical weeks before you set the load. Include quoting time, travel to quotes that do not convert, marketing, admin and bookkeeping. Many owners are surprised by the total. Ten non-billable hours a week is common, and in a growing business it can be higher. Using real hours gives a rate you can defend and live with.
Avoid two mistakes. First, do not set non-billable hours to zero to make the rate look low; that only moves the cost onto your evenings and weekends. Second, do not double count: if some admin time is already billed to a client as project management, do not load it again. The tool works best when each hour is counted once, in the right place.
Review the load every few months. As a business grows, admin hours often grow faster than billable hours, and the rate needs to keep up. Better systems can also cut admin time, which lets you hold the rate steady while earning the same income. Either way, the loaded rate makes the trade-off visible instead of hidden in unpaid overtime.
This tool is free, runs in your browser and needs no account. It is an estimating aid, not professional financial advice. Your real hours and costs should drive the final rate, and local market rates still matter. Loading non-billable time into your rate is not greed; it is how a small business pays for the work that keeps it running.
Expect non-billable hours to change with the seasons. In a busy season, quoting and scheduling can swallow far more time than in a quiet month, while quiet months bring more marketing and admin as you chase the next jobs. Rather than fixing the load once a year, check it each quarter with fresh hour counts. If a quarter was heavy on admin, the loaded rate for the next quarter should reflect that, or your pricing will lag behind reality. Also watch for tasks that can be cut or automated: a booking form, a standard quote template, or a simple bookkeeping routine can each save an hour a week, and every hour saved lowers the load your billable rate must carry.
Also available in Spanish: Calculadora de Horas no Facturables en tu Tarifa.