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Staying organized

Non-Billable Time

The short answer

Non-billable time is every hour that goes into the business but never reaches an invoice — quoting, admin, and answering calls or messages outside a job. It shrinks your effective hourly rate even though no client ever sees it on a bill.

What it means

A quoted rate is what a client pays for the hours they see. Non-billable time is the rest: writing the quote itself, chasing a part, answering a message at the end of the day, catching up on invoicing. None of it is wasted time, and none of it is optional, but none of it is paid for directly either.

It matters most when it grows quietly. An hour of evening admin here, an extra call there, and the working week gets longer without a single extra invoice to show for it — which is exactly the gap between overhead, the fixed cost of being in business, and the day-to-day hours that never make it onto a job.

For example

A job is quoted and billed at $500. Getting there also took 40 minutes of quoting, two unbilled calls, and a Sunday evening spent on invoicing — all non-billable time that never appears on that $500, or any other invoice.

The mistake to avoid

Tracking only the hours on a job and ignoring the admin and answering hours around it — the effective hourly rate a week actually pays is the billed hours and the non-billable hours added together, not the billed hours alone.

See also

Effective Hourly RateOverheadResponse Time

Where this shows up

Guide

Working hours and boundaries — the hours you answer are the promise

A client cannot see your diary. They read your hours from when you actually answer, not from what you post. Set the hours you work and the hours you answer as two different windows, say both in the three places a client looks, price a genuine emergency in advance, and hold the line the first time it is inconvenient.

 Free tool

Working hours check

Type in the hours you intend to work, the hours you actually answer, and the admin hours outside both, and see the gap between the week you meant to run and the week you are actually running — plus what each one pays per hour.

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