How to calculate agency utilization rate (and the number to aim for)
Utilization is the most quoted and least understood number in agency operations. Here is the formula, the benchmarks, and the three ways the calculation goes quietly wrong.
Topic
Agency operations
Running the delivery side of an agency: capacity, utilization, and where the time goes.
How to write a client time report that explains the work
A total tells the client how much time you spent. A useful report shows what moved forward, where the budget stands, and what needs a decision.
How to estimate project hours using work you have already done
Your last project contains evidence for your next quote. Here is how to turn recorded hours into an estimate you can explain and improve.
Capacity planning when you are too small for a resourcing team
A spreadsheet, one number per person per week, and a rule about how full is full. Most of the value in capacity planning arrives well before the sophisticated version.
How to switch time tracking tools without losing your history
The migration is not the hard part. Keeping your old reports reconcilable and not double-billing during the changeover is, and both are decided before you start.
A time tracking policy worth actually writing
One page, eight decisions. Most agencies have none of this written down, which is why their billable percentage measures interpretation rather than work.
A timesheet approval process people don't resent
Approvals exist to protect the invoice, not to police the team. The difference shows up in what the approver is actually looking at.
Catching scope creep before it eats the retainer
Scope creep is rarely one big unreasonable request. It is forty small ones, none of which was worth an argument, and the only reliable detector is a number you check monthly.
How to tell whether a project actually made money
Revenue minus obvious costs is not profitability. Here is the calculation that includes the parts agencies routinely leave out, and when to run it.
Billable vs non-billable: where agency time actually goes
The four arguments every agency has about what counts as billable, why the answers matter less than the consistency, and what a healthy non-billable split looks like.
Rolling out time tracking without a mutiny
The first ninety days decide whether you get useful data or a compliance exercise. A practical sequence, and the three mistakes that poison it on day one.
Why we don't build screenshots
Several tools in this category will photograph your team's screens every ten minutes. We have decided not to build that, and it is worth saying why rather than leaving it as a gap in a feature list.
Numbers like these, without the spreadsheet
Utilization, effective hourly rate and project margin, straight out of tracked time.
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