Calculating technician utilization: what counts and what does not

What is a technician's utilization rate?

The utilization rate says how much of the time a technician is available is actually spent on work that earns something. It is a fraction with a numerator (productive hours) and a denominator (available hours).

There is no fixed or legal definition. One business counts only hours at the customer, another includes travel time, a third looks only at hours that get invoiced. All three can be defended, as long as you always measure the same thing. Switch definitions halfway and you are comparing apples with oranges.

A few terms in a row. Productive hours are hours spent directly on customer work. Billable hours are hours you can charge to the customer. Available hours are contracted hours minus holiday, sick leave and public holidays.

What does that look like in a worked example?

Suppose a technician has a 40-hour contract and takes a day of holiday. Their available hours are then 32. They work 32 hours that week: 20 at customers, 7 travelling, 2 on preparation and 3 on admin. Of the 20 hours at customers, 18 are invoiced, because 2 hours were a repeat visit with no invoice.

These numbers are made up to show the mechanism. They say nothing about what is typical in the trade. What you count as productive decides the outcome:

What percentage is good?

The same week produces a utilization rate between 56 and 91 percent. That is why the definition matters more than the number.

There is no percentage that is right for every business. A business doing installations at fixed addresses drives differently from one handling breakdowns across the whole region. And one hundred percent means there is no room for overruns, urgent jobs or a customer who is not home. So compare with yourself: same definition, same period, per type of work. A rising line on a constant definition says more than any figure from an article.

Watch the other side too. A rate that stays high structurally can point to overtime or to a schedule with no buffer.

How does scheduling raise utilization?

Utilization looks like a technician problem, but it is largely decided at the office, when scheduling. Three things matter most: clustering work by area so travel time drops, filling gaps in the day, and only scheduling jobs with technicians who can actually do the work, so there is no repeat visit.

In the stipt calendar every technician or crew has a row of their own with working hours, days off and blocked time, and you can show the travel time between appointments. The slots a customer is offered are calculated on availability and travel time, and on skills and work area if you switch those on per appointment type. And the technician fills in the work order on site, so it does not have to be filled in or retyped in the evening.

If your software does not calculate utilization for you, a spreadsheet is enough. You only need four columns: available hours, hours at the customer, travel and other.