Is 32 hours a week a target or a wish?
Twenty weeks of one timesheet, including the public holiday week and the week two days went into an unbilled pitch. The mean is 31.90 hours and the median is 33, and that gap is the whole point.
Work Starter Statistics free
After you install, this is the model to open.
What Does a Typical Billable Week Look Like?
- In your spreadsheet, click the Sortia icon in the strip of icons down the right-hand edge. No strip? Click the arrow at the bottom-right to open it. You can also use Extensions, then Sortia, then Open Sortia.
- Click Start from a template and put that name in the search box.
- Pick the card with that name and click Load this template. It arrives on a new tab with real numbers already in it.
The answer
The center, and the band around it:
- Mean
- 31.90 hours a week
- Median
- 33 hours a week
- Standard deviation
- 5.24 hours
- Interval on the average
- ± 2.45 hours at 95%
Two bad weeks pull the average down while barely moving the middle, and skewness of -1.19 says the same thing in one number: the surprises in this job live on the low side. Against a target of 32 chargeable hours, this consultant is hitting it on the median and missing it on the mean, and the difference between those two readings is worth more than another meeting about utilization. The band is the thing to argue with, not the 31.90. Run it again asking for the second largest and second smallest week, which is a fairer picture of the range than the single 18 and the single 39.
The model
One column of weekly billable hours with the header in the first row. Descriptive Statistics returns the center, the spread, the shape and a confidence interval for the average.
| Weeks logged | 20 |
| What is measured | billable hours a week |
| Worst / best week | 18 / 39 hours |
| Confidence level | 95% |
| Mean, median, spread and interval | calculated |
Once it is in your sheet
- The model arrives with real numbers in it and runs as it stands, so you can press the button first and understand it second.
- Change the numbers to yours. The sheet marks which cells are inputs and which hold formulas, and most labels carry a note explaining the row.
- Press the run button at the bottom of the panel. It is labeled for the tool you are in, and the result lands on its own tab, with a written reading of it beside the figures.
Never used Google Sheets? Start here goes the whole way, in seven steps, and assumes nothing.
Next question
- Is your biggest client really your best one?Which Clients Are Actually Worth Keeping?
- What is the lowest rate that is not a subsidy?What Rate Do I Have to Charge?
- Which few tasks are eating the whole calendar?How Long Do Our Tasks Really Take?
- How much should you pad the next estimate?How Wrong Are Our Estimates, Usually?
- What three-point estimate does your history give?What Shape Are Our Task Durations?
- How many people does the rota actually need?Cover Every Hour With the Fewest People
Every model like this one, and the method behind them: Statistics in Google Sheets.