Booked utilization, also called board or scheduled utilization, is the percentage of a technician's available hours that have a job assigned on the schedule. It measures how full the calendar is, not how much work was done.
How to calculate booked utilization
Booked utilization = Assigned hours ÷ Available hours × 100
Say a technician has 40 available hours in a week and 37 hours of job blocks on the board. Booked utilization is 92.5%.
Now look inside the blocks. If 10 of those 37 hours were driving and 4 were waiting on access or parts, the hours spent working were 23. Productive utilization is 23 ÷ 40, or 57.5%. The same week reads 92.5% or 57.5% depending on which question you ask. The technician utilization calculator separates the two on your own numbers.
Why it matters for scheduling
Booked utilization is the number most scheduling tools show by default, so it is the number most owners see. It is genuinely useful for one thing: spotting holes in the schedule. A truck at 60% booked has empty time that could be sold.
It is misleading for everything else. A truck at 100% booked might be fully productive, or might spend a third of the day driving. If you hire based on booked utilization, you can end up adding a truck to fix what is really travel hidden inside appointment blocks. The full case, with worked examples, is in 100% booked is not 100% utilized.
The fix is to keep travel out of the job blocks. When drive time sits on the board as its own block, booked utilization and productive utilization start to tell the same story, and the gap between them becomes visible.
A common mistake
Reporting booked utilization under the name "utilization" without saying which version it is. Two managers can then argue over a number that is measuring two different things. Label it on the report as booked, and put productive utilization next to it.
Related terms
- Technician utilization rate covers all three versions: booked, billable and productive.
- Schedule density uses the same arithmetic for time and adds a geographic half.
- Idle time is one of the things booked utilization hides.
- Capacity planning goes wrong when built on booked utilization alone.
Common questions
What is the difference between booked and utilized?
Booked means the time is assigned on the schedule. Utilized means the time was spent on productive work. Driving and waiting are booked but not utilized.
Is a high booked utilization good?
It means the calendar is full. Whether that is good depends on what fills it. Check drive and idle time before treating it as a success.
Why is my booked utilization high but revenue flat?
Usually because travel and waiting are inside the booked hours. Recalculate with drive time removed and the picture usually changes.