Technician utilization rate is the percentage of a technician's available working hours spent on productive work. The standard formula is productive (or billable) hours divided by available hours.
How to calculate technician utilization rate
Utilization rate = Productive hours ÷ Available hours × 100
Both halves need a written definition.
- Available hours are scheduled working hours minus PTO, holidays and any paid non-field time you choose to exclude, such as training.
- Productive hours depend on which version you are measuring. There are three in common use:
| Version | Numerator | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Board (booked) utilization | Hours assigned on the schedule | Whether the calendar has holes |
| Billable utilization | Hours charged to a customer | Whether the day produced revenue |
| Productive utilization | Hours on site doing the work | Whether scheduling is working |
Say a technician has 40 available hours in a week. The board shows 38 hours assigned. Of those, 11 were driving and 4 were waiting. Board utilization is 95%. Productive utilization is 23 ÷ 40, or 57.5%. Same technician, same week. The technician utilization calculator does this split for you.
Why it matters for scheduling
Utilization is the number owners use to decide whether to hire. If it reads high, the instinct is to add a truck. If the high reading is mostly travel and waiting, a new truck just adds more of both. Reading productive utilization next to booked utilization tells you whether you have a capacity problem or a scheduling problem.
A common mistake
Counting travel as productive. When appointment blocks include the drive, board utilization can read in the high nineties while the technician spends a third of the day behind the wheel. If your utilization number looks too good, check whether windshield time is sitting in the numerator. The formulas and their failure modes are covered in depth in Technician utilization rate: the formula, and why yours is probably wrong.
Related terms
- Booked utilization is the board version of this metric. It measures the calendar, not the work.
- Wrench time is the numerator of productive utilization.
- Idle time is whatever is left after wrench time and travel are taken out.
- Technician productivity measures output, where utilization measures time.
Common questions
What is a good technician utilization rate?
There is no single benchmark worth chasing, because the result depends on your definitions, your trade and your service radius. Track your own trend with a fixed definition. Treat a very high number with suspicion until you confirm travel is excluded.
What is the difference between utilization and productivity?
Utilization measures how much available time went to work. Productivity measures how much output that time produced, such as jobs or revenue per technician per day.
Should apprentices be included in the average?
Report them separately. An apprentice riding along is a training cost, and mixing them into the team average hides what your senior technicians are doing.