Voltti
Voltti
Enter the income you want, your costs and the hours you can really bill. See the minimum hourly rate and day rate you need to charge. No signup.
Your rate is only right if your billable hours are. Voltti tracks your real minutes in every app on Mac and Windows, with no timer to start or stop, so your daily and weekly reports show how much of your week went to client work. It shows what distractions cost at your own hourly rate, and builds invoices from tracked hours that clients can verify on voltti.app.
Example: you want $60,000 a year and your costs are $6,000, so you need $66,000. With 6 weeks off you work 46 weeks. At 25 billable hours a week that is 46 × 25 = 1,150 hours. $66,000 ÷ 1,150 = $57.39 an hour. A day of 5 billable hours is about $286.96. Add a 10% margin and you need $72,600, or $63.13 an hour.
Compare that with a salaried job using the salary to hourly calculator. A salary divides by every paid hour, but a freelance rate has to cover your time off, your costs and the hours no one pays for. When the work is done, bill it with the free invoice generator.
The income figure is before income tax. This calculator does not work out tax, so check what applies to you with a tax professional.
Add the yearly income you want to your yearly business costs. Divide that by your billable hours in a year, which is your working weeks times your billable hours a week. Enter your numbers above and the calculator does it for you.
Billable hours are the hours you can charge a client for. The rest of your working week, like email, sales calls, proposals, invoicing, admin and learning, still takes time but no one pays for it directly. Your rate has to cover those hours too.
2,080 is 40 hours times 52 weeks, which assumes every hour is paid and you never take time off. As a freelancer you pay for your own time off and your own tools, and only part of your week is billable. Dividing by 2,080 gives a rate that is too low.
Multiply your hourly rate by the billable hours in a typical day. This calculator uses your billable hours a week divided by 5. At $57.39 an hour and 25 billable hours a week, that is 5 hours, or about $286.96 a day.
Before income tax. Enter what you want to pay yourself before income tax. This calculator does not work out tax for you, so check what you will owe where you live.
Your numbers stay in your browser so they're still there when you come back. Nothing is sent to a server.
Track them. Voltti for Mac and Voltti for Windows record every real minute in your apps and work websites, with no timer to start or stop, so you can see how much of your week goes to client work. The free plan includes automatic tracking.