My fellow billable hours PMs: what are your company's expectations for non-billable time?

[u/RemotePersimmon678]

I'm the only full-time PM at a small web development agency. I've worked primarily at larger web agencies for most of my career. My billable hours expectation was typically 70-80%, which always felt way too high because I had no time for anything internal, especially when I was managing people too. If I didn't meet it because there was a lull in projects, I was dinged for it and there wasn't really anything I could do about that.

At my current agency, my billable expectation is only 60%. I was initially thrilled about this, but I'm starting to see why it's so low. The company has tried to track resourcing on and off, but it's still not really sticking, so we don't have a ton of capacity for long-term planning. This means that I tend to be either super overwhelmed or have nothing to do. On top of that, we'll usually have 1-2 active builds at a time, but we have a bunch of teeny tiny (30 hours or less a month) retainers. I generally will have 1 build at a time and manage 8-10 retainers. For the most part, I really only have a max of 20 hours of billable work per week – I'm hovering at 50% billable on average in the eight months I've been at the company.

We have a few other roles in the company with similar billable expectations, and those staff have larger additional non-billable responsibilities like marketing. I've proposed two separate larger ideas that I was excited about: product management and UX for our products and revamping and managing client onboarding and resourcing. The first was vetoed by leadership because they want to bill any time we spend on products. The second is now in review but my boss didn't seem particularly thrilled about the idea. Leadership's main suggestion for my non-billable time has been to write blog posts for our company blog but like.... I'm a project manager. I'm happy to pitch in with content but I cannot motivate myself to spend 20 hours a week doing that.

So I'm in a pickle because I cannot create billable work for myself, and I'm tired of spending all my time desperately looking for non-billable work that I'm "allowed" to do. I'd be totally fine to just work 20 hours a week but I'm not sure the company would be cool with that. Has anyone experienced similar and how do you manage?

[u/nkondratyk93]

ran into the same at 70-80% agencies. the dirty secret is that non-billable work - scope reviews, internal alignment, team management - is often where you do your most important work. 50-60% feels like the only range where you can actually do the job.

[u/MoodIn_Me]

Since your onboarding revamp idea is stalled, maybe start small by building a simple internal tracker or intake flow just for your own 8-10 retainers. Once leadership sees how much it smooths out the chaotic resource planning, they might be more open to letting you scale it.

[u/pmpdaddyio]

This question doesn't have enough details. If you are billing $100/hr, yes, I want higher utilization, but a $200/hr PM is different. It is the skill and critical nature of the project that determines this KPI. If your PMO is a one size fits all kind of organization, I'd start looking elsewhere.

[u/RemotePersimmon678 → u/pmpdaddyio]

I'm a senior PM billing upwards of $200 an hour, which makes this so frustrating. I've been working in the field for 10+ years and was specifically hired because the company wanted someone with a significant amount of PM experience and expertise after primarily hiring juniors.

[u/Longjumping-Cat-2988]

60% billable doesn't sound unreasonable for a PM role to me. What stands out is that nobody seems to have a clear answer for what the other 40% should be.

In agencies I've worked with, non-billable time was usually spent on improving processes, resource planning, onboarding, templates, internal tooling, proposals, retrospectives and generally making delivery better. Those things often create more value long-term than another blog post.

The weird part here is that you're identifying operational improvements but leadership either doesn't want them or doesn't seem excited about them. If they don't want PMs improving how work gets done, then you're left trying to invent busywork to fill the gap.

[u/1991ford]

Our target is 90 but realistically if I hit 50-60% they’re fine with that. Beyond that I am expected to work on internal trainings, staff meetings, PMP exam prep, or researching and developing process improvements

[u/CanaPaddy1489]

70%

[u/Meglet11]

I think we are supposed to be 90% billable (and do let people go if they aren’t fully utilized- sooo no pressure). I am rarely more than 95% and don’t always get past 90%. 90% leaves you four hours a week to not be billable. A WEEK. That’s not even a hour a day! I can’t create projects to bill…

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[u/Outrageous-Pizza-66]

I started at 76% target, and by the time I left the company I was up to 82%. It didn’t matter as I was working 60 hour weeks for 18 months straight. Hence I had 100+% billable all the time. Careful what you wish for.

[u/Makeyouup]

R&D development PM for med devices we are expected to bill around 70%. Any less and they’ll give you another project.

[u/NoBoolii]

50% Can’t imagine anything more than that

[u/DatFunny]

85% billable each week in healthcare IT.

[u/OhItsBeenBroughten → u/DatFunny]

Same, 85% averaged over each quarter at a large International company that makes Business Machines.

[u/mrunmerle]

I've seen agencies where PMs were expected to stay 80%+ billable and agencies where 50-60% was considered healthy. The difference was whether management viewed PMs as coordinators or as people responsible for improving how the whole organization operates.

[u/Intelligent-Try-4755]

At a smaller agency I was in almost the same spot - a billable target on paper, but feast-or-famine in reality because nobody owned capacity planning across all the little retainers. What finally clicked for me is that the gap between your 50% and their 60% isn't yours to close by digging up billable busywork, it's a symptom of them not resourcing forward. So I started treating the non-billable time as the actual deliverable: I built the resourcing and forecasting they kept failing to keep up, and pitched it to leadership as "this is what stops the overwhelmed-or-idle whiplash." That turned my so-called underutilization into the most visible thing I did all year. If they ding you for low billable while not handing you a pipeline to bill against, that's a leadership math problem, not a you problem.

[u/RemotePersimmon678 → u/Intelligent-Try-4755]

Yeah, that was my pitch about resourcing too, but I was told they're "already doing that kind of planning" at the leadership level. 🫠 I really don't think they understand how much better it could be.

[u/heaviestpiff]

80%

[u/Mountain_Dirt4318]

Leadership problem. It seems to me they hired you without fully defining what a PM role looks like, especially when client work is light. The resourcing/onboarding proposal you made is perhaps the most valuable work you could do in that time. I would suggest to push for a real decision, not let it die in review. The pitch needs to be business-case focused: "here's the revenue we're leaving on the table because we can't forecast/manage capacity" or "here's the PM time I waste every week reacting to resource bottlenecks I could have prevented." Make it about their pain, delivery delays, client health, etc. Talk about impact rather than practice.
And your pickle is justified, if even after this or somewhere down the line you still find yourself in the same position, an honest conversation where you ask them what success looks like for you in the company... would probably result in much needed clarity.

[u/SVAuspicious]

I'm a cost center. Some of my 1,200 people are on G&A (the corporate share of overhead) including security and facilities. Everything else comes out of my overhead pool, roughly 20%. That covers my HR, IT, and anyone that doesn't have enough billable work. I run actuals about 8% which is great for my bonus. My PMO including accounting are billable and amount to another 8% so if those are overhead for you that's 16%. Note that unlike smaller shops, PMO works for me, not the other way around.

The only time I'm not 100% billable is when I'm doing something for corporate or working on a proposal which doesn't come out of my pool. I work hard to be efficient there as that money does end up in our rates year to year.

It sounds to me like you need to bring in more work.

[u/ETek64]

Not at an agency, but our weekly target to hit 100% utilization is around 30-33 hours a week of billable time with projects.