Tools
Electrical Contractor Capacity Planner
Model how many field hours your team can actually produce, how much of that capacity is currently billed, and whether booked demand fits inside the next four weeks.
Capacity is the quiet constraint behind most scheduling problems. Paid hours are not billable hours, backlog is not the same as demand, and a busy week is not proof that another van or another electrician is required. This planner separates those figures so the staffing conversation starts from hours instead of pressure.
It prescribes no target utilization rate and no ideal backlog length. Every number below is produced from your own inputs. Read the full capacity planning guide.
Run the numbers
Your results
Enter your field headcount, weekly hours and backlog, then select Calculate Capacity.
Everything is calculated in your browser. Nothing you enter is saved, stored or transmitted.
How the Capacity Model Works
Available capacity per employee is paid hours minus required non-billable hours. Multiplied by billable field headcount, that becomes total weekly capacity. Current utilization compares what you actually bill per employee against that available figure, and backlog coverage converts sold work into weeks of production.
The four-week view adds the two demand pieces together — current backlog plus expected additional booked hours — and compares them to four weeks of modeled capacity. A positive gap is remaining capacity; a negative gap means the modeled demand exceeds what the current team can produce.
Why Non-Billable Hours Decide the Answer
The non-billable input is the most sensitive number in the model. Every hour moved into it reduces capacity across the whole team, which raises utilization, shortens backlog coverage and shrinks the four-week gap. Contractors who understate it get an optimistic capacity figure and then wonder why the schedule never holds.
Some of those hours are structural and some are recoverable. Dispatch density, staging, stocked trucks and tighter scheduling routinely move hours back into billable production without hiring anyone. Dispatch and scheduling for electrical contractors covers those levers.
Capacity Signals vs Hiring Decisions
A shortfall in this model is information, not an instruction. Confirm the demand is durable rather than a seasonal spike, exhaust the cheaper capacity options first, then price the commitment before adding permanent cost.
When to add another service van works through the incremental capacity cost of a truck, and hiring your first electrician covers the readiness questions before a first hire. For the strategic framing across field, office, scheduling and owner capacity, read electrical contractor capacity planning.
Turning Hours Into Financial Decisions
Capacity hours feed directly into the financial models. Billable hours are the divisor in labor rate and overhead recovery, and the revenue those hours produce is what has to clear the break-even floor once new capacity raises overhead.
Model the revenue side with the break-even calculator before committing to added cost, and build the rate itself with the labor rate calculator.
Frequently Asked Questions
Capacity Is an Operating System, Not a Number
Hours only stay predictable when scheduling, pricing and staffing decisions are run the same way every week. Contractor Core connects those systems so capacity is planned ahead of the calendar instead of discovered inside it.