Capacity is the question almost nobody in the home-service trades asks cold: does the work coming in fit into the hours my crew can actually deliver? Most owners run it by feel, and by feel you make the two expensive mistakes of the business. Either you take on more work than you can deliver, run late on customers and burn out the crew. Or you carry technicians below their capacity, paying wages that never turn into invoices.
This calculator puts numbers on that question. Adjust your figures above and you will see, in real time, your utilization, your capacity in jobs and how many technicians you need to cover the demand on your plate.
How to read the results
- Crew utilization is the headline number: what percentage of your crew's capacity the current demand is taking up. Above 100% you are slammed; below 70% you have slack.
- Capacity (jobs/week) is how many jobs your crew can do per week with the billable hours it actually has.
- Headroom or shortfall turns that capacity into something tangible: how many jobs you have to spare, or fall short by, against the demand coming in.
- Technicians needed is the crew size that would cover current demand without turning work away.
- Revenue left on table/week is the money that walks out the door each week when demand outruns your capacity and you have to say no.
Real capacity, not capacity on paper
The most common planning mistake is counting the hours a technician is on the clock as if they were all billable. They are not. Between travel, materials runs, estimates and paperwork, a full-time tech rarely bills more than thirty hours a week. If you plan on forty, you overstate your capacity and commit to a volume you cannot deliver on time. That is why this tool reasons in billable hours: it is the only honest measure of what your crew can produce.
When to hire and when not to
When you are slammed, the temptation is to hire right now. First, look at the trend. Utilization above 100% for several weeks running, with revenue left on the table every week, is a solid signal to add a technician: you are turning away work you could bill. But if the overload is a seasonal spike, a full-time tech becomes a fixed cost once demand drops. The question is not just how much work I have today, but how much I will have steadily three months from now.
The cost of turning work away versus idle techs
Both sides of capacity cost money. Turning work away is direct lost revenue plus crew burnout. Carrying technicians below 70% is idle capacity you are already paying for. If you have slack, the problem is not the crew, it is the work coming in. Close the demand leaks you already generate first (answer every call, respond fast), then work on visibility and conversion to fill the schedule before you think about cutting.
What to do with the number
If you are short on capacity, size the hire with the technicians-needed figure and first make sure you are not losing the demand already coming in: the missed-call revenue calculator shows how much work falls through from not answering. The operations page explains how to organize schedule and crew to scale without chaos. Explore the rest of the free tools to size up other parts of the business, and when you want your real numbers on the table, talk to us.