Measuring staff utilisation honestly
How an accounting firm should measure staff utilisation, what goes into the figure in Achekam's time reports, and how partners should read it fairly.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Accountants & audit firms in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
Utilisation is the number partners ask for and staff dread. Partners want to know whether the firm's people are spending their time on work clients pay for. Staff suspect the figure will be used to rank them, and that the colleague who rushes and books generously will look better than the one who is careful and honest.
Both are right to care. A utilisation figure, read well, tells a firm whether it has the right number of people, whether work is spread fairly and whether internal tasks are swallowing client time. Read badly, it rewards padding and punishes the people who train juniors and run the firm's systems.
Chargeable, non-chargeable and available hours
Utilisation compares two quantities over a period:
- Chargeable hours: time recorded on client work.
- Available hours: the time the person could have worked, usually their contracted hours less leave and public holidays.
Everything else a person records is non-chargeable: training, administration, business development, supervision, quality work. Utilisation is chargeable hours as a share of available hours.
Three cautions before anyone looks at a figure:
- It depends on what is recorded. If non-chargeable time is not recorded, the denominator is guesswork and the figure means little. Firms that do not record internal time should start there; recording non-chargeable time explains how.
- Targets differ by role. A trainee, a manager and a partner should not be measured against the same expectation. Managers spend real time reviewing and coaching; partners spend it on clients and the firm.
- Chargeable is not the same as billed. A person can be highly utilised on work that is later written off. Utilisation measures effort on clients, not value to the firm.
The time reports and their exports
Under WORK & DELIVERY > Time Reports, Achekam offers ten reports for a chosen period, among them staff time, engagement time and utilisation. Each can be exported as CSV, XLSX or PDF, so partners can take the figures into their own analysis or a meeting pack.
Use the reports together rather than reading utilisation alone:
| Report | What it adds to the utilisation figure |
|---|---|
| Utilisation | The headline share of time on client work |
| Staff time | Where each person's hours actually went |
| Engagement time | Which clients absorbed the time |
A low figure with a staff time report showing heavy supervision and training is a different story from a low figure with little recorded at all.
Never based on keyboard or mouse counts
Achekam records a person's working time automatically while they work on a client, engagement or work item, using only counts of key presses, clicks and scrolling, and never the keys typed. Capture is on by default and can be switched off under Settings > Time & presence. Captured time reaches the timesheet only when the person confirms it, by default.
Utilisation is never based on keyboard or mouse activity. It comes from the time on the timesheet. That matters for how staff feel about the figure: it measures the time they recorded and confirmed, not how busily they moved a mouse. Say this to staff plainly when you introduce the reports, because the fear that activity counts drive the figure is common and corrosive.
The Team Activity page follows the same principle. It shows each person's recorded and captured time against their working hours and the work due on them next, stated as facts about the work and not as a judgement of the person. Leaders can ask for an AI reading of it that may only rank and explain the report's own facts; findings about a person's character or effort are dropped. More is in the team activity report.
What partners should read from it
Utilisation is most useful at the level of the firm and the team, and over months rather than weeks.
- Firm-wide utilisation falling over several months suggests too many people for the work, or too much internal work. Both deserve a conversation.
- One team much higher than others suggests overload. High utilisation for long periods is a warning about burnout and quality, not a reason for praise.
- One person persistently low is a question, not a verdict. They may be carrying internal work, waiting for client records, or between engagements because of how work was allocated.
- Seasonal swings are normal. Compare the same months year on year rather than adjacent months.
Pair the figure with forward planning. Under WORK & DELIVERY > Capacity / Resource Planner, a people-by-weeks plan shows capacity, and a week with no capacity recorded shows as "not set". Low utilisation last month and many "not set" weeks next month often have the same cause: nobody is planning that person's time. See planning staff capacity week by week.
Utilisation alongside quality
A firm that manages by utilisation alone will get exactly what it measures: more hours on clients, booked more generously, with less time for review, training and consultation. The work suffers in ways the figure does not show.
So read it beside quality signals: review notes raised and cleared, work returned at review, findings from file reviews. A team with high utilisation and rising review problems is going too fast. The IAASB's description of ISQM 1 explains that audit and review firms must design, implement and operate a system of quality management tailored to the firm and its engagements, and how a firm uses its people is part of the picture.
Ground rules worth writing down
- Utilisation is reported by team and firm first, person second.
- Targets are set by role, and agreed with the people they apply to.
- Nobody is judged on a single month.
- Internal work recorded honestly is never held against anyone.
- The figure is always read with capacity and quality alongside it.
Agree those ground rules with the partners before the first report goes round, and share them with staff the same day the figures do.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
