Free tool
What is the work you finished and never invoiced worth?
On the figures below, a general contractor with 12 field staff losing 2 hours each a week to work that never reaches an invoice is paying $54,000 a year for work it never billed. Change any of it. The arithmetic is shown in full.
Wage plus payroll taxes, insurance, and vehicle. Change it to your real number.
You almost certainly cannot answer this, and that is the point. Move it and see what each answer would be worth.
Work you paid for and never billed
$54,000
a year
Here is the whole calculation
12 field staff
× 2 hours a week
× 50 weeks
× $45 an hour
= $54,000
No industry benchmark, no assumed rate of loss. Every figure above is one you chose.
Why this number is so hard to get
Unbilled work is not hidden by anyone. It is simply never recorded, because the moment it happens there is nothing to record it into. A change made in the field lives in a text message. An extra hour lives in a crew lead’s memory. A return visit looks like a normal day’s schedule. By the time the invoice is built, from the estimate rather than from what actually happened, the difference has already disappeared.
That is why the middle input on this page is a slider rather than a box. Every other figure here is something you know. That one is the thing your business cannot currently tell you, and the size of the number attached to it is the whole argument.
Getting a real figure instead of a guess means connecting the things that already know pieces of the answer: whatever holds hours, whatever holds the schedule, whatever holds the invoice. Once those meet, the number stops being a slider and starts being a report.
Questions about this tool
How is the number calculated?
- People, multiplied by hours a week that never reach an invoice, multiplied by working weeks a year, multiplied by what an hour of their time costs you loaded. Nothing else. There is no industry benchmark and no assumed rate of loss behind it.
I do not know how many hours go unbilled. What should I put?
- Nobody knows that number, which is the reason the tool is a slider rather than a form. Start at one hour and move it. If the answer is large at every setting, the size of the leak matters less than the fact that you cannot currently measure it.
What counts as unbilled work?
- Work that was done and paid for in wages but never turned into revenue. A change made in the field and never written up, a return visit to fix something, a service call absorbed into a maintenance agreement, an extra hour on site that never made it onto the ticket.
What should I use for loaded hourly cost?
- Wage plus payroll taxes, insurance, and vehicle. For most trades it lands well above the hourly wage. If you are not sure, use your wage figure and treat the result as conservative.
Is this an estimate of what OndeWork would save me?
- No. It is arithmetic on figures you entered, not a projection and not a claim about results. It shows what the unknown is worth, which is a different thing from promising to recover it.
Do I have to give an email address to see the result?
- No. There is no form, no gate, and nothing to sign up for. The result is in the page and in the URL, so you can share it.
More on where this shows up for a general contractor: General contractors.
Want the real number instead of the slider?
Pick the three you recognize. We’ll come back with what they cost, in dollars. No sales call, no sequence.
Would rather just talk? Text us, hello@ondework.com, or the contact form.