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Freelance Capacity Planner

Forty working hours is not forty billable hours, and a project you agreed to in March is still using up your May. This plans the weeks you actually have, shows which are overbooked, and works out when a new project could realistically start.

Who it is for. Freelancers with more than one live commitment, and anyone who has ever answered “when can you start?” with a guess.

Download this template

Free · No signup · No email · Version 1.0, updated September 2026

The files are generated when the site is built and served as ordinary static downloads. Nothing you type into them is ever sent anywhere — once the file is on your machine it has no connection to Freshlance at all.

What the file looks like

This preview is generated from the same definition the downloads are built from, so what you see here is what opens. The figures below are the file’s own formulas, calculated — switch to formulas to see the arithmetic behind them.

Capacity planner — workbook preview

Your week, as it actually is. Everything else is derived from these.

CAPACITY SETTINGS
Be honest here. A plan built on an optimistic week is not a plan.
YOUR WEEK
Weekly working hours40.00Hours you are at work, not hours you can sell
Target billable %75.0%The share of working time that can be client work
WHAT COMES OUT OF IT
Admin hours per week4.00Invoicing, bookkeeping, email, filing
Sales hours per week2.00Proposals, enquiries, calls that are not billable
Recurring meetings per week1.50Standing calls you cannot move
Buffer %10.0%For everything not on any list. Do not set it to zero.
PLANNING
Working days per week5
First week starting2026-09-21A Monday. Week 1 of the plan below.
Planning horizon (weeks)12
THE RESULT
Base billable capacity30.00Weekly hours × target billable %
Less recurring commitments22.50Base capacity − admin − sales − meetings
ADJUSTED WEEKLY CAPACITY$20.25What is left after the buffer. This is the number the weekly plan is measured against.
Hours per working day4.05Adjusted capacity ÷ working days

Cream cells are yours to type into; grey cells are formulas. This sheet prints landscape.

What is included

  • Capacity after reality

    Weekly hours, a target billable percentage, and explicit deductions for admin, sales and recurring meetings — then a buffer, because the week never goes to plan.

  • Projects with remaining hours

    Estimated minus completed, so a project half done takes up half the room it used to.

  • A twelve-week grid

    Committed hours per week against adjusted capacity, with free capacity, utilisation and overbooked hours calculated for each.

  • A three-state status per week

    AVAILABLE, BUSY, OVERBOOKED — under 80%, up to 100%, and beyond.

  • A new-project planner

    Hours, desired pace and earliest start in; first feasible week, duration and completion date out.

How to use it

Five steps, in the order that keeps the work out of trouble.

  1. 1

    Fill in SETTINGS honestly. The target billable percentage is the one people overstate — if last month was 55%, plan with 55%.

  2. 2

    List every live commitment on PROJECTS, including retainers. A retainer is a fixed number of hours a week even in a quiet month.

  3. 3

    Spread each project’s remaining hours across the weeks on WEEKLY PLAN. This is the one part you do by hand, and it is the part where you find out what you have promised.

  4. 4

    Look for the red weeks. An overbooked week does not fix itself; something moves or something gets descoped.

  5. 5

    Use the NEW PROJECT block before answering “when can you start?” — and quote the date it gives you, not the one you would like to be true.

The worked example

The example plans a 40-hour week at 75% billable, less 4 hours of admin, 2 of sales and 1.5 of recurring meetings, with a 10% buffer — an adjusted capacity of 30 hours. Week 1 commits 24 of them: 6 hours free, 80% utilised, BUSY but not overbooked.

Adjusted weekly capacity
$20.25
Committed, week 1
24.00
Free capacity, week 1
0.00
Utilisation, week 1
118.5%
First feasible week
10
Estimated completion
2026-12-28

Every figure above is read out of the workbook you can download, by evaluating its own formulas. If the file changes, this changes with it — there is no second set of numbers maintained on this page.

What to change

The parts that are deliberately yours to decide.

  • The buffer

    Set at 10%. It absorbs the things that are not on any list — a client emergency, a broken laptop, an hour lost to a support ticket. Setting it to zero is how a plan becomes fiction.

  • Horizon

    Twelve weeks. Long enough to answer a start-date question, short enough to still be roughly true at the far end.

  • Priority

    The column is there so that when a week is overbooked you already know what moves. Filling it in is more useful than it looks.

  • Week starts

    Mondays in the example. Change the first date and fill down; every other formula follows.

About the formats

What differs between the files, and why you might pick one over another.

XLSX
Three sheets with frozen headers, and a weekly plan laid out landscape so twelve weeks fit on one printed page.
ODS
The same three sheets generated for LibreOffice Calc, cross-sheet formulas included.
PDF
Settings, projects and the weekly plan, printed landscape.

Questions

What is a realistic target billable percentage?
Most solo freelancers land between 50% and 70% once admin, sales, learning and unpaid communication are counted. The Billable Hours Calculator works it out from your own week rather than from an average.
Why subtract a buffer as well as admin and meetings?
Because admin and meetings are the interruptions you can name. The buffer covers the ones you cannot, and every week has some.
How does the new-project planner choose a week?
It walks the weekly plan from your earliest start date and picks the first week whose free capacity is at least your desired weekly hours. The formula is on the sheet and you can read it.
Does this replace a project plan?
No. It plans your capacity, not the project’s tasks. It answers when you can work on something, not what you will do in what order.

Download it

Download this template

Free · No signup · No email · Version 1.0, updated September 2026

The files are generated when the site is built and served as ordinary static downloads. Nothing you type into them is ever sent anywhere — once the file is on your machine it has no connection to Freshlance at all.