Waste time is any hour you pay a wage for that never reaches an invoice: driving, queuing at the wholesaler, standing on a site that isn’t ready, redoing work, quoting jobs you never win. The fix isn’t flogging the crew harder on the day. It’s recognising the hours up front and building them into the rate you quote, because once a paid hour goes unbilled, that money is gone.
That’s the argument in a business column published by trade title Electrical Connection, which tells contractors that “Every hour you turn from waste to invoiced can add back over $100 to your profit.” The column doesn’t show where the $100 comes from, and no source is given, so treat it as the writer’s rule of thumb rather than a benchmark. The underlying point stands up better than the number does.
The percentage your hourly rate is really built on
Job-costing tools for electrical businesses assume a big chunk of the paid day is never billed. The Housecall Pro electrical labour rate calculator uses 30% billable efficiency as its conservative baseline and treats 50% as highly efficient.
Sit with that for a second. At 30%, an eight-hour paid day produces a touch under two and a half billable hours. Every other hour is being carried by the rate you charge on those two and a half.
The same guide sets out why that matters to pricing: your overhead rate is total annual overhead divided by total billable hours. Shrink the billable hours and the cost you have to recover on each one goes up. Grow them and the same overhead spreads thinner, which is where the margin comes from.
So the money isn’t found by inventing extra hours in the day. It’s found in the split between hours you sell and hours you absorb, and in whether your quoted rate was ever built on an honest split in the first place.
Getting, doing, managing
The column breaks the job into three pillars. Getting is the work coming in the door: “You must have a strong focus on continuing to get new and repeat incoming work regularly to avoid gaps in workflow.” Gaps are pure waste time, because the wages still run.
Doing is having systems so the work actually gets done in a timely way. Managing is the one most small shops skimp on: “You must make sure all the work is completed on time and within the time allowed.”
That last line covers the quiet profit killer, which is rework. An hour spent going back to fix something is an hour paid twice and billed once, and it usually drags a second trade or a client callback along with it.
”Failing to plan is planning to fail”
The column’s blunt line on scheduling is “Failing to plan is planning to fail”, and it’s followed by an admission most contractors will recognise: plans get blown up at the last minute anyway.
Its answer is to plan regardless. “Keep ahead of the game, get the right order mix, organise early, plan in advance and schedule to suit your resources.”
On the tools that translates into unglamorous stuff. Kitting jobs the night before so the van isn’t parked at the wholesaler at 7am. Confirming site access and predecessor trades before the crew rolls. Grouping jobs by suburb so a day isn’t half spent on the ring road. Deciding which quotes you’ll chase rather than pricing everything that moves.
Is it a market problem or a business problem?
There’s a comfortable story in the trade that time pressure is all demand-driven, and it doesn’t entirely hold. The Housing Industry Association’s late-2025 trades availability tracking found electrical trades sitting close to equilibrium nationally, at plus 0.02, while bricklaying, tiling, carpentry and roofing recorded genuine shortages. The HIA report suggests the squeeze on a lot of electrical businesses is coming from how the week is run, not from a shortage of sparkies.
Longer term is a different picture. Powering Skills Organisation projects Australia will be short 17,400 electrical and energy workers by 2030, ABC News reported in March 2025, with Master Electricians Australia pointing to an electrical apprenticeship completion rate of around 60% as part of the problem.
If that gap arrives, the businesses that already know their billable percentage will be the ones able to price it. The ones guessing will just be busier and no better off.
What to do on Monday
Start with a fortnight of honest timesheets, split into hours you invoiced and hours you didn’t, with a reason code on the wasted ones. Travel, parts runs, waiting, rework, quoting. Most operators are surprised by which column is fattest.
Then check what you actually charge against our guide to how much electricians charge per hour in Australia. A 2026 pricing survey by Built Simple benchmarked licensed residential and commercial electrical work at $90 to $140 an hour in metro areas, ex-GST. If your number sits in that band but was set on the assumption that most of the day gets billed, the band isn’t the problem. The assumption is.
The fortnight of data is the bit worth doing. Everything else in the column is advice you’ve heard before, and it only turns into money once you know what your own waste hours are actually costing you.
Frequently asked questions
What percentage of a paid day should be billable for an electrical business?
The Housecall Pro electrical labour rate calculator uses 30% billable efficiency as a conservative baseline and treats 50% as highly efficient.
What do Australian electricians typically charge per hour?
A 2026 pricing survey by Built Simple benchmarked licensed residential and commercial electrical work at $90 to $140 an hour in metro areas, ex-GST.
Is there actually an electrician shortage in Australia right now?
Not nationally, according to the HIA’s late-2025 tracking, which found electrical trades close to equilibrium at plus 0.02, unlike bricklaying, tiling, carpentry and roofing. Longer term, Powering Skills Organisation projects a shortfall of 17,400 electrical and energy workers by 2030.
How do you work out an overhead rate?
It’s total annual overhead divided by total billable hours. Fewer billable hours means each one has to carry more of the cost, which is why tracking your real billable percentage matters.
Sourced from Electrical Connection, Housing Industry Association, ABC News, Housecall Pro. Original article.
