Entering billable hours revenue streams

Chris Iacofano

May 02, 2025 20:54

If your business offers services charged on an hourly basis, the Billable Hours revenue stream model in LivePlan is an ideal choice for forecasting. This model is commonly used in various fields, such as legal services, counseling, personal training, and music lessons, where clients are billed based on the time spent providing the service. Additional examples include fields like consulting, tutoring, IT support, event planning, and therapy.

Billable hours are also frequently used by professionals who operate their own businesses while subcontracting or freelancing for other companies. For instance, an independent web developer might take on individual client projects while also contracting with larger agencies, billing both for the hours worked. Similarly, a photographer might charge clients for hourly shoots but also work on a freelance basis for event companies. Any situation where your business provides service and where time is the primary factor for pricing is a good fit for the billable hours revenue stream.

Adding a billable hours revenue stream

In the Forecast Overview, select Revenue:
Enter a name for your unit sales revenue stream, then click Add Details:
Next, choose Billable hours for the revenue stream type:
Indicate how many billable hours you'll have for this revenue stream. This can either be a constant amount per month or year or varying amounts.

If you chose Constant amount, enter the number of hours you estimate to bill per month or year and when that revenue starts:
If you choose Varying amounts over time, enter the number of billable hours you forecast for any months you prefer. Then click Next:

Finally, indicate how much you will charge per hour for this service. This can be either a constant rate or one that varies over time (as in seasonal pricing):

Click Create & Exit.
create and exit.png

Editing or deleting a revenue stream

To edit an existing revenue stream:

To edit an item that you have already entered in the forecast (such as a revenue stream, expense, or asset), first navigate to the Forecast Overview. Next, click on the section that contains the entry you wish to edit.

forecast overview screen with forecast pages highlighted.png
Find the table of your entries at the bottom of the page, then click on the green title of the item you want to update.

You can edit any part of your entry. Click Save & Exit when you're done:

To discard changes, click on the back arrow in the upper-left corner of the editor window:
Discard changes revenue editor.png
Confirm

discard unsaved changes.png

Note: In certain tables, such as the Personnel and Financing tables, you may need to click the triangle icons to expand the lines so you can access the editable entries, as shown below:

financing table detail with arrow pointing to expand.png

To delete a revenue stream:

Forecast items can be deleted from two different places: from the forecast table or list, or from within the editor overlay when viewing a single forecast item.

In the forecast: Click on the action menu (three vertical dots) to the right of the forecast item and select Delete:
In the editor: Click the More actions dropdown near the top-right of the forecast editor and select Delete: