Updated · Built and checked by the PlinzoTools team, formulas tested against published sources
Track hours remaining and projected finish date against an estimate.
60.0%
This calculator compares hours already logged against a project's total time estimate, showing hours remaining, percent complete, and a projected number of days left at a stated daily pace -- a quick progress check for freelance or internal project work billed or tracked by the hour.
Enter your total estimated hours, hours logged so far, and your available hours per day. The result shows hours remaining, percent complete, and estimated days left.
Hours remaining = max(0, estimated hours - hours logged). Percent complete = (hours logged / estimated hours) x 100, capped at 100%. Days remaining = ceil(hours remaining / hours per day).
100 estimated hours, 60 logged, 6 hours/day available: 40 hours remaining, ~7 days left (60% complete).
To convert logged hours into an invoice amount, see the Billable Hours Calculator.
Suppose a design project is estimated at 80 hours, 50 hours are logged, and you can devote 4 hours per day. Hours remaining are 30, percent complete is 62.5, and days remaining are 30 divided by 4, 7.5, rounded up to 8. The tool rounds days up, since half a day of work still needs a day on the calendar. Now suppose 95 hours are logged against the same 80 estimate: hours remaining shows 0, percent complete is capped at 100, and the over-budget flag is raised. The overrun amount is not shown, so subtract the estimate from the logged hours yourself (15 hours here). All numbers are hypothetical.
Percent complete here means hours used divided by hours estimated. It measures budget consumption, not finished work. If the first 50 hours went into the easy parts and the difficult work remains, the project may be far less than 62.5 percent done. A more honest reading combines this figure with your own judgment of scope finished: if hours used is 80 percent of the estimate but only half the deliverables are complete, you are heading for an overrun and should re-estimate or renegotiate now.
The days-remaining number is only as credible as the daily pace you enter. Being available eight hours a day does not mean eight productive hours on this one project, since meetings, other clients, and interruptions all take time. Look at your logged hours over recent weeks and divide by the number of days you worked to find a real average. Then enter that number, not an aspirational one.
The tool gives a number of days, not a calendar date. Because it assumes you work every day, count forward on a calendar from today, or use a deadline or business day tool to skip weekends. For example, 8 working days from a Monday lands on the Wednesday of the following week when weekends are skipped.
It does not track cost, only time, and it does not model scope changes. If the client adds work, update the estimated hours to the new total rather than leaving the original. It also has no idea about hourly rates, so for the money side see an invoicing or billable hours tool. For fixed-fee projects, comparing hours used to the estimate is a quick way to see whether your effective hourly rate is shrinking.
It means hours logged already exceed the original estimate -- the tool flags this clearly rather than showing a misleading negative "hours remaining" figure.
No -- "days remaining" assumes you work every day at the stated hours-per-day pace; adjust the hours-per-day figure downward to roughly account for non-working days.
No -- it's capped at 100% even if logged hours exceed the estimate, since "over budget" is the more useful signal at that point.
The tool flags an overrun but caps hours remaining at zero. Subtract the estimated hours from the hours logged to get the size of the overrun.
Any leftover fraction of a day still requires part of another working day, so the tool uses the next whole number to avoid underestimating.
Yes. Enter the revised total hours so percent complete and hours remaining reflect the current scope rather than the original plan.
Reference: U.S. Department of Labor