Allied health practice economics
What does an hour actually need to earn?
Put in your own numbers and watch the floor price move. This is the price a billable hour has to clear before you make a cent, and the price you should charge once margin is added. Tap any i for what a figure means and where to find it.
The clinician
Their wage plus the on-costs you carry on top.
The cash salary before super, from the employee's contract or your payroll in Xero. For an hourly employee, multiply their rate by contracted hours.
Superannuation guarantee is 12% from 1 July 2025. Use a higher figure only if an award or contract sets one.
From your WorkCover Queensland renewal notice. It is set by your industry classification and is usually well under 1% for allied health.
Only payable once your total Australian wages pass $1.3m a year (QLD). Grouped entities, service trusts and some contractor payments count toward that, so check before assuming you are under it.
The QLD base rate is 4.75%. Regional employers may get a 1% discount. Applied here to salary plus super, which is the QLD wage base.
Their time
You pay for the whole year. They only earn in the weeks they are in, at the share of the day spent treating.
Ordinary contracted hours, for example 38 for full time. Not appointments, the total hours you pay for.
The share of available time spent in attended appointments, from your practice software's utilisation or productivity report. Around 75% is a common target for clinicians.
Standard full-time annual leave is 4 weeks. This is funded by the weeks they are working, so it lifts the price of each billable hour.
Around 2 weeks covers QLD public holidays plus a realistic amount of personal or sick leave actually taken across the year.
The practice
Everything that earns no billable hours of its own gets carried by the clinicians who do.
From your profit and loss in Xero. Take total operating expenses for the year, then remove the treating clinicians' own wages and super, which are already counted above. Leave in reception and admin pay, practice manager or owner management time, rent, software, equipment, marketing, insurances and utilities.
How many fee-earning clinicians share the overhead. Count a working owner by their treating time only, and keep their management time in opex above.
Fees actually banked divided by fees billed, from your software or P&L. It accounts for write-offs, bad debts and unpaid gaps. If unsure, 97% is a reasonable starting point.
The net profit you want left after every cost is paid. Set it to what the practice needs to fund growth and reward ownership, commonly 15 to 25%.
Charge this per billable hour
Break-even plus your target margin.
per hour of treating time
Break-even is $0 an hour. Below that you lose money on this clinician.
- Clinician, working weeks$0
- Funding their leave and non-working weeks$0
- Share of practice opex$0
- Buffer for unbanked fees$0
- Your margin$0
30 min
$0
45 min
$0
60 min
$0
Break-even billings per week
$0
Target billable hours a week
0
Fully loaded cost a year
$0
Billable hours a year
0
Figures are a planning model, not advice. Weekly break-even is the clinician's loaded cost plus their opex share, grossed up for collection, before any margin. If clinicians are contractors rather than employees the cost build differs: no super or leave funded by you, but contractor payments can still attract payroll tax and carry engagement-classification risk worth checking.
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