Technician Capacity & Hiring Decision

Verdict

CAPACITY SHORTFALL

519 demand hrs/mo vs 468 sustainable capacity (5 techs × 117 productive hrs × 80% target) — running at 89% raw utilization.

Key figures

FTE gap	0.54
Raw utilization	88.6%
Demand hours / mo	519
Sustainable capacity / mo	468
Months to capacity wall	0
What to do	AUTOMATE FIRST, THEN HIRE
Why	You are short 0.5 FTE, but AI deflection at 25% of routine tickets would return ~95 hrs/mo — run the AI Automation ROI calculator on triage before signing an offer letter.

Assessment

Sustainable capacity reserves headroom on purpose: the gap to 100% is what absorbs escalations, incidents, training, and turnover. Ticket demand is net of AI deflection; hire-vs-automate compares loaded hire cost against automation ROI (cross-link).

Questions for the founder

Which ticket categories drive the volume — and are the top three automatable or eliminable at the source?
Is after-hours coverage inside these hours or a separate rotation?
What is the real recruiting lead time for your market? Start that clock, not the burnout clock.

Assumptions & method

117 productive hrs/tech/month ≈ 1,400/yr ÷ 12 (PTO, training, meetings removed).
Never plan to 100% utilization — 75-85% is the sustainable band*.

Generated by AICost.ai (aicost.msp-technician-capacity), CloudIntelligence.ai LLC. API pricing is sourced vendor-exact from a daily-maintained pricing single source of truth as of 2026-07-20. Values marked with an asterisk are analyst estimates rather than vendor-verified data. This memo is a cost-and-unit-economics analysis prepared for diligence purposes; it is not investment advice, and it does not assess team, market, product or legal risk.