Ticket SLA Calculator: Work Out the Real Due Time, in Business Hours

How it is done today

Most small service firms sign contracts with response and resolution commitments, then measure them in whatever way is easiest at month end. Usually that means counting calendar hours between two timestamps, which produces breaches for tickets raised on Saturday night and clean sheets for tickets that sat all Wednesday.

The calculator does one thing: it converts a target duration into an actual clock time on a specific date, using the working calendar that was agreed. Once that number exists on the ticket, everything else becomes possible, including warning somebody before it passes.

One row per ticket, with the calendar and targets inherited from the client contract.

• Ticket reference and client — linking to the contract that carries the targets.
• Channel and arrival timestamp — when the request reached you, whichever channel it used.
• Priority — from the impact and urgency matrix, not from adjectives in the message.
• Working calendar — days, hours and the holiday list applicable to that client.
• Response target and resolution target — durations by priority, taken from the agreement.
• Response due and resolution due — the calculated clock times, displayed on the ticket.
• First response actual — the timestamp of the first substantive human reply.
• Pause periods — start, end and reason for each hold.
• Total paused minutes — the figure subtracted before any comparison.
• Resolution actual — when the fix was confirmed, not when the ticket was closed.
• Breach flags and reason — separate flags for response and resolution, with a reason from a fixed list.
• Owner — the person the escalation reaches before the due time.

Illustrative example only. The times below assume working hours of nine to six, Monday to Saturday, and are invented to show how the due times are derived.

Note the second and last rows. Both arrived outside working hours, so the clock starts at the next working minute rather than on arrival.

A team handling a handful of tickets a day can calculate due times by hand. Past that, the arithmetic is not the problem; the reminder is. Nobody breaches an SLA they were told about twenty minutes beforehand.

In a CRM the due time is computed when the ticket is created, the escalation fires ahead of it, and the client account accumulates its own SLA record. When the renewal comes round, service performance and contract value sit on the same screen instead of in two systems with different definitions.

Measuring in calendar hours. It punishes weekend arrivals and flatters weekday neglect.

Starting the clock at assignment.The customer's clock starts when they send the message.

Unstructured pauses. If the reason is free text, waiting on customer becomes an unfalsifiable excuse.

Closing as resolved to stop the clock. Record resolution when the fix is confirmed, and keep the reopen count visible.

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