Beta/hfe is going to change some with various operating points, and change radiacally as you approach the non-linear points of saturation and cut-off. Just pick a spot half-way between saturation and cut-off and calculate it there. Don't forget that good circuit design will allow for some pretty radical varations in beta as the circuit parameters will be much larger than affecting transistor parameters. For instance, the gain of a simple common-emitter amplifier should be dependent primarily upon unbypassed emitter resistance and collector resistance while a change in beta from 200 to 300 won't affect the gain. If that weren't true, we'd have to have one or two tweaks in every sub-circuit of a large system that would need adjusted every time a transistor was replaced.