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Occupancy in Pigeonhole has two halves, and the Track | Plan switch at the top right moves between them. Track is the week you are running. It shows children and staff hour by hour, works out your ratios, and lets you fix a session or a shift on the spot. Plan is the year you are deciding. It takes the same bookings, prices, funding and rota, projects them across the whole academic year, subtracts what your staff and your building cost, and lets you try changes before you make them.
The Track and Plan switch at the top right of the occupancy page

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Which one do I want?

Use Track when somebody is off sick, a parent asks for an extra Wednesday, or you need to prove your ratios held. Use Plan when you are setting fees, costing a pay rise, working out how many places you need to fill by September, or deciding whether a new room pays for itself.

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What the two share

The planner is not a separate set of numbers. It reads the same records as everything else, so a plan and the real booking that follows it agree to the penny:
  • The same bookings — every child’s sessions, days, times and funded hours.
  • The same prices — your price lists and their dates, priced by the code that builds your invoices, including top-ups, extra charges and discounts.
  • The same ratios — set a room’s ratio in one and it changes in the other.
  • The same rota — staff sessions, days, times and rooms.
  • The same calendar — your terms and closure dates.
The planner adds two things nothing else in Pigeonhole records: what your staff cost an hour, and your yearly fixed costs. Both are entered inside the planner and are shared by everyone who plans for the setting.

Planning the year ahead

The occupancy planner: how to read it, and everything you can try in it.

Occupancy heatmap

The tracker’s view modes, colour coding, and how to read occupancy data.

Target ratios

Set staff-to-child ratios for each room, and for different times of day.

Children's schedules

View and edit children’s sessions from the occupancy tracker.

Staff schedules

View and edit staff rotas from the occupancy tracker.

Room moves

Schedule children moving between rooms.

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The tracker: All Rooms vs Per Room

The tracker has two view modes, toggled in the page header.
View toggle buttons in the Occupancy Tracker header

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All Rooms

The default view shows a single aggregate heatmap across all rooms and all children — a quick read on the whole nursery for the selected week. From here you can open Manage Children and Manage Staff for the whole setting.

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Per Room

One card per room, each with:
  • Its own heatmap, scoped to the children and staff in that room
  • Schedule Move — plan a future room move for children in this room
  • Manage Children — the children in this room, with inline session editing
  • Manage Staff — the staff assigned to this room
If any room moves are scheduled out of a room, a banner at the top of that room’s card summarises them.
Per Room is the better starting point when you are planning room transitions or checking one room’s ratios.

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Week selection

The week selector at the top navigates between weeks:
  • Previous / Next week — the arrow buttons move one week at a time.
  • Date picker — click the date range to jump to any week.
Pigeonhole always works out the Monday–Friday week containing the day you pick.

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Frequently asked questions

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Do changes in the planner affect my real bookings?

No. The planner never writes to bookings, the rota or room moves. When you have decided what to do, make the real change in Track (or on the child’s or staff member’s own profile).

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Do changes in the tracker show up in the planner?

Yes, immediately. The planner reads live records, so a session you edit in Track is in the next forecast you run.

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Why can’t my staff see the planner?

It shows every member of staff’s pay and the setting’s whole income, so it is restricted to Admins. The Finance role cannot open it either.