The Occupancy Planner

The occupancy planner takes everything Pigeonhole already knows — every booking, price, funding rate, closure and shift — projects it across the academic year, subtracts what your staff and your building cost, and tells you what the year makes. Then it lets you argue with it. Add a child, move children up early, give everyone a pay rise, put your prices up, take a family away: each change is priced over the year, on its own and alongside the others, and nothing real is touched until you decide to act.

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Start here

Five things nursery managers use it for, each worked through end to end:

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Before you start

The planner works from your real records. For a true profit figure it needs two things nothing else in Pigeonhole records, and it tells you which are missing:

1. What staff cost. Press Adjust on the Staff card and enter your average hourly pay and on-costs, and say how you pay for holiday. You can also give individual staff their own rate.
2. Your fixed costs. Press Adjust on the Fixed costs card: rent, the manager’s salary if they are not on the rota, food, utilities and insurance, as yearly amounts.

Until you enter a staff cost, the planner uses £12.50 an hour so you still see a figure. Leave a fixed cost on Whole setting, or give it a room when only that room has it, such as air conditioning or baby-room equipment. A room’s own costs come off that room’s figures as well as the year’s profit.

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How you pay for holiday

Under the rates, Holiday pay decides how the weeks you are shut are costed. There are two ways to run it, and the planner has to know which is yours, because counting both would charge holiday twice:

• Paid through the closures — how salaried staff are paid. They are paid the weeks the setting is shut, so those weeks are a cost with no income against them. Their holiday is already in that figure, so leave holiday out of the on-costs: put in employer NI and pension only.
• Rolled up into the hourly rate — how most term-time-only settings run it. Staff are paid only for the days they work, and the holiday is a percentage on top of their rate. 12.07% is the statutory figure (5.6 weeks’ leave over the 46.4 weeks it accrues across). On-costs apply on top of it, because employer NI and pension are due on holiday pay as well.

A term-time-only setting starts on rolled up; everywhere else starts on paid through the closures. Either way, a term-time-only setting costs nobody outside its terms.

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Ratios and places

Each room’s staff ratio is shown beside its name. Click it to change it: one ratio for the whole day, or different ratios for different times. It is the same ratio the occupancy tracker uses, so changing it in one place changes it in both. A ratio marked not set means nothing has been saved for the room or the site, so 1:8 is being used. Places are optional. If a room has a limit on how many children it can take, set it on Settings → Rooms. If you don’t divide children into rooms, the planner shows a single Whole setting row with everyone in it. Everything else works the same, and the change forms don’t ask which room — there is only one.

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How children move rooms

On Settings → Rooms, choose when children move up. The rule applies to the whole setting:

• Each September — everyone who has reached a room’s move-on age by 31 August moves on 1 September.
• On their birthday — each child moves on the first of the month after they reach the age.
• Only when I schedule it — the planner only uses the moves you schedule in Track.

Then edit each room and set Children move on at and They move to. For example, Babies move on at 2 years to Toddlers. Rooms without a move-on age keep their children. If children split between rooms, tick more than one under They move to. With one baby room and two toddler rooms, tick both and the planner shares each September’s group between them — by places if every room you tick has places set, evenly otherwise, and in age order so each room gets a similar mix. Children leave for school at the end of the August after they turn four, unless they have their own leaving date.

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Reading the year

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The five figures

The top of the page shows the year in five figures: From families, From council, Staff, Fixed costs and Profit for the year. When you have planned changes, each also shows how far it has moved from the current position. Under From families you’ll see what it is made of: private hours, top-ups, extras and discounts. Under From council, the funded hours in each age band at that band’s rate. Lines worth nothing are left out. This year or next year is the switch at the top left. Next year is not simply a different set of dates: it starts from the roll you would have after the September moves, so the children have gone up a room and this year’s school leavers have gone. It is the quickest way to see the gap you will be filling.

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The year strip

Below that, each room has a row across the twelve months.

• Months shows the busiest day in each month: the most children in the room at once.
• Free places shows how many more children the room could take. The limit is the lower of the room’s places and what the staff on the rota allow at its ratio.
• Weeks shows every week of the year, Monday to Friday, shaded from emptier to fuller, with closures hatched. Click any month to jump to its weeks.

Hover a month for the detail: the busiest day, what is capping the room, each weekday, and how many children are booked in. An amber warning means there aren’t enough adults on the rota for the room’s ratio at some point that month; adding staff fixes it. Red means more children than the room’s places, which more staff can’t fix.

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Moves, leavers and the month-by-month picture

Under the rooms, Room moves and leavers lists who moves room and when, who is already booked to start, and who leaves for school. Click a row to see the children’s names. Income and costs by month puts money in against money out for each month, with that month’s profit underneath. Use Show table for the figures.

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Planning changes

Every figure at the top has an Adjust button that changes what it is made of. From families also has Prices. Staff opens what staff cost and lets you try a pay rise; Fixed costs opens your yearly costs. Each is its own dialog, so you only see the figures you came to change. Click Adjust on a room, or on the From families card and then pick the room, to plan one of four changes:

• Add children — one child at a time, with a name, their date of birth, start date, their week of sessions, discounts and extra charges. It starts from the week most children in that room already have.
• Add staff — one adult at a time, with a name, which days and hours they work, when they start and leave, and their hourly pay if it differs from your average.
• Move children — move the eldest children to another room earlier or later than the rule would.
• Schedule Leaver — pick a child you already have and see what the year loses without them.

Add children and Add staff both ask for a name rather than a number. One change is one person: when they are really booked in or really on the rota, the name is how you know which change to take out.

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A child’s week

Every field marked * has to be answered before Add to plan will do anything. Give them a name you’ll recognise, like “Sibling for Ava”, and their date of birth. The date of birth is what decides their council funding band in each term, when they’d move up a room, and when they’d leave for school — all of which move as the year goes on, which is why the planner asks for the date rather than an age. Build the week the way you would book it. Each session has its own row: choose the session and its price, then the days. For a child who comes on a Monday morning and a Thursday full day, add two rows. It is still one child. Funded hours belong to a session, not to the child, because which session they sit on changes what the family pays. Each row takes none, 15, 30 or any amount up to 30, and the total across the rows can’t be more than 30. The planner spreads a row’s hours over the days it books, never more in a day than the session is long. Each day shows what the family pays for it, worked out as your invoices do:

• Per hour — funded hours replace private ones. An 8-hour day with 5 funded hours at £8 an hour and a £2 top-up is 3 × £8 + 5 × £2 = £34.
• Flat rate — the session price, whatever the funded hours. A top-up is added only if that price list has one and the day has funded hours.

So funded hours are worth more on an hourly session than a flat-rate one: on a flat rate they take nothing off the fee, though the council still pays for them either way. Choose whether funded hours apply every week (stretched) or in term weeks only, when holiday weeks are charged in full. Attends term time only is there for a setting that is open all year and has some children who only come in term. If your whole setting runs term time only, there is nothing to ask and the switch doesn’t appear: every planned child attends in term weeks, like everyone else. Before you add it, the panel shows what the change is worth over the year, split between families and the council — and warns you if it would put the room over its places or short of staff.

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Your changes

Each change appears under its room as a sentence with its value. Above the year strip, a bar says what your changes are worth between them and carries a button with the number of them on it: click it to read the lot. Inside, Edit opens a change with its details filled in, and × removes it. Save and Reset stay on the bar, so you can keep or drop everything without opening the list. Pay rises and price changes belong to no one room, so they have no Edit: take one out and add it again from its own card. Each change’s figure is what that change on its own is worth, so the changes in a plan add up to the total at the top. Where two overlap — a price rise and a child you have planned on that price list — the child’s line carries their whole income at the planned price, and the rise’s line counts only the children who were already here.

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Trying a pay rise

On the Staff card’s Adjust, under Plan a pay rise, choose how much more an hour, from when, and whether it is everyone or particular staff. The planner costs it for the rest of the year, on-costs included. Add as many as you like and they stack, so “everyone from March, and these two from November” works the way you would say it. Nobody’s pay changes: this is a plan, not a payroll.

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Trying a price change

Prices on the From families card puts a price list up or down from a date, and shows what the year does. Move the private rate, the top-up, or both. It applies to everyone on that price list — the children already here as much as any you have planned — because that is what putting your prices up does. Price changes you have already entered in Settings need no planning: the forecast prices every day at the price in force that day, so a rise you set up for January is in the figures from January. A cut can take a price down to nothing but not below it — the planner says so rather than forecasting a price you could never charge.

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Fixing a staffing shortfall

When a room is short of staff, the planner works out the smallest extra rota that would fix it — the days, the hours, the number of adults — and what it would cost. Add staff puts exactly that in your plan.

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Saving plans

Click Save plan and give it a name, for example “Open Fridays in Caterpillars”. Everyone who manages the setting can open saved plans from the Plan list. Once a plan is saved, the changes bar is named after it and shows what you have done since. Anything added is marked Added since saving, anything edited is marked Edited since saving, and anything taken out stays in the list struck through with Put back next to it. Save keeps the lot; Reset puts the plan back as it was saved. Both ask first. On a plan you haven’t saved yet there is only Reset, which takes every change out and returns you to the current position. Saved plans are shared, so two people can have the same one open. If somebody else saves while you are working, your Save is refused rather than writing over their work: open the plan again to see what they did, then make your changes. Leaving the planner with changes you haven’t saved asks first — nothing in a plan is kept until you save it.

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What’s in the numbers

• Family income is priced by the same code that builds your invoices: session prices, top-ups, extra charges and discounts. It takes closures and term-time-only children into account.
• Council income is funded hours at your funding rates, for each child’s age band at the start of each term. If next year’s rates aren’t set yet, the planner uses the most recent year’s and tells you.
• Staff are costed from the rota at their hourly pay plus on-costs. Whether the weeks you are shut are paid for depends on the Holiday pay setting above.
• Fixed costs are spread evenly over the twelve months. A room’s own costs also come off that room’s earnings.
• Not included: registration fees and deposits, one-off invoice adjustments, and staff sickness and cover.

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FAQ