See next September before it arrives

Every nursery loses its oldest children each August and has to refill from the bottom. The question is how much of a hole that leaves, and how early you have to start filling it. The planner answers it in one click, because it knows every child’s date of birth, every room’s move-on age and every leaving date you have entered.

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Step 1: Look at this year first

Open the planner and leave it on This year. This is your baseline: what the year makes if nothing changes.

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Step 2: See who is leaving, and when

Scroll to Room moves and leavers. It is the story of your year in a dozen lines. Each row is a real event:

• New child starts (already booked) — children whose start date falls inside the year. They are already in the figures from the month they arrive.
• Child leaves (leaving date set) — a family who has given notice. Also already in the figures.
• Children leave for school — the end of August after they turn four, unless they have their own leaving date. Click the row to see their names.
• Move Toddlers → Pre-school, move Babies → Toddlers — the September moves, worked out from each child’s age and each room’s move-on age.

In this example, twelve children leave for school on 31 August, ten toddlers move up to take their places, and seven babies move up behind them. Which means the baby room empties completely.

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Step 3: Switch to next year

Click Next year. This is not just a different set of dates — the planner starts from the roll you would have after the September moves, with this year’s school leavers gone. Read it row by row:

• Babies: 0 children, every month. Everyone moved up and nobody has been booked in behind them. The room still costs £70,218 in staff and £1,800 in its own costs, so it loses £72,018.
• Pre-school: 9 children — this year’s toddlers, moved up. It was 12.
• Toddlers: 6 — this year’s babies. It was 9.
• Profit: −£100,169. The income halves; the staff and the building cost the same.

That figure is not a prediction of disaster. It is the size of the job: this is what you have to fill between now and September, and you are seeing it a year early.

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Step 4: Work out what closes the gap

Now start planning against it. Each room’s Adjust button adds children to that room, and every change is priced on its own so you can see what each one is worth. The natural order is bottom-up, because that is how a nursery refills:

1. Fill the baby room, which is empty and is where new families arrive. See filling the gaps from your waiting list.
2. Check the rooms above it — the moves have already put children there, but not as many as left.
3. Watch the staffing, because filling a room past what the rota covers creates a shortfall the planner will flag. See staffing the year you have planned.

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Step 5: Save what you decide

Save the plan with a name that says what it assumes — “Next year, if we fill Babies by September”. Come back to it as real bookings arrive: each child who is really booked appears in the baseline, and you take their planned stand-in out of the plan. The name you gave the planned child is how you know which one to remove.

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Things worth knowing

• Council income falls further than family income. Your school leavers are three- and four-year-olds carrying 15 or 30 funded hours each; the babies replacing them carry none. In this example council income drops from £89,350 to £14,967.
• Funded hours come from the booking, not from the child’s age. A two-year-old who will become eligible next year still shows today’s hours, so next year’s council income reads low until the booking is updated. Add the extra hours as a planned child to see what they would be worth.
• Next year’s funding rates may not exist yet. If they haven’t been set, the planner uses the most recent year’s and tells you, with a link to Settings → Funding.
• The year runs 1 September to 31 August, so “31 Aug” events land on the last day of the year you are looking at, and “1 Sep” moves belong to the year after.