The monthly board numbers
At the start of each month, the finance lead asks each site manager for occupancy and revenue. One reports desks occupied, another reports offices let, a third reports by floor area. One counts offices under notice as occupied, another does not. Someone exports invoices from Xero and tries to match them to sites. The board pack arrives with three definitions of occupancy and a footnote.
The investors ask why one site's occupancy is high but its revenue is flat. Nobody can answer quickly, because the figures were built by hand.
Why occupancy numbers do not agree
Occupancy in flexible workspace is harder to define than it sounds, and every operator has to choose.
| Question | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Desks or offices or area? | Each gives a different percentage |
| Are offices under notice occupied? | Affects forward view |
| Are signed but not started deals counted? | Contracted versus current |
| How are discounts and free months treated? | Revenue per desk looks different |
| Are hot desk members counted? | Flexible plans do not map to desks |
Once these are decided, applying them is mechanical. The problem is that each site decides for itself, every month, in a spreadsheet.
Management agreements and revenue shares with landlords add another layer. The figures a landlord partner receives need to match the figures your board sees, and when both are built by hand from different exports, they rarely do.
What unreliable figures cost
Leadership spends time reconciling numbers rather than acting on them. Investors and lenders see figures that change definition between months. Site managers argue about whose figures are right. And decisions about pricing, sales focus and new sites are made on numbers nobody fully trusts.
Time is lost at the worst moment too. The first week of the month, when the team should be chasing renewals and filling offices, is spent producing a report.
Site managers are often measured on these numbers, which makes the definitions sensitive. If one site counts an office under notice as occupied and another does not, the comparison is unfair, and the conversation about performance turns into a conversation about spreadsheets.
The reporting layer we build
- Your leadership agrees the definitions once: what occupancy means, how notices, signed deals, discounts and flexible plans are treated.
- Inventory, agreements, members and invoices are pulled from your membership platform, such as Nexudus or OfficeRnD, and from Xero or your accounts system, on a schedule.
- Figures are calculated by site: current occupancy, contracted occupancy, forward occupancy for the coming months from notices and signed deals, revenue, and revenue per desk or per square foot.
- Each figure can be opened to show the offices and agreements behind it.
- Checks flag data problems, such as an office marked occupied with no active agreement, or an agreement with no invoice.
- Dashboards in a tool such as Power BI or Looker Studio show the figures by site and over time, and the monthly pack is produced from the same data.
Which definitions to use is your decision. The reporting layer applies them the same way everywhere.
What the first week of the month looks like
The figures are ready at the start of the month, the same way for every site. Questions from investors are answered by opening the figure. Site managers stop producing their own versions. Data problems are fixed in the platform, so the figures get better over time.
The forward view becomes the most useful part. Seeing which offices come free over the next three months, by site, gives sales a clear list to work on well before those offices are empty.
Is this your monthly report?
- Each site reports occupancy differently.
- Monthly figures take days to produce.
- Occupancy and revenue do not reconcile.
- You cannot see forward occupancy from notices and signed deals.
- Investors question changes in definitions.