'We're pretty much full'
Ask most nursery owners how full they are and they give one number. It usually comes from a rough count, or from the nursery software's summary. It sounds healthy. But walk round on a Friday afternoon and the pre-school room has a handful of children with the same number of staff it had on Tuesday, and the baby room has had a waiting list for months.
The one number averages away everything useful. The empty Friday afternoons, the full Tuesdays with families turned away, the room that will drop sharply in September when the older children leave for school: none of it shows in a single occupancy figure.
Why the averages hide the gaps
Occupancy in a nursery is really a grid: rooms down one side, sessions across the other, for each week of the year. Most tools report one cell of that grid, the total.
- Parents prefer the start and middle of the week, so Fridays run light in most settings.
- Morning and afternoon sessions fill differently, and full days blur the picture.
- Each room has its own capacity and its own demand, set by the age of children it takes.
- Future occupancy changes as children move up rooms or leave, which a snapshot does not show.
- Funded-only children fill sessions in a different pattern from fee-paying ones.
Without the grid, you cannot tell whether you need more families or just families who want different days.
What the hidden gaps cost
An empty place in a staffed session is lost income that can never be sold later. Staffing to the busy days and carrying it through the quiet ones is costly. Marketing tends to be general ('places available!') when what you actually have is Thursday and Friday afternoons in pre-school, which is a different message to a different set of parents.
Meanwhile, families asking for the full days you cannot offer are turned away without anyone noting it, so the demand you are missing never shows up either.
The occupancy view we build
- Bookings are read from your nursery management system each night, by child, room and session.
- Each room's capacity per session is set, based on your registered places and your own staffing plan.
- Occupancy is shown as a grid of rooms by session for the current week, with colour for full, filling and empty.
- Room moves and leaving dates are used to project the grid forward month by month, so the September drop is visible in spring.
- Enquiries you could not accommodate are logged with the sessions wanted, so turned-away demand appears alongside the gaps.
- A short weekly summary goes to the owner or manager: the emptiest sessions, the fullest, and what changed.
| What you can see | What you might do about it |
|---|---|
| Pre-school empty on Friday afternoons | Offer a Friday afternoon session to waiting families |
| Baby room full with families waiting | Review room sizes or plan an expansion |
| Toddler room drops in September | Start marketing those places in spring |
| Requests for full days you turned away | Rethink which session patterns you offer |
What the view does not do is decide your pricing or session patterns. It gives the owner the numbers to decide with.
Monday morning with the grid
The owner opens the summary with a coffee. The pre-school room has three empty Friday afternoon places for the next two months, and the waiting list has two families who asked for Fridays. The baby room is full, and four families were turned away last month. September looks thin in toddlers. That is enough to act on: two calls, a marketing post aimed at the right parents, and a note to plan September staffing.
When the owner talks to the bank or considers a new room, the occupancy history is there by room and session, rather than a single percentage that nobody fully trusts.
Signs you are missing the gaps
- You describe occupancy as one number.
- Friday afternoons feel quiet but you do not know by how much.
- September's drop in numbers surprises you each year.
- Families wanting certain days are turned away without a record.
- Staffing is the same on quiet sessions as on busy ones.