F R E E T O O L
Occupancy Break-Even Calculator
The occupancy your service needs to cover its costs, and where you sit against it today.
Most providers know their occupancy. Fewer know the number it has to beat.
Break-even occupancy is the point where the fees coming in cover everything going out. Above it you have a surplus. Below it you are funding the service from somewhere else, and every week that continues makes the recovery harder.
Put in seven numbers. Nothing is stored and we do not ask who you are.
Your numbers
Weekly costs
Updates as you type. Nothing is stored and we do not ask who you are.
Your result
0% occupancy
Being straight about it
Four things a five-number calculation cannot tell you.
Staff cost is treated as fixed
It is not. It moves with occupancy as ratio requirements shift across the day, so your true break-even is likely a little lower than the figure above.
No room-level view
A service at 75% overall can be near capacity in one room and well short in another. Those are different problems with different fixes.
No seasonality
A single week does not show the January dip or the school-transition drop.
Nothing about quality
Your rating, your Quality Improvement Plan and your assessment history shape the commercial picture more than any number here.
Below break-even is a solvable problem while it is a four-child problem. It becomes a much harder one at twelve.
Want the fuller picture?
The service health check goes considerably further.
Eighteen numbers rather than seven, read room by room, with agency spend, turnover, enquiry conversion and arrears alongside the occupancy figure.
Rebecca Gunn writes every one of those reports personally, which is why we complete a limited number each month.