Tip of the Month #9 - Optimising Your Occupancy!
For this month's Tip of the Month, we thought we would talk about some of the best ways that you can keep track of your occupancy using Abacus! It's important to know how many kids you've got to keep an eye on today!
If you missed last month's tip, we talked about the Dashboard which has a few at-a-glance reports to help you keep track of your occupancy. This month, we're going to dive a little deeper so get those goggles on!
Detailed Daily Occupancy Report
The Detailed Daily Occupancy Report will show you how many spaces you have booked in each room and how many spaces are available. The report is broken down into 15 minute intervals so you can really keep track of what's doing on that day - that's why we called it "detailed" ;).
You can use this report to see the number of staff that you need to have scheduled in each room in the "Staff Required" section. This figure comes from where you have set the child:staff ratio in your settings!
You can also see an average percentage of how full the nursery is on the selected day!
This report can be run with different rooms, child ages and dates. You can also opt to include children on the waiting list or children that have left or are on holiday!
Detailed Staff Rota
The Detailed Staff Rota is a really handy report! It will show you the occupancy of the children per room and break it down into 15 minute intervals much like the Detailed Daily Occupancy Report. This time however you will see the total number of staff that have been rota'd into this room and the number of staff that is required according to your child:staff ratio. The Detailed staff Rota is run by week instead of daily and you can find it in Reports > Staff!
This report is also colour coded! Anywhere that the numbers show red, you haven't booked enough staff into this room. The blue numbers show that you have more staff than the total required in this room!
For more information about adding your staff on and booking in shifts for them, head to our Staff Section Helpfiles. Or let us know if you would like us to write up a Tip of the Month about it!
Occupancy AM/PM Reports
Take a look at the Occupancy AM/PM reports. There's one by week and one by room! These reports will show you the number of spaces that have been booked before and after the start of the afternoon. On these reports, everything before the start of the afternoon is AM and everything after the start of the afternoon is PM. You can check or amend the start of your afternoon by heading to Settings > Configuration and adjusting the "Afternoon starts at:" field.
The Occupancy AM/PM Report by Week will show you how many spaces are booked in each room on the week that you are running for. You will the total for the setting on the second to last row and a percentage total at the bottom! Very handy!
The Occupancy Report by Room will show you similar results. This Report will show you the number of spaces that have been booked in each room showing you the total and percentage of each room on each page! You can also click "Combine Results" when running this report which will show you the total for all the rooms at the setting!
Don't forget!
The occupancy reports show the number of spaces that have been booked at any one time NOT necessarily the number of children that are due to come in. In other words, you might have a child with a session from 9am - 11am and a child from 11.30am - 1:30pm. These children would take up two spaces on the register for that day but only one space on the occupancy report.
Imagine that the first child was sat in a chair until 11.00am and then second child came in at 11.30am and sat in the chair. You only need one chair for these two children because they don't need it at the same time.
Occupancy Opportunities
The Occupancy Opportunities Report will highlight all spaces that are available in each room and identify any places that can be booked without the need to increase current staffing levels. This way you can optimised your availability and not miss out on any potential business! You can run the report for a selection of rooms or the whole setting and you even have the option to view the results in a table or a chart.
The report is colour-coded too! Anywhere that you are overbooked will show in red and the available opportunities will show in green!
Like the majority of our reports - all of the reports we've looked at today can be exported into Word/Excel/ CSV etc so you can save them onto your device!
Struggling to fill your occupancy?
Have a read of "Improving the Business of Childcare: Empowering Childcare owners to achieve financial success"! This is a book written by Allan Presland, CEO of Parenta! The book has great advice on all things childcare, including maximizing marketing and increasing occupancy!
I'm not just saying that because he's the boss either! Click here to view the book on amazon and read the reviews for yourself!
Did you find this tip helpful? Let us know by clicking the thumbs up below!
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