Daycare Enrollment & Revenue Calculator
By Jayesh Parayali, Founder, CareCam · Free, nothing to sign up for
Put in your real numbers. You'll see what your empty seats cost every month, and exactly how many inquiries, tours and enrollments it takes to fill them on your timeline.
Unused capacity
You have 11 empty seats. At $1,350/month, that's $14,850/month in unused capacity.
$178,200 a year if nothing changes. Each seat you fill is worth $16,200 a year.
To fill them in 6 months, you need about
29
inquiries / month
9 more than today
15
tours / month
5 more than today
3
enrollments / month
1 more than today
That includes replacing your 1 withdrawal a month. At your current pace (1 net family a month) you'd fill up in about 11 months.
Where your funnel stands
- Inquiry to tour: 50% (10 of 20)
- Tour to enrollment: 20% (2 of 10)
- Each withdrawal costs you about 10 inquiries to replace.
Same goal, if one thing improves:
- Close 30% of tours: you'd need 19 inquiries a month instead of 29.
- Book 60% of inquiries into tours: you'd need 24 instead of 29.
- Keep one more family each month: you'd need 19 instead of 29.
Whichever change saves more inquiries is usually the cheaper place to start.
How the math works
Enrollment is a funnel with four stages: inquiry, tour, enrollment, retention. The calculator runs your goal backward through it.
- Open seats = staffed capacity minus current enrollment.
- Unused capacity = open seats × average monthly tuition.
- Enrollments needed per month = open seats ÷ months to fill, plus monthly withdrawals (every family that leaves must be replaced first).
- Tours needed = enrollments needed ÷ your tour-to-enrollment rate.
- Inquiries needed = tours needed ÷ your inquiry-to-tour rate.
A worked example
A center staffed for 80 children has 69 enrolled at an average of $1,350 a month. That's 11 open seats and $14,850 a month in unused capacity.
It gets 20 inquiries, 10 tours and 2 new families a month, and loses 1 family a month. So half its inquiries tour, and 1 in 5 tours enrolls. Net growth is 1 family a month, which means 11 months to fill.
To fill in 6 months instead, it needs about 3 enrollments a month (11 ÷ 6, plus the 1 withdrawal). At a 20% close rate that's 15 tours, and at 50% booking that's about 29 inquiries. That's 9 more inquiries a month than today, or a better close rate: at 30% of tours enrolling, the same goal needs only about 19 inquiries, fewer than it already gets.
That last line is the usual story. Before spending more on ads, check whether the tours you already get are converting. The daycare tour playbook covers what to do before, during and after a tour, with follow-up scripts.
Finding the weak stage
- Few inquiries: a visibility problem. Check your Google Business Profile, reviews and whether parents can find tuition and a tour booking link on your website.
- Inquiries but few tours: usually response speed. Parents contact several centers at once, and the first one to reply well often gets the tour.
- Tours but few enrollments: the tour itself, price clarity, or no follow-up after the visit.
- Enrollments offset by withdrawals: a retention problem, and every lost family costs you a stack of new inquiries to replace.
Not sure which one it is? The 20-minute daycare enrollment audit walks through each stage and tells you where to start.
One factor in tour-to-enrollment
Parent trust is one factor that can affect tour-to-enrollment conversion. If parents on your tours ask whether they can see their child during the day, CareCam gives centers a secure, video-only live-viewing option that works with the cameras many centers already have.