Let’s face it—juggling enrollment and capacity is one of the toughest parts of running a child care center. Every child grows at their own pace, families give notice or extend care unexpectedly, and one missed transition can throw your whole operation off balance.

Planning capacity isn’t just about knowing how many kids are in the building; it’s about making sure you have the right number of staff, the right ratios, and the right mix of ages in every room, every week.

When a parent asks, “When can my child start?”, you’re left second-guessing:

• Are you letting them start too soon and risking being out of ratio?

• Are you waiting too long and leaving a spot (and tuition) empty?

Without a clear, data-driven answer; you’re forced to rely on guesswork instead of making the best decision for your center and your families.

Don't fly blind

If you’re not tracking capacity, you’re constantly reacting to surprises, missing out on potential enrollments, and risking chaos every time a child moves up or a new family walks in. And if you’re like many centers trying to solve this, you’re probably managing it all in a spreadsheet—one you secretly dread opening. Here’s why:

• Updating is a nightmare: Every time a child moves up an age group, you have to update their info in multiple places - current room, next room, future projections. Miss one cell and the whole sheet is off. And let’s not forget the non-stop copy and paste routine - moving names, dates, and notes from one tab to another, hoping you don’t accidentally overwrite something important or paste into the wrong cell. It’s a tedious, error-prone process that eats up hours and leaves you second-guessing whether your numbers are even right.

• Mistakes happen… constantly: It’s way too easy to drag a formula wrong, delete a row by accident, or forget to update a sibling’s info. Suddenly, you’re double-booked or, worse, under-enrolled and overstaffed.

• No real forecasting: Want to know how many spots you’ll have open for toddlers in three months? Good luck tracing all those transitions manually. Spreadsheets just aren’t built to anticipate future capacity in a dynamic, visual way.

• Zero visibility: You can’t easily see bottlenecks, upcoming gaps, or opportunities to optimize. That means you’re essentially burning money. Open slots sit empty when they could be filled. You miss out on months of tuition simply because you didn’t see the vacancy coming soon enough to offer it to a new family. Instead of having a waitlist ready to go, you’re scrambling to fill spots at the last minute, leaving revenue on the table and making it harder to plan for staffing and resources.

That’s where Playground's new Predictive Enrollment comes in.

Imagine this: you enter a child’s transition date once, and the system automatically updates every affected room, across every relevant date.

• Want to see how moving a child up a month early impacts your whole center? Click. Done.

• Need to spot a future lull in enrollment? The dashboard shows you, visually, in real time.

No more error-prone manual updates. No more late-night “what did I miss?” panic. Instead, you get:

• Automated, accurate transitions for every child, every room, every time.

• Instant forecasting—see exactly how many open spots you’ll have, by age group, months in advance.

• Critical insights—identify over- or under-capacity situations before they happen, so you can act, not react.

• Easy collaboration—everyone works from the same, always-up-to-date info.

And best of all, when a parent asks, “When can my 12-month-old start?” you can answer with confidence in seconds, not after hours of spreadsheet gymnastics.

The bottom line

With predictive enrollment, you’re not just filling spots - you’re running a smarter, more stable business. You can plan staff schedules, confidently promise spots to families, and finally get out of spreadsheet purgatory. Your center runs smoother, you waste less time, and you’re always a step ahead.

Already a Playground customer? Predictive enrollment is now available under 'Scheduling' in your account.

Book a demo here and we’ll show you exactly how predictive enrollment can work for your program. Even better, send us your current roster and schedules and we’ll plug them in so you can see, firsthand, what your future could look like (minus the spreadsheet headaches).