Average occupancy hides the Tuesday
What a flex floor really earns, why the monthly average flatters it, and a calculator you can play with using rough guesses.
By James Brouard, Co-founder and CEOLast updated
Ask anyone who runs a flexible floor which day is busiest and they'll answer before you've finished the question. Tuesday, usually. The kitchen has a queue, someone's taking a call in the stairwell, and the last free desk goes before ten.
Ask what the floor earned per seat last month and the room goes quiet.
That second number is the one owners need. It's called revenue per available seat, and it takes one line of arithmetic.
The Tuesday and the Friday
Picture the same floor three days later. Friday afternoon. The lights are on, the heating's on, the coffee machine has been cleaned for nobody, and two people are sitting by the window.
Your team works both days. The owner gets one number on Monday morning: 60% occupied. It reads fine, and it describes neither day.
The people on the floor feel the shape of the week. The report flattens it into an average, and an average can't tell you whether you're short of space or short of people.
Two floors, same average
Two floors, 100 seats each, both 60% occupied on average across the week.
Floor A
Close to full on Tuesday and Wednesday. Two-thirds empty on Monday and Friday.
Floor B
About 60% full, every single day.
Same number on the report, and two very different businesses. Floor A has more demand than it can seat on its best days and too little on its worst, so its fix is pricing that follows the week. Floor B is short of members all week, so its fix is more members. Send Floor A a sales push and you'll just turn more people away on Tuesday.
One line of arithmetic
Monthly revenue ÷ every seat you could sell = revenue per available seat
A$42,000 ÷ 100 seats = A$420 a seat, every month
Those figures are an example, picked to keep the maths easy.
"Every seat you could sell" means hot desks, dedicated desks and the desks inside private offices. Meeting room revenue goes in the top line, and the rooms themselves stay out of the seat count.
Empty desks go in the count on purpose. They still cost rent, cleaning and power, so the floor has to earn its keep across all of them.
From there the number moves two ways: fill more of the empty seats, or earn more from the ones people already use. Hotels have tracked revenue per available room this way for decades, and desks work the same.
Play with your own numbers
Nobody knows their exact occupancy for each day of the week, and you don't need to. You know your floor. Start from the example below, then drag the sliders to roughly where you think yours sits. Rough guesses are fine. You're looking for the shape of your week.
Everything stays in your browser. Nothing you enter is stored, saved or sent anywhere, including to us.
Example floor loaded. Drag the sliders to roughly match yours.
What every seat earns, sat in or not
A$420
per seat, per month
The seats people actually use earn A$700 each a month.
On your busiest day, 10 seats are free. On your quietest, 70 sit empty.
Two ways to lift it, roughly
Fill 5 more seats on a typical day: about +A$3,500 a month, or A$455 per seat.
Charge 5% more on what you already sell: about +A$2,100 a month, or A$441 per seat.
Where to start
Your busiest day runs well above your typical day. Pricing by the day is the first lever to pull.
Rough sums for a snapshot. They assume new members pay what your current ones do.
Stays in your browser. Nothing is stored or sent.
What the numbers are telling you
- If your busiest day runs well above your typical day, price by the day. Meeting rooms and day passes priced to demand let Friday earn something and stop Tuesday selling out at the lowest rate.
- If your busiest and typical days are close and both well short of full, you need more members. Put the effort into enquiries, tours and following up the ones that went quiet.
- If you're busy all week, look at what you charge before you look for more space.
- Running more than one site? Compare them on revenue per available seat. Total revenue always flatters the biggest building.
And put the number in the Monday report, next to your busiest and typical day. The owner gets the whole week in three numbers, and your team stops having to explain Tuesday.
Where Hamlet fits
Hamlet reports how full each room and site was, busiest against average, alongside revenue by site and across the portfolio, and it can send that report on a schedule so it lands before anyone asks. Meeting rooms and day passes can price to demand. Revenue per available seat is then one division away, and nobody has to build the spreadsheet.
How landlords run flex on Hamlet →
Automate the admin, grow the relationship.
Common questions
What is revenue per available seat in coworking?
Monthly revenue from the space divided by every seat you could sell, filled or not. It shows what the floor earns per seat, and it moves with both how full you are and what you charge.
Do I need exact occupancy figures to use the calculator?
No. A rough sense of your typical, busiest and quietest day is enough to see which lever matters. For the report you send an owner, use real booking or check-in data.
How is it different from occupancy?
Occupancy tells you how many seats were used. Revenue per available seat tells you what the floor earned for them. A floor that's full on cheap memberships can earn less per seat than one at 70% on better rates.
How often should we measure it?
Monthly, by site, next to your busiest and typical day. Monthly matches how memberships bill, and measuring by site stops a strong building hiding a weak one.
