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Calculators for running a play area
Seven calculators from PlayAreaOS, for the arithmetic a play area lives on: break-even visits a day, what a birthday party actually earns, how many visits your floor can hold, revenue per visitor, what a pass is worth once families use it, what a roster costs an opening hour, and VAT in or out of a price. Every formula is printed on the page, and nothing you type leaves your browser.
The calculators
Play area break-even
Fixed costs, cost per child-hour, price, capacity and turns per day, turned into the number of child visits a day you need and the share of your floor that fills.
Birthday party profit
Package price, extra children, food, host hours, room costs and add-ons, turned into margin per party, margin percentage and revenue per child.
Venue capacity planner
Your regulator’s limit or your floor area, session length, changeover and opening hours, turned into sessions per day and the most child visits a day the floor can hold.
Revenue per visitor
Sales by category divided by child visits, so play, café, parties, passes and retail show up as revenue per visit and as a mix.
Membership ROI
Single-visit price, pass price, visits included and visits actually taken, turned into the effective price per visit, the discount you really gave, and the visit count where a pass turns against you.
Staff cost
People on shift, their pay, opening hours and children on the floor, turned into wage cost per opening hour, per child-hour and per play session.
VAT pricing
A net price with VAT added, or a shelf price with VAT taken out, at your own rate, with the per-line against per-total rounding difference shown.
How do these calculators work?
- Inputs you actually know. Each one asks for numbers an owner can read off the P&L, the price list, the regulator's letter or the POS, never for a figure you would have to invent.
- The formula is on the page. Every calculator prints its arithmetic in plain text above the form, so you can check it, repeat it in a spreadsheet, or disagree with it.
- Illustrative defaults, not benchmarks. Each has a button that loads round numbers so the arithmetic moves in front of you. They are chosen to make the sums easy to follow, measured at no venue anywhere, and the page says so every time the button is pressed.
- Nothing leaves your browser. The calculators are plain static pages: no account, no storage of your numbers, no network call, no data collection. Close the tab and the numbers are gone.
- Keyboard and screen-reader friendly. Every input is labelled, the results are announced in a live region, and the whole thing works with the keyboard alone.
Which one should you run first?
If you are opening or re-pricing, start with capacity, because the most visits a day your floor can hold is the ceiling every other number sits under. Then run break-even to see what share of that ceiling you need on an average day. If parties are a big part of your week, party profit shows whether a package earns what it looks like it earns once food, host and room are counted. And once you are trading, revenue per visitor is the number to watch month on month against your own baseline. Three more answer narrower questions: membership ROI when a pass looks popular but you are unsure what it earns, staff cost when the wage bill needs pinning to an opening hour or a child-hour, and VAT pricing whenever a board price has to be quoted net and gross.
The method behind each formula is in the guides: how to price a soft play session, birthday party pricing, capacity management and the play area KPI glossary. In PlayAreaOS the live versions of these numbers come from the reports, the occupancy board and finance.