Attendance rate

Attendance rate is the percentage of booked class spots that turn into people in the room. Twenty booked, seventeen attended, 85%. The missing 15% is capacity you sold and didn’t use — and often a member on a waitlist who didn’t get in.

Attendance rate = attended ÷ booked × 100

Separate late cancellations from no-shows when you record it. Both reduce attendance; only one gave you a chance to fill the spot.

Attendance rate is where waitlists and cancellation policies prove themselves. A class running at 100% booked and 80% attended isn’t full — it’s full on paper and a fifth empty in the room, with members turned away who’d have come.

It also affects the feel of a class, which affects retention. A room built for twenty with fourteen in it reads as quiet, and quiet classes lose the energy people came for.

It’s only as good as your marking. Unrecorded attendance makes every downstream number — no-show fees, capacity planning, engagement scoring — unreliable.

Attendance and no-shows are marked per session. Late cancellations are tracked separately, so you can tell “told us too late” from “didn’t turn up” — and waitlists fill freed spots automatically.