Capacity utilisation
What is capacity utilisation?
Capacity utilisation is the percentage of your available class spots that get used. A timetable offering 500 spots a week with 350 attended runs at 70%. It tells you whether your timetable matches demand.
How to calculate it
Utilisation = spots attended ÷ spots offered × 100
Calculate per class and per time slot, not just gym-wide. The average hides everything useful: a gym at 70% overall might be turning people away at 6pm and running near-empty at 2pm.
What the numbers mean
| Utilisation | What it’s telling you |
|---|---|
| Under 50% | Too many sessions, or the wrong times |
| 50–75% | Healthy — room to grow without adding classes |
| 75–90% | Strong. Watch for waitlists |
| Over 90% | Consistently turning members away. Add a session |
Why it matters for your gym
Every class costs the same whether four or twenty attend — the coach, the room, the hour. Utilisation is the difference between a timetable that pays for itself and one that quietly doesn’t.
The expensive mistake is adding classes to a timetable running at 55%. It feels like growth and it dilutes the classes you had, making busy sessions quieter and quiet ones emptier.
How PATO handles it
Attendance is tracked per session with class stats by type and time. Waitlists show demand above capacity — which is the signal telling you to add a session, and the one a plain attendance figure can’t give you.
PATO