The classic Forecast view helps you see how your classrooms fill throughout the week based on the schedules you’ve set for each student. Instead of showing transitions or future schedules like the enhanced version, this view focuses on daily counts and FTE totals so you can see how much space is being used each day. It gives you a quick, straightforward look at how your program is running without needing to open individual students or schedules. The sections below explain how FTE works in this version and how those values shape the totals you see.

FTE, or Full Time Equivalent, shows how much of your program day a student uses based on the schedule they’re assigned. These values come from your center’s FTE settings and help determine how each schedule contributes to classroom capacity. The classic Forecast view uses these values to show how full a classroom is on each day and how those totals shift throughout the week. Because the numbers update automatically as schedules or FTE settings change, you’ll always see a current snapshot of how your classrooms are filling.

The Forecast tab relies on student schedules and your center’s FTE settings to show daily classroom capacity. These two inputs work together to show how full a classroom is expected to be on any given day and how much of your available capacity is being used.

The classroom capacity shown in the forecast is also pulled from the classroom settings tied to the classroom in that student’s schedule. To make sure your forecast is accurate, always update the classroom listed a student’s schedule whenever their schedule changes.

You can find your FTE settings by going to Settings on the dashboard, opening the Scheduling tab, and scrolling down to the Full Time Equivalents section. These settings control how the system calculates each student’s FTE value and how those values contribute to your total classroom capacity. Keeping these settings up to date helps the Forecast view reflect your actual attendance patterns.

Here’s what each setting actually means:

This setting tells the system how many hours count as a full day of FTE. If a student attends fewer hours than the number you enter here, they receive a smaller portion of that day’s FTE. This setting is only used to calculate the daily FTE amount based on the hours a student is scheduled or attends.

This is the maximum amount of FTE a student can contribute in a single day. Most programs set this to a decimal so that the total reaches 1.0 by the end of the week.
​

• For a five-day schedule, we generally recommend using 0.2
​

• For a seven-day schedule, we generally recommend using 0.14

These values make the math work out cleanly so a full schedule equals an FTE of 1.0.

The classic version of Forecast Enrollment gives you two ways to look at your numbers: schedule based or classroom based. They both use the same FTE values, but they sort the information differently, which is why the totals don’t always look the same. Each view is helpful in its own way, and understanding how they work makes it easier to decide which one fits what you want to review.

Schedule based is usually the most reliable option because it uses the actual days and times students are scheduled to attend. Since each student’s FTE value comes from their schedule, this view gives you a clearer picture of how much of a classroom is being used on each day. The totals tend to line up better with real attendance patterns, which is why most centers prefer schedule based when they want the most accurate view of how full their classrooms will be.
​

Classroom based works a little differently. Instead of using student schedules to calculate FTE, it uses the details you’ve entered for each classroom, like capacity, age range, and ratios. Because FTE comes from schedules and not classroom settings, you’ll see FTE listed as N/A in this view. And since this view relies on every classroom’s settings being filled out consistently, the totals can look different from what you see in schedule based if some rooms have more complete information than others.

For the most accurate forecasting and the clearest picture of how your rooms will fill during the week, schedule based is the recommended option. It brings together schedules and FTE values, which are the two pieces of information that matter most when planning for real attendance.

Forecast enrollment allows you to plan ahead for the year, taking the capacity of your classrooms into consideration. You will be able to view utilization rates along with the number of open seats at a quick glance. To locate the Forecast Enrollment dashboard, you'll want to click on Scheduling then on Forecast.

If you’re in the classroom based view, you’ll see a dropdown for each classroom. This lets you look at the students currently in that room and anyone scheduled to move out of it in the future. For this example, we will be using the Bunnies classroom.

Clicking on the dropdown arrow next to the classroom will allow you to view all the current students and those transferring out. You'll also be able to view the student's date of birth and their schedule if one has been added.

Changing the date at the top of the page allows you to view the future days for that classroom. In the example photo above, we see that Sofia Gonzales is switching out of this classroom on the 16th. Let's update the date to the 16th to see how the Bunnies classroom capacity is reflecting.
​

We can see that Sofia Gonzales example is no longer listed for this classroom due to the classroom switch.

The FTEs can be viewed on the Forecast Enrollment using the schedule based option.

You'll be able to see an overall FTE for the entire center on the specific day overall as well as per classroom.

​