How the schedule heatmap works

Type the average attendance for each class slot over the last month and the grid colours itself: bright slots are full, dark slots are empty, and anything below your threshold gets an outline and a place on the under-filled list. It is the whole timetable on one screen, which is the view you never get from a booking system’s day-by-day calendar.

Gathering the numbers

You need one figure per slot: average attendance across the last four weeks. Most booking systems export attendance by class; a pivot by weekday and start hour gets you there in a few minutes. If you run several classes in the same hour, use the total for the hour or pick the one you are deciding about. Leave slots with no class blank so they do not drag the averages down.

Set capacity to the number of spots that still gives a good class, not the maximum the room allows. Set the threshold to the fill rate below which a class is a problem for you. Forty percent is a common starting point; a boutique studio with premium pricing might use sixty.

Reading the map

Average fill is the health of the timetable as a whole. Below fifty percent usually means too many slots rather than too few members.

Best day tells you where demand already is. Adding a class next to a full one is safer than adding one in a dead zone.

Quietest slot is the single class costing you the most per attendee.

Under-filled slots are the decisions. Every one of them is paying a coach, blocking a room and taking a line on your marketing for a handful of people. The list is sorted with the worst first.

Why an under-filled slot costs twice

The obvious cost is the coach’s fee for a class that brings in a fraction of its potential revenue. The hidden cost is opportunity: that room and that hour could hold the class members actually want. A 6pm slot at 30 percent is not neutral, it is a 6pm slot that could be at 90 percent with a different class in it.

Run the numbers on one slot with the class break-even calculator. If the slot is under break-even every week, the map has already made the decision for you; the question is what replaces it.

Merge, move or cut

Before cutting a class, try the two cheaper options:

Merge. Two adjacent slots at 35 percent each become one at 70 percent. Members lose a choice they were not using.
Move. A class at the wrong time is a common cause of low attendance. A 40 percent Tuesday 6pm might be an 85 percent Wednesday 7pm. Look at the best day and best hours on the map for the destination.
Cut. Last resort, and never announce it cold. Cancellations cluster around schedule changes (the churn calculator shows what those cancellations cost), so give the regulars a replacement they chose.

Test the replacement before you change the timetable

The map tells you which slots are failing. It cannot tell you what to put there instead, and guessing is how the next under-filled slot gets created. Post two or three candidate classes for the slot, let members vote with an email, and launch the winner to the people who voted. That turns a cut into an upgrade, and the regulars from the old class hear about the new one first.

“Copy summary” gives you a plain-text version for a staff meeting or a message to a co-owner. “Copy link” encodes the whole grid in the URL, so the person you send it to sees the same coloured map with nothing stored anywhere.

Under-filled slots