Daycare / Childcare Center Financial Model — State Staffing Ratios + SBA (Excel + Google Sheets)

Opening a childcare center? Labor is 40-60% of your revenue — and your state's law sets it. This model builds your staffing from those legal ratios automatically.

Every other daycare template makes you guess a single teacher-to-child number. This one is different: pick your state and it loads the legal infant, toddler and preschool ratios, then computes the minimum staff the law requires for your enrollment — and turns that into a lender-ready 5-year pro forma.

What it calculates for your center:

• State-mandated staffing — required teachers = enrolled children ÷ your state's legal ratio, rounded up per room, for infants, toddlers, preschool and school-age. Switch states and your whole margin moves.
• Licensed capacity from your space — usable square footage ÷ the per-child minimum, so you size the center to what you can actually be licensed for
• Revenue by age band — separate slots, occupancy and tuition per room (infants cost the most to staff AND charge the most), with a Year-1 enrollment ramp
• 5-year P&L — labor, food, supplies, rent, insurance, licensing and marketing, with EBITDA and margin
• DSCR, cash-on-cash, breakeven occupancy and a 5-year IRR — the numbers an SBA 7(a) lender checks first
• Occupancy × tuition sensitivity grid — see how much softness the center can absorb before it stops penciling

What's inside:

• 10-sheet Excel workbook (works in Google Sheets too — no macros, no add-ins, no external links)
• 17-page PDF user guide — quick start, sheet-by-sheet walkthrough, how the state-ratio staffing engine works, how a lender reads your DSCR and breakeven occupancy, and a full FAQ
• START HERE sheet: your first projection in minutes, only amber cells to fill
• State Ratios sheet with editable presets for California, New York, Texas, Florida and Ohio — plus a Custom row to match your exact local rule
• Dashboard with KPI cards and a 5-year revenue-vs-EBITDA chart, formatted to share with your lender or partners
• Benchmarks sheet with sourced 2024-26 ratios, tuition, cost structure and SBA terms

Why this one: every formula is machine-verified — the full calculation graph is recomputed by three independent engines (including Excel itself) before release, and the staffing engine is tested against each state's rules. Models that balance to the cent.

Educational planning tool — not financial, legal, tax or investment advice. Staffing ratios, square-footage rules and tuition vary by state and over time; verify the current rules with your state licensing agency before relying on any number.