Practice income and appointment capacity planner

Start with total working hours for one working week. Remove time for administration and marketing, then divide the remaining minutes by appointment length plus preparation, notes, cleaning and any travel assigned to each appointment. The result is rounded down to complete slots.

If your work involves journeys of different lengths or room access at fixed times, a simple weekly total can overstate capacity. Check the result against a real diary. Do not count the same travel or administration in two places.

Paid occupancy is the proportion of available slots generating the appointment amount entered. It is your assumption. It does not come from SSTA client data, a search ranking or a prediction about your area. A fractional average describes many weeks; it does not mean part of a person attends.

Fictional example: 20 working hours minus five administration hours leaves 900 minutes. A 60-minute appointment with 15 minutes between appointments permits 12 slots. At 50% paid occupancy that is an average of six paid appointments per working week. At an invented £50 received per appointment over 46 working weeks, modelled annual turnover is £13,800.

Variable cost per paid appointment is multiplied by paid appointments and working weeks. Fixed weekly business costs are multiplied by 52, including weeks off. If a cost stops during time off, convert your expected annual total to a weekly equivalent by dividing by 52.

Continuing the fictional example: £5 variable cost per appointment gives £1,380 annually. Fixed costs of £60 per calendar week add £3,120. Total modelled costs are £4,500, leaving £9,300 before personal tax and owner pay. These are invented figures, not typical income or a recommended price.

The calculator includes only the costs you enter. It is not a tax, VAT, benefits, pension or borrowing calculator. Obtain qualified advice on how those affect your own circumstances. Do not describe its surplus figure as a salary.

Simple recovery years = initial training and setup outlay divided by positive annual modelled surplus. With the fictional £9,300 annual surplus and £3,000 outlay, this is approximately 0.32 years. That arithmetic assumes every pound of the surplus is available for recovery and the same activity continues.

Personal drawings, tax, loan charges, inflation and changes in demand are excluded. If annual surplus is zero or negative, the tool shows no recovery estimate. Paying for training creates no assurance that any outlay will be recovered.

Keep price and capacity grounded in a service you are qualified and equipped to deliver. Change occupancy and working weeks to see how sensitive the model is. Allow for cancellations, illness, holidays, training and the time required to build a diary.

Print each scenario with your assumptions and date. If a model needs an almost full diary from the start, review fixed commitments before taking them on. Use real enquiries and delivered appointments to update assumptions as evidence becomes available.