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

Description
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 equal enrolled children divided by 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 divided by 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, 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 and tuition sensitivity grid — see how much softness the center can absorb before it stops penciling.

What is inside:

• 10-sheet Excel workbook that also works in Google Sheets — 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, and a full FAQ.
• START HERE sheet: your first projection in minutes, with only the 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.
  
  

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.

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.