Occupancy is the single most important operating metric in a boarding and daycare facility. You have a fixed number of physical runs, suites and daycare slots, and every night a run sits empty is revenue you can never sell again — a run-night, like an airline seat or a hotel room, is perishable. This dashboard keeps occupied capacity tracking against what you actually have, so you can see how full the building is and where empty space is quietly costing you.
What this dashboard answers
The overview answers the questions an owner or kennel manager asks every morning: how many run-nights did we sell, how many were available, and what's our occupancy rate? How full is daycare against its daily slot capacity? Where are the empty run-nights, and how full do we get on peak dates versus the soft midweek? Breaking occupancy down by run type — Standard Run, Luxury Suite, Cat Condo, Large-Dog Run — and by location shows which inventory sells and which sits, and a day-of-week view exposes the classic pattern of full weekends and empty Tuesdays.
The metrics that matter
Occupancy rate is the headline, but it lies on its own: a facility can run 70% occupancy overall while a profitable run type sits half-empty and a cheap one is jammed. That's why the report splits occupancy by run type and location, and separates boarding occupancy from daycare utilization — two different capacity pools that behave differently through the week. Empty run-nights translate the rate into a count you can act on, and peak-date occupancy tells you whether you're actually capturing the holiday demand that makes the year.
Why the data is trapped
Your booking software — Gingr, PetExec, Revelation Pets, Kennel Connection — knows every reservation and run assignment, but it shows you today's board, not a 30-day occupancy curve by run type across three locations. Physical capacity (how many runs of each type you actually have) usually lives in a setup screen, not in the reports, so the denominator for a true occupancy rate isn't sitting in any export. Getting occupied-over-available means joining bookings to capacity by hand in a spreadsheet that's stale the moment a reservation changes.
How to read it
Read occupancy rate first, then immediately split it by run type and day of week — that's where the actionable story is. A healthy facility runs high weekend and peak occupancy with a visible midweek trough; the gap between them is your discounting and daycare-conversion opportunity. Watch empty run-nights on your most profitable run types and on peak dates especially, because those are the most expensive empties. The sample on this page uses entirely synthetic data, so there are no real client or pet records in what you see here.
Metrics it tracks
| Metric | What it means |
|---|---|
| Occupied Run-Nights | Run-nights actually filled by a boarding pet, summed across all dates and run types. |
| Available Run-Nights | Total sellable run-nights — physical run capacity times nights open — across every run type. |
| Occupancy Rate | Occupied run-nights ÷ available run-nights — the share of physical capacity you actually sold. |
| Daycare Utilization Rate | Daycare slots filled ÷ daycare slots available — the share of daily daycare capacity sold. |
| Empty Run-Nights | Available minus occupied run-nights — unsold capacity that earned nothing. |
| Peak-Date Occupancy Rate | Occupancy rate on holiday and high-demand dates — how full the building gets when it counts. |
Used by: Facility owners and operators, front-desk and kennel managers
Frequently asked questions
How do you calculate occupancy rate for a boarding facility?
Occupancy rate is occupied run-nights divided by available run-nights, where available run-nights is your physical run capacity multiplied by the nights you're open. Measuring it as a SUM-over-SUM (not an average of daily rates) keeps it accurate when capacity varies by run type and location.
Why track occupancy by run type instead of one overall number?
Because a single facility-wide rate hides the real picture. Luxury suites, standard runs, cat condos and large-dog runs sell at different rates and earn different revenue, so an 80% overall number can mask half-empty premium inventory. Splitting occupancy by run type shows exactly which capacity is selling and which is sitting.
What's the difference between occupancy and daycare utilization?
Occupancy measures overnight boarding capacity (run-nights sold vs. available), while daycare utilization measures daily daytime capacity (daycare slots filled vs. available). They're separate capacity pools with different weekly patterns, so the report tracks them with separate denominators rather than blending them.
Build this report on your own data
Clone this Pet care facilities template — describe it and we’ll generate sample data so you can try it free, or upload your own export. You get a fully modeled, branded Power BI project that opens in Power BI Desktop.
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