Free tool
Retreat admin hours calculator
Count the hours a single retreat cycle takes you in intake, chasing and rooming before anyone has arrived.
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Retreat break even calculator
Find out how many of your beds have to sell before your retreat starts putting money in your pocket.
The build is deliberately plain. Everything that costs the same whether four women come or twelve is a fixed cost: the venue for the week, your insurance, the assistant facilitator, your own travel and the deposit you already paid. Everything that scales with a body in a bed is variable, and for a residential retreat that is overwhelmingly food. Subtract the variable cost from the seat price and you get the contribution each bed makes toward the fixed pile.
Divide the fixed pile by that contribution and you have your break even seat count. If it lands at nine on a twelve bed house, you are betting your fee on the last three beds, which is a much riskier retreat than one that breaks even at six. Hosts who run this before setting a price usually change either the price or the venue, and occasionally both.
Your result
Food cost per bed
$275
What one more woman in one more bed costs you to feed for the whole stay.
Total fixed cost
$12,700
The pile you owe whether four beds sell or all of them do.
Beds you must sell to break even
6
Below this bed count the retreat is costing you money to run.
Profit if every bed sells
$12,800
Your take at full occupancy, before card fees and before paying yourself a facilitator fee.
Card processing costs come off the top of every payment, so trim the profit line by roughly the rate your processor charges before you treat it as yours.
Read the break even number against your real fill rate
A break even of six on a twelve bed house means you are safe once half the beds go, and the second half is your income. A break even of ten means five months of work rest on the final two women, who historically book late and sometimes do not book at all. Same retreat, same brochure, completely different night sleep.
If your number comes out high, there are only three levers: raise the seat price, cut fixed costs by finding a cheaper week or a smaller house, or cut the food line by changing how you cater. Adding beds only helps if the house genuinely has them and you can fill them, which is a sales question rather than an arithmetic one.
The costs hosts forget until the retreat is over
The lines that get missed are almost always the same. Airport transfers for guests who arrive on three different flights. The extra night you sleep at the venue before anyone arrives so you can set up the room. Liability insurance for the year, apportioned to this retreat. Materials, candles, printing, the massage therapist you booked for Thursday. Bank charges on an international venue payment. Each is small and together they are frequently a full bed.
Put them in the other fixed costs box even when they feel too petty to bother with. The purpose of this calculator is not a beautiful budget, it is a break even number you trust enough to price against. A number that quietly excludes a thousand dollars of real spending is worse than no number at all.
Questions about this calculator
Should I use my shared price or my single room price?
Use the shared price, because most beds in a small residential retreat sell as shared and it gives you the conservative answer. Treat single supplements as upside on top of the break even rather than as part of it. If your house is mostly singles, use the single price instead.
Where do my own facilitator hours belong?
If you intend to pay yourself a set fee regardless of how the retreat sells, put it in other fixed costs and read the profit line as pure surplus. If you plan to take whatever is left, leave it out and treat the profit line as your pay. Just do not do both.
What about the deposit I already paid the venue?
It belongs in the venue cost, because it is part of what the week costs you. Whether it is refundable changes your risk, not your break even. If the deposit is nonrefundable, note the date it stops being recoverable, since that is your real point of no return on the retreat.
More free tools and working documents
Working document
The retreat roster sheet: one row per guest, one page on arrival day
A fill in template that puts every fact you need about a guest on a single line, from her bed number to her allergy to the flight she lands on.
A number your roster can keep true
A figure you calculate once starts drifting the moment a guest upgrades to the quiet single or drops out at three weeks. In RetreatSeats the bed chart and the balances move together, so what you priced in March is still what you can read in week eleven. Ask for a demo and bring the retreat you just put through this calculator.