Childcare center budget: revenue, payroll and expense lines (template)

Start where the money starts.

Tuition is the core revenue line: your enrollment plan — how many children, in which age rooms, at what weekly or monthly rate — sets the top of the budget, and registration, activity or supply fees you charge add to it.

How many children your center may serve, overall and per room, is set by your state child care licensing agency, so take the ceiling for this projection from your license and confirm it with the agency rather than from a full building on paper.

Subsidy revenue behaves differently from tuition, and the federal CCDF rules shape it. Families who qualify for child care assistance pay with funding your state administers under the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF).

Three features matter to a budget line.

Rates: states set subsidy rates using a statistically valid market rate survey or an approved alternative methodology, such as a cost estimation model, conducted no earlier than two years before the CCDF Plan — every state has a current rate study, and it is a local pricing benchmark as well as a subsidy reference.

Timing: under the "Restoring Flexibility" final rule effective July 13, 2026, states must pay providers either prospectively or within 21 days of a complete invoice.

Structure: 45 CFR 98.45(m) lets states support providers' fixed costs by paying on enrollment rather than attendance, or by paying in full when a child attends at least 85% of authorized time, among other options.

Ask your state subsidy agency which options it uses — the answers decide how steady this line is month to month.

Food-program reimbursement is a revenue line that offsets a cost line further down: the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) reimburses qualifying meals and snacks at rates the U.S. Department of Agriculture sets annually.

For the July 1, 2026 to June 30, 2027 cycle in the contiguous states, center rates run from $0.42 to $2.54 per breakfast and $0.45 to $4.76 per lunch or supper per child, depending on the reimbursement tier (free, reduced or paid); snacks are reimbursed too.

Grants are the fourth line — daycare grants covers what has been funded — and they belong in the months their terms attach them to, not spread evenly across the year.

Why the revenue side gets this much care: a September 2021 U.S. Treasury report found most for-profit child care facilities operating on razor-thin profit margins, usually less than 1 percent.

That is the report's finding as of its date, not a current measured average — but it explains the discipline this page is about.

At margins like those, a revenue line projected optimistically is not a rounding error; it is the budget.

Payroll is the line that decides whether the budget works. A September 2021 U.S. Treasury report, citing a Center for American Progress cost analysis, put wages at no less than 50-60 percent of child care expenses on U.S. averages, with labor's share larger for infant care.

Read that as a share of expenses, not of revenue, and as a dated national estimate rather than a target — but it tells you where the budget's weight sits, and why infant rooms are costlier to staff than other rooms.

List the roles your roster actually carries: lead teachers and assistants for each room, aides and floaters, substitutes, a director and any front-desk or administrative help, a cook if you serve meals, drivers if you transport, cleaning either staffed or contracted.

How many hours each role needs comes from the schedule your rooms require — how many staff a daycare needs walks that count room by room and age band by age band.

Wages are only the top of the line.

Under them sit employer payroll taxes, benefits — health insurance if you offer it, any retirement contribution — paid time off, the substitute hours that cover absences and any training time you pay staff to complete.

All of it moves with the roster, so all of it belongs in the same line of your spreadsheet, rolled up from the same staffing schedule.

Price the wages against data instead of memory: the salary pages on this site carry the federal wage survey by role and state — start with childcare teacher pay and childcare director pay — so the payroll line reflects what hiring actually costs where you operate.

Two cautions travel with it.

How a role is classified for overtime is wage-and-hour law set at the federal level (the DOL) and in your state, so confirm classifications with employment counsel before you finalize the line.

And every resignation reruns recruiting and onboarding inside the same budget year, which makes retaining childcare staff part of the payroll conversation too.

Occupancy is the fixed floor under the budget: rent or mortgage; utilities — electricity, gas, water, sewer, trash, internet, phone; maintenance and repairs; and cleaning, whether staffed or contracted.

Property taxes join the line if you own the building.

These costs do not shrink when a classroom runs light, which is why enrollment dips land so hard on centers — and why the enrollment-based payment options in the CCDF rules (45 CFR 98.45(m)) are framed as support for providers' fixed costs.

What a building must contain before children can be served in it is your state child care licensing agency's territory: square footage, capacity and facility requirements are set there, and they come before the budget if you are still choosing a building — how to open a childcare center walks that sequence in order.

One gap to know about: no per-square-foot build-out cost for childcare centers was verified in the research for this page, so the honest entry on these lines is your actual lease, loan and contractor paperwork — not a national estimate.

If the budget you are building is for a center that has not opened yet, the startup version of these lines — deposits, build-out, furniture and equipment, pre-opening payroll — is its own exercise: what it costs to start a daycare covers it line by line.

Food is a daily cost in every room that serves meals, and it has a matching revenue line if you participate in CACFP: reimbursement for qualifying meals and snacks at the rates the U.S. Department of Agriculture sets annually — the July 1, 2026 to June 30, 2027 center rates for the contiguous states are the figures quoted in the revenue section above.

The cook's wages, if your kitchen is staffed, belong in payroll, not here.

Supplies split into recurring and cyclical.

Recurring: classroom materials by age band, curriculum, art and consumables, diapers and wipes where your program provides them, cleaning supplies, office supplies.

Cyclical: furniture, cots and cribs, playground surfaces and equipment — worth a dedicated replacement line, so a necessary purchase never arrives as an emergency.

Administration and technology round the group out: bookkeeping, office equipment and childcare management software for billing, attendance and family communication — childcare management software covers what to compare before you pick one.

Insurance closes the group as a fixed annual line: liability, property, and workers' compensation for your employees.

What coverage fits your center, and what your state requires of it, is a question for your insurance agent alongside your state child care licensing agency and your state labor agency — daycare insurance walks the policy types and the questions to ask.

Run the template as a spreadsheet: one column per month, a year total at the right, and every line below as a row.

Fill it in order — revenue from your enrollment plan, payroll from your staffing schedule, occupancy from your lease or loan paperwork, the program lines from enrollment and your vendors — and total both sides before you set or revisit tuition.

Three habits turn it into a tool rather than a document: compare budget to actuals every month, re-run the payroll line whenever enrollment changes by a classroom, and keep the contingency line in the budget from the start rather than hoping for it later.

The template carries no sample dollar figures on purpose.

Your numbers depend on your enrollment, your state's subsidy rates, your lease and your local wage market — a borrowed figure would only make the plan feel more finished than it is.

Line	What goes in it
Revenue
Tuition and fees	Weekly or monthly tuition by classroom and age group, plus registration, activity or supply fees you charge
Child care subsidy (CCDF) payments	What your state pays for enrolled families using assistance — project from your state's current rate study and confirm payment timing and structure with your state subsidy agency
CACFP reimbursements	Per-meal reimbursement for qualifying meals and snacks, if you participate
Grants and other income	Grant awards and one-time income, booked in the months their terms attach them to
Total revenue	Sum of the lines above
Payroll and benefits
Wages by role	Teachers, assistants and aides, floaters, substitutes, director and administrative staff, cook, drivers, cleaning — hours from the schedule your rooms require
Employer payroll taxes	The employer-side taxes on the wages above
Benefits	Health insurance and any other benefits, retirement contributions, paid time off
Coverage and training hours	Substitute hours covering absences, and any training time you pay staff to complete
Total payroll	Sum of the payroll lines
Rent and occupancy
Rent or mortgage	The building's monthly payment under your lease or loan
Utilities	Electricity, gas, water, sewer, trash, internet, phone
Maintenance, repairs and cleaning	Upkeep and repairs, janitorial supplies or contract cleaning
Total occupancy	Sum of the occupancy lines
Food, supplies and insurance
Food and kitchen	Groceries and kitchen supplies for the meals you serve, at full cost — CACFP reimbursement is booked once, in the revenue block
Classroom supplies and curriculum	Materials by age band, curriculum, art and consumables, diapers and wipes where you provide them
Office, admin and technology	Office supplies, bookkeeping, childcare management software
Insurance	Liability, property and workers' compensation premiums
Total program and operations	Sum of the food, supplies and insurance lines
Other operating lines
Marketing and enrollment	Advertising, open houses, waitlist management
Licensing and professional services	State licensing fees — no national fee figure was verified, so use your state child care licensing agency's current fee schedule — plus the accountants or attorneys you contract
Debt payments	Loan repayments not already in the mortgage line
Contingency reserve	A cushion line you set — unfilled seats and surprise repairs both land here
Total expenses	Sum of every expense line
Projected surplus or shortfall	Total revenue minus total expenses, by month and for the year

The finished budget is also the financial core of a longer document: how to write a daycare business plan shows where it sits among the narrative, the market analysis and the operations plan.

This page is employer information, not licensing or legal advice. Licensing capacity, subsidy rules and reimbursement rates are administered by your state child care licensing agency, your state subsidy agency and the U.S. Department of Agriculture; wage-and-hour questions belong with employment counsel or the DOL. Confirm the figures that apply to your center with the agencies that set them before you act on this budget.