Understanding Full Time Equivalency (FTE)

Using FTE in Procare

Full-Time Equivalency (FTE) can be used to determine if your classrooms have a “full” schedule of children. Rather than simply count children, some of whom may be scheduled for just a few hours, FTE converts the total scheduled hours (per classroom) to a number representing how many “full time equivalent” children are scheduled.

Calculating your FTE number

1. What do you consider the number of Full Time Hours Per Day? For most centers this is 8.
2. Calculate the Maximum FTE Value Per Day. The most a single child may count toward a week is 1.0. Therefore, the maximum per day is 1.0/the number of days per week you are open. For a typical 5 day week, 1.0/5 = 0.2.

Some examples: The center below considers a “full” day to be something less than 8 hours. Say the program is from 9 am- 12 pm (3 hours). Here are two different ways they might want to calculate FTE:

Option 1: If you want your 3 hour program to count as exactly half a day, set your full time hours to 6. That means a child scheduled 3 hours would count halfway toward their maximum for the day (an FTE of 0.10). A child would need to be scheduled 6 hours (or more) to count as a full 0.20 FTE for the day. Hint: If they were scheduled between 3 and 6 hours, their FTE would fall somewhere in the middle (between 0.10 and 0.20). Settings: Full Time hours: 6.00, Maximum FTE per day: 0.2

Option 2: Another approach is to set the full time hours per day to a little bit over 3 (say 3.10); that means anyone scheduled for more than 3 hours would immediately count as full time (0.20 FTE per day), while children scheduled for exactly 3 hours would count as almost full time (0.19 FTE per day), and children scheduled for 1.5 hours would count as a half day (0.10 FTE). ). Settings: Full Time hours: 3.10, Maximum FTE per day: 0.2

Once you determine your FTE settings, change them in the Regions and Schools options so your reports will reflect your center’s requirements.

Understanding report numbers

Example: One Full-Day Child, 3 Days/Week

Let’s say McKenzie was scheduled 8 hours on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, her FTE would be 0.20 for each day and 0.60 for the week. That is, she would be equivalent to 60% of a full-time child.

Example: Five Full-Day Children, 3 Days/Week

If 5 children (including McKenzie) had the same M-W-F schedule, their Monday FTE would be 5 children x 0.20 = 1.0 for the day and 3.0 for the week. In this example none of the 5 children are full-time by themselves, but added together they are the equivalent of 3 full-time children for the week. A quick glance at the report shows we need to do a better job of getting the word out about our Tuesday and Thursday programs.