Hot desk ratio calculator
Enter your employees or members, desks and daily attendance chance. See how often desks run short and how many people can share them at your chosen risk. Free, in your browser, with no account or AI.
Daily desk use and risk
- Average desks used
- 49.96 desks
- Average people attending
- 50 people
- Chance of a day with too few desks
- 1.76%
- Expected short days per 20 working days
- 0.35 days
- People per desk
- 1.67 : 1
Desks used are capped at the desks available. Average attendance can exceed that count. A short day means at least one person cannot get a desk.
Largest sharing pool at your target
104
Chance of a short day at this size: 4.75%
The target is a probability for each day. It does not guarantee a maximum number of short days in a particular month.
What this model assumes
- Each person decides independently whether to come, with the same fixed daily probability. Everyone who comes needs one desk for the whole day.
- Team days break independence. Busy weekdays raise attendance. Both can make shortages more likely than a calculation using the overall average; test peak-day attendance and use observed patterns.
- Part-day visits can let one desk serve more than one person. This full-day model does not include check-out times, staggered arrivals, reservations, guests or desk preferences.
- Twenty working days is an assumed month. The expected number of short days is 20 times the daily probability, not a prediction of which days will run short.
The binomial calculation
With n people and attendance probability p, X follows Binomial(n, p). Average attendance is np; desks used are min(X, d). A shortage is X > d, so exactly filling all d desks is not a shortage. The people-per-desk ratio is n/d. We search whole numbers of people for the largest one whose shortage probability is at most your target.
Read the formulas, units and worked example →
When visits and departures matter
These articles simulate arrivals, departures and desk reuse. Their share of visits without a desk is different from this calculator’s share of days with a shortage. Reading the articles is free; running simulations in Laydyne requires Pro.