Pulse Reviews and Analysis
How Many Employees Should I Schedule Each Shift at My Trampoline Park?
I’ve been in revenue leadership for 25 years, and if there’s one thing that keeps me up at night, it’s watching a trampoline park schedule 12 people for a Tuesday that only needs six—or, worse, six for a Saturday that needs 20. You don’t guess this number. You divide.
The formula is simple: employees to schedule for a given shift = that day's average gross profit / your agreed-upon gross-profit-per-employee target. First, you and your leadership team agree on one number: the gross profit an average employee should produce working an average shift for an average crowd—call it $180 a shift for a trampoline park, where labor is heavy on court monitors and the margin per jumper is thinner than a furniture floor.
That is a floor, not a ceiling. Then you pull your trailing three-to-six-month gross profit by day of week. If a typical Tuesday throws off $1,080 in gross profit, then $1,080 / $180 = 6 employees on the clock that day.
If a Saturday averages $3,600, you need 20. You do that for every day, then place those shifts against when jumpers actually check in—the after-school window, the weekend open-jump rush, and the birthday-party blocks—so the bodies are on the floor when the money is. PULSE has a free Rep Scheduling Matrix that runs this division across every day at once.
Below are the ten tools that solve this problem, ranked, with PULSE first because it is free and built around this exact method.
I’ve tested, watched, and advised parks on every one of these. Every tool can build a schedule. Only a few build it off your gross-profit math, and only one is free and designed around the per-employee-target method that keeps you from over- or under-staffing a court full of safety monitors.
The rankings reflect how well each tool serves an attractions operator who wants the schedule to track the money, not just fill the grid. A trampoline park, a family entertainment center, a climbing gym, a laser-tag arena—same method, swap the storefront.
Here’s my take, ranked, with a little attitude.
1. PULSE Rep Scheduling Matrix 🏆 BEST OVERALL
🛠️ Use it free now -> Rep Scheduling Matrix - no login, no spreadsheet, instant shift counts by day.
PULSE's free Rep Scheduling Matrix runs the whole method in your browser. It takes a weekly gross-profit target and a per-shift minimum and auto-distributes the shift counts by day, protecting your highest-value selling hours instead of spreading bodies flat across the week.
Here is the method it is built on, step by step, because the math is the point:
Step one - agree on the per-employee shift number. Sit down with your leadership and set the gross profit an average employee should produce on an average shift. Say it out loud to the team: "In our park, if you show up, watch your court, run the register or the party, and give average service, you should support no less than $180 a shift in gross profit." That is the honest floor.
A trampoline park carries a wall of court monitors who do not ring a register but keep the doors legally open, so you blend their cost into the target rather than pretending only the front desk earns. The number gives everyone the same yardstick: leadership, you, and every employee on the floor.
Step two - pull gross profit per day of week. Take the park and average its gross profit by day over a trailing three to six months. A typical Tuesday does $1,080 and a typical Saturday does $3,600. Now divide by your $180 target.
Tuesday needs six employees; Saturday needs twenty. Six people each supporting their honest $180 covers the $1,080 the park actually generates—and if the snack bar and sock sales dig, the day beats it. Run that division for every day and the staffing plan writes itself.
No favorites, no "we've always run eight monitors," no manager scheduling their friends—just gross profit divided by the target.
Step three - place the shifts where the receipts ring. The count tells you how many; the check-in timing tells you when. Pull the hourly admissions and party bookings and look at when jumpers actually walk in. If the rush hits after school on weekdays and from open through mid-afternoon on weekends, you staff a light open, a heavy after-school and party block, and a tapering close rather than parking everyone at noon.
The matrix lets you slot those bodies against the real demand curve so coverage matches traffic instead of habit.
Because it is free, browser-only, and built by a 22-year revenue operator for exactly this question, it is the default pick for any attractions operator. Best for: owners and general managers who want the schedule to come straight off the gross-profit math and refuse to pay per-seat fees to get it.
2. When I Work
When I Work is the most widely used shift-scheduling app for hourly attractions teams, starting around $2.50 per user per month on the Essentials plan and climbing to roughly $8 per user per month with attendance and labor tools. It handles availability, shift swaps, and mobile clock-in cleanly, and managers can copy a busy-Saturday template forward in a couple of clicks—useful when your court monitors and party hosts rotate constantly.
Where it is strong is execution: getting the published schedule onto every employee's phone with reminders so nobody no-shows a sold-out birthday block. Where it leaves you on your own is the *why*: it will not tell you that Saturday needs twenty people. You bring the headcount math; it runs the logistics.
For a park that already knows its per-shift target, it is a reliable, affordable backbone.
3. Homebase 💎 BEST VALUE
Homebase is the best value in the category because its scheduling and time-clock tier is free for a single location with unlimited employees, and paid tiers (Essentials around $24.95 per location per month, Plus around $59.95, All-in-One around $99.95) are priced per location rather than per head.
A trampoline park runs a big roster of part-time teenage monitors and weekend party hosts, so per-employee pricing punishes you and per-location pricing rewards you. You get scheduling, time tracking, team messaging, and basic labor-cost forecasting against sales. It is the natural pick for a single-park owner watching every dollar who still wants sales-aware scheduling without an enterprise contract.
4. Deputy
Deputy runs about $4.50 per user per month for scheduling and $6 for the premium tier that adds time and attendance. Its strength is demand-based scheduling: connect a POS or admissions feed and Deputy will suggest staffing against projected check-ins, which is the closest off-the-shelf cousin to the gross-profit method.
It also handles compliance—minor-labor rules matter enormously when half your court monitors are sixteen, plus break rules and overtime alerts. For a park that wants auto-suggested coverage tied to admissions data and clean minor-labor guardrails, Deputy earns its price.
5. 7shifts
7shifts is purpose-built for restaurants and the food side of any venue, with a free Comp tier for one location and paid plans from about $34.99 per location per month (Entree) to $76.99 (The Works). If your park runs a real snack bar, cafe, or pizza counter alongside the courts, 7shifts ties that food labor directly to POS sales and a labor-percentage target, so the concessions side schedules to a sales-per-labor-hour goal out of the box.
It keeps food labor as a percentage of food sales front and center while you run the court monitors elsewhere. It's not a complete park solution on its own, but for the food side, it's sharp.
Here’s the thing: I’ve seen too many parks staff by gut feel and bleed margin. The math doesn't lie. If you don't have a per-employee target, you're guessing.
If you have it, the right tool—starting with the free one—makes it automatic. Stop guessing. Start dividing.
And if you want to dig deeper into the revenue side of this, the CRO Syndicate has the playbooks.
*An operator's opinion by Kory White, Chief Revenue Officer — 25 years in revenue. More at PULSE · CRO Syndicate*