A therapist renting a room pays the same weekly rent whether they book two sessions or twenty. Break-even is the point where the sessions booked so far have covered that fixed rent — every session after that is profit. The math is the rent divided by what each session actually nets after supplies, rounded up because a partial session does not exist.
A $350 weekly booth rent with a $90 session price and $15 in supplies nets $75 a session — break-even is 5 sessions.
The example
Three therapists renting the same studio at different price points and supply costs.
| A | B | C | D | E | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Therapist | Weekly rent | Price/session | Supply cost | Break-even |
| 2 | Room A | 350 | 90 | 15 | 5 |
| 3 | Room B | 400 | 85 | 12 | 6 |
| 4 | Room C | 300 | 100 | 20 | 4 |
The formula
Per-session margin first, then divide the rent by it:
How it works
Two numbers combine into the margin, then one division finds break-even:
C2-D2is what one session actually nets after oil, linens and laundry — $90 minus $15 is $75.B2/(C2-D2)divides the fixed weekly rent by that per-session margin: $350 / $75 is 4.67 sessions.ROUNDUP(...,0)rounds up to 5, because 4.67 sessions means the therapist is still short of covering rent until the fifth session is booked.
Compare break-even sessions against typical weekly bookings — if a therapist regularly books fewer than break-even, the rent (or the price) needs to change, not just the schedule.
Try it: interactive demo
Enter the weekly booth rent, the price per session and the supply cost per session.
Variations
Show weeks of runway from average bookings
If you know average sessions booked per week, divide break-even by that to see how many weeks of low bookings the therapist can absorb before falling behind on rent.
Compare commission pay against booth rent
Break-even tells a renting therapist their floor; comparing total weekly take-home under rent versus a commission split tells them which pay structure earns more at their actual booking volume.
Pitfalls & errors
If the price per session is less than or equal to the supply cost, the denominator is zero or negative and ROUNDUP returns a #DIV/0! error or a meaningless negative break-even. Guard with IF(C2>D2,...) before dividing.
Supply cost per session should include laundry and linen wear, not just oil and lotion — leaving those out understates the true margin and makes break-even look easier to hit than it is.
Round DOWN, not up, when reporting how many sessions a therapist can afford to miss and still break even — that is a different question from how many they need to book, and the two answers should not share a formula by accident.
Practice workbook
Frequently asked questions
Should booth rent be weekly or monthly in this formula?
What if a therapist offers multiple session lengths at different prices?
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