Is your riding school actually making money ? The method to finally find out

You learn your turnover once a year, at the accountant's, eight months late. In between you steer by feel : « seems to be going alright ». But is your livery making you money ? Is the pony club funding the owners, or the other way round ? Here is the simplest method in the world to find out – and no, no spreadsheet.

Why the accountant's figure tells you nothing

The annual accounts add everything together : lessons, livery, clinics, the bar. A rising total can hide an activity that is sinking, offset by another that is doing well. It is exactly like judging the health of your school horses by weighing them all together : the number exists, but it is no use to anyone.

To decide anything – raise a price, stop an activity, open a slot – you need to know what each activity earns on its own. And contrary to what people think, that fits into three numbers.

The three-number method

For each activity (livery, lessons, clinics), write down : 1. What it takes in per month. 2. What it directly costs : for a stable, the hay, the straw, the hard feed, the share of farrier work if it is included. For a lesson, the instructor cost per hour and the wear on the horse (count its livery divided by the hours it works). 3. The difference, which is the margin of the activity, the one that has to pay for everything else : the rent, the tractor, you.

The result is almost always a surprise : in many yards, the Wednesday pony club quietly funds livery that has been under-priced for years. Or the other way round. As long as you have not seen it written down, you cannot fix it.

Without a spreadsheet: when the numbers work themselves out

The real reason nobody does this calculation is that it would mean gathering figures scattered between a folder, a notebook and your memory. That is exactly what management software does for you : every invoice issued, every payment, every activity is already filed in the right place. Your profitability per activity is no longer a January project : it is a screen you open over your coffee.

And the quiet anxiety of « is this actually working ? » is replaced by an answer. Sometimes uncomfortable, but always something you can act on.