For heads of school

School finance

Set every department’s budget, send each a pack, and bring their quarterly returns into one dashboard that shows who’s over or under, when money is spent, and how spending supports your strategic plan.

What you get

Your school’s standard budget lines and strategic priorities, set once and shared with every department
Allocations for up to 30 departments across EY, ES, MS and HS, with optional centrally fixed amounts
A ready-to-copy pack for each department
A dashboard of every department: over, watch or on track
Spending patterns: who front-loads and who has a year-end surge
The biggest purchases across the school, and spending by strategic priority

How it works

Set up your school: settings, strategic priorities and the budget lines every department shares.
List your departments with their section and allocation.
Copy each department’s pack and send it with a Department budget workbook.
Each quarter, paste the returns heads of department send you.
Read the dashboard, and use Department detail to look closely at any one department.

Works with Department budget

Each head of department uses the Department budget workbook. You send them a pack; they send you a one-row return each quarter. Copying and pasting values means nothing breaks when files are emailed, renamed or moved.

Department budget

Tips from experience

Agree the calendar up front. Tell heads of department when returns are due each quarter, and stick to it.
Look at timing, not just totals. A department that spends 50% in the first quarter isn’t necessarily wrong, but it’s worth a conversation.
Use the strategic priority view in budget talks. Asking what spending supports the plan changes the conversation from “more” to “why”.
Fix centrally only what you must. The more departments plan themselves, the more they own the budget.

Finance words, in plain English

Allocation: The total amount a department has been given to spend this year.
Budget line: A category of spending, such as stationery or trips. Budgets are planned and tracked line by line.
Committed: Money promised but not yet paid: an order has been placed, but the invoice hasn’t been paid. It isn’t spent yet, but it’s no longer available.
Spent: Money that has actually gone: the invoice has arrived or been paid.
Remaining: Allocation minus committed minus spent. What you can still use.
Accrual: Recording a cost in the year it belongs to, even if it’s paid later. An order placed in June but paid in September usually belongs to June’s year.
Outturn: What was actually spent by the end of the year, compared with the budget.
Forecast: Your best estimate of the year-end position, based on spending so far and what’s still to come.
Variance: The difference between budget and actual. Positive means underspent; negative means overspent.
Virement: Moving money from one budget line to another. Most schools need approval for this above a set amount.
Capitation: Funding shared out per student. Some schools set department allocations this way.
Cost center: A department or area whose spending is tracked separately, with its own code.