June 2021
Dear Colleagues,
As budgets are finalised for another year the team would like to commend you all on what has been a challenging budget season.
Final FMS Close and Upload of CFR report to DfE
All preliminary CFR returns have been checked. Please follow the guidance attached with this bulletin to complete the final close on FMS and Upload to COLLECT. Deadline for submission is Monday 5th July 2021.
Please note once this has been done, unwanted cost centres can be deleted.
Budgets
With budgets in the main now submitted and imported into FMS, a reminder to ensure that once checked and balanced, you 'fix' the budget in FMS and also 'fix and publish' the ratified scenario in SBS.
PE & Sports Grant 2021/22 funding
The DfE has announced that primary schools will continue to receive the PE and Sport Premium grant funding for the next academic year. On 17 June 2021 the Education Secretary announced a further relaxation of ring-fencing arrangements for the PE and Sport Premium. This will allow any unspent grant to be carried forward into the 2021/22 academic year.
Any underspends carried forward from the 2019/20 and the 2020/21 academic years, will need to be spent in full by 31 July 2022. Schools should factor this into their PE and Sport
PE and sport premium for primary schools - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
VAT - LA Invoices
Please be reminded that all transactions between maintained schools and LA departments are correctly coded as 'Out of Scope' as we share a single VAT Number.
Scheme of Financing - Standing Orders
The Council has just recently reviewed the Contract Standing Orders following the change in Leader and we are now looking to incorporate these into the Scheme for Financing Schools and Guidance to Schools on Financial Management.
We will be amending the Scheme and Guidance over the summer to reflect the changes in approval levels which the schools will also need to adopt into their school policies.
Devolved Formula Capital (DFC) Cost Centre Allocations
The LA have now received the 2021/22 DFC allocations for maintained schools and these will be notified and paid in the July cash advance.
As schools have already estimated for DFC in their budgets, to process the cash advance movement for this is slightly different to that of the usual movements. You need to process a movement for the difference between your estimate and the final allocation. For those that have a DFC income value in a "Cash Advance Expected/Adjustment" cost centre, this will need to be removed when you have completed the cash advance movements process.
Typically, the process to follow is:
- Increase your fund allocation as usual.
- Compare your cash advance allocation with value you budgeted and allocated in your DFC expenditure cost centre. Note the difference.
- Adjust the Capital cost centre (expenditure) allocation using the above value.
- Then, in your "Cash Advance Expected/Adjustments" cost centre, remove the DFC income value and set to zero.
Cash Advance movements related to budgeted Cash Advance Expected amounts
In a similar way to DFC, over the next year movements on funding such as COVID-19 catch-up will affect the Cash Advance Expected cost centre allocations. This can be complex when amounts of funding given to schools differs to the amounts budgeted. To ensure that these movements are not double counted please follow the attached guidance. Both step-by-step instructions and a flow chart are provided.
Maintained Schools Outturn
The following table summarises the information on maintained schools revenue balances for each sector including the movement between 2019/20 and 2020/21:
Local School Business Professional Groups
The DfE encourage school business staff to join locally based professional groups to exchange information, experience, and ideas. Link to DfE webpage below:
Join or create a network for school business professionals - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
View My Financial Insights (VMFI) tool Training
The DfE are holding a further training webinar for the View My Financial Insights (VMFI) tool. VMFI provides enhanced analytics on the financial performance of schools and an automated assessment of the greatest areas for improved resource management.
This webinar will include a quick demo of the tool and an open Q&A session. It will be useful for local authorities, maintained schools and academy trusts. To sign up, please use the link below. Friday, July 2nd, 12pm to 1pm.
View my financial insights (VMFI) webinar Tickets, Fri 2 Jul 2021 at 12:00 | Eventbrite
High Needs Bandings 2021/22
Please find attached a list of High Needs Bandings for this year. These have not changed from the previous year.
Nicolas Roberts Publications
In the May Schools Finance bulletin there was an item in relation to the notification from a school that they had been subjected to a spurious payment request from the following company; Nicolas Roberts Publications Ltd.
We would like to clarify that subsequently the Schools Finance team have been in contact with this Nicolas Roberts and can confirm that Nicolas Roberts Ltd is a legitimate publishing company offering services to schools. Therefore, please disregard the article that was included in the May bulletin.
SBS Helpline and email
SBS provides a helpline to schools for technical questions:
Telephone: 0345 222 1551 option 8
Email: sbsonline@schoolbusinessservices.co.uk
Please continue to contact your link officer for finance queries.
Kind Regards
Schools Finance Team
Attachments
Final CFR Report & Upload to COLLECT Guidance year ending 2020-21 [1MB]
Guidance on Processing Cash Advance Expected movements [34KB]
