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Independent schools budgeting software
Designed exclusively for the education sector
It helps you create accurate, balanced school budgets and forecasts for up to five years, quickly model the impact of changes and produce powerful reports for even more robust planning and management.
See our budgeting software for MATs page if you're looking for trust-level reporting.
Over 8,500 professionals across the UK trust our budgeting software for independent schools
We truly believe that software can save you money and we support more than 9,000 schools across 37 local authorities to help them do just that. Our software takes care of the admin burden, increases efficiencies and tracks the income and expenditure throughout your school.
Why choose our independent school budget software
School specific
Designed for independent schools, our easy-to-use software makes it easy for non-finance staff as well as school finance professionals to manage budgets.
Secure and cloud-based
100% cloud-based with secure access through Access Workspace, anytime, anywhere.
5-year forecasting
Forecast and plan your independent school budget for up to 5 years, increasing your visibility so your school can avoid deficits, track spending, and plan for success.
Scenario planning
Model the financial impact of multiple scenarios, such as changes in staff, pay, pupils, income or expenditure and more.
Powerful reporting
Produce and view powerful reports, including income and expenditure, monthly staffing profile and pupil reports all in real-time.
DfE & ESFA reports
Our Governor report combines your budget forecast with actual income and expenditure commitments, while our ESFA report helps academies submit their budget forecast returns.
Salary modelling
Understand the impact of your independent school’s biggest cost to estimate your end of year outturn and plan your school budget. Easily model and monitor changes to staff costs and benefit from automatic payroll calculations.
Income & expenditure
Track, manage and report on all your independent school’s income and expenditure to ensure your budget stays on track.
Calculate, plan and model staff costs
Your biggest cost is your staff so ensuring your numbers are accurate and can easily be adapted to suit any changes in your school is crucial. Access Education Budgets has a number of key features, including:
Quick salary calculator - Calculate the full cost of employing a new member of staff, compare costs for different staff, and calculate the impact of pay adjustments with our quick salary calculator.
Automatic payroll calculations - Built-in functionality automatically takes account of the latest National Insurance rates and threshold values, inflation factors, and automatic in-year updates for all DfE, ESFA and National Insurance requirements.
Staff costs - Nationally applied staffing costs and adjustments are calculated for you and automatically take into account multiple contracts, pay scales, pensions and allowances.
Payroll reconciliation - By importing your monthly payroll file you can automatically reconcile expected and actual monthly payments and see an up-to-date view of cost-versus-budget variances against critical fields such as total pay, pension payments and National Insurance.
Scenario planning and 5-year forecasting with our independent school budgeting software
You can create an accurate budget and forecast of up to five years using school-specific income and expenditure settings.
Teaching and support staff costs and adjustments are calculated for you and take account of multiple contracts, scales, points/awards, FTE hours, pensions, increments and allowances such as maternity, paternity or sickness pay.
Plus, you can quickly and easily model the financial impact of 'What if?' scenarios, such as changes in staff, pay, pupils, income or expenditure, saving you lots of time and complexity, and helping you make informed decisions for effective short-, medium- and long-term plans.
Generate comprehensive reports and returns
An extensive reporting suite allows you to quickly generate customisable, easy-to-understand reports in a variety of formats, including
- The consistent financial reporting (CFR) framework
- Income and expenditure
- Monthly staffing profile and pupil reports
- Payroll reconciliation
- A comprehensive budget dashboard
The DfE compliant Governor report combines your budget forecast with actual income and expenditure commitments and presents data at the highest level or down to individual ledger codes.
Find out more about how our independent school budgeting software can save you money
Monitor school budgets, forecasts and variances in real-time
Integrations for budgeting software for schools
Easily transfer data between your budgeting, accounting, HR and MIS software to monitor real-time spending against your original and current budget. This can not only save you time but it can save you money too.
Access Education Finance integration
Seamless integration with Access Education Finance software means schools can easily transfer data between their budgeting and accounting software to monitor real-time spending against their original and current budget.
Third-party finance integration
Integration with third-party financial management systems such as PS Financials, Sage, Civica, SIMS Financial Management System and more through Access Education Links, as well as SIMS Personnel 7.
Access Education People & Payroll integration
Links to Access Education People & Payroll software to ensure any updates made in your HR system then update in your budgeting tool.
Access Education Curriculum & Access Education SEND integration
Integrated with our curriculum planning software, Access Education Curriculum and our SEND funding software, Access Education SEND. This integration allows schools to accurately model different curriculum and staffing scenarios and make financially viable decisions in the short-, medium- and long term.
Partners
Partnered with school management information systems such as Arbor and integrated with SIMS.
Why schools love our budgeting software
Access Education Finance and Budgeting has transformed the day-to-day running of the finance department. The system is particularly user friendly for non-finance staff. Teachers can keep track of their spend versus budget from the beach during the summer holidays, should they wish!
The scenario planning feature of the Access Budgeting software has been invaluable - especially during lockdown, as it was important to monitor any increased expenditure for Covid-19 and be able to report this information to the governing board.
The software has massively improved budgeting efficiency across maintained schools in the borough. It’s as easy as managing your own bank account. Cloud-based software removes any of the risk associated with spreadsheets, staff turnover and doing aspects of budgeting manually
More than just great school budgeting software
We are dedicated to providing our customers with award-winning implementation and support to help them get the most out of their software.
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Danni Rutherford was extremely helpful
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