Budgeting Module

The budgeting module is designed to take you through the phases that help you plan your budget for the next financial year. The software is in a early state at present so it is on limited release to the steering group.

There are 5 phases in the initial Wizard, which can all be accessed later as you work on your model.

• Baseline categories

• Budget codes

• Staff

• Pupil

• Forecast

Baseline Categories

The baseline categories are values that are set at the start of the process which will be used later in the calculations. Some of the items are for reference only so they are greyed out.

Note:  the working hours per week cannot be changed once a post has been added to a member of staff.

The Save button will allow you to save changes and you will return to this area when you come back to budgeting.

Budget Codes

The budget codes are where you define, for each code, if it will be used in your forecast and also if it is expenditure or income. The Budget Codes are taken from Arbor Finance, so if a new Budget Code is needed you will need to create it in Arbor Finance first.

The easiest way to allocate your budget codes is via searching for budget headings.

• e.g. If you know that all your budget headings for income start with an 'I', then type 'I' in the Budget Header search box, then click Search.
• If you click the tick box to the left of the Budget Code heading then you can select all the codes in the search at once.
• Untick any that you don't want to mark, then click Mark as Income (or Expenditure)
• Any Budget Codes that are marked as Non-Budgeting will not appear in the final forecast screen
• Searching will be the easiest way to find codes, you can also sort each column to help find specific codes

Staff

Staff is where you add the staff and staff posts. This will include salary information, so you may need to get this in advance of entering the information on the page.

• To add a member of staff click Add Staff

• Enter the required fields

• Check each check box is correct

  • Automatic salary increment - for posts on a scale this will increment the salary by a scale point each year at the appropriate time of year

  • Opt out from pension - this will mean that the employer contribution will be 0% if selected

  • Contract NI - if the staff member is contracted Out of NI then uncheck the box, the employer contribution will be adjusted accordingly

To add a post to a member of staff click the Add New Post button

Adding a post

There are 4 steps to adding a post

General

Here you can add the following information

• Contract type - Permanent or Fixed, for a fixed contract adjust the start and end dates accordingly
• Post - choose the post you want to assign to the staff member, if the one you want isn't listed then you can create a new on on the fly by using the Create New functionality in the dropdown menu
• Contract start/end dates - unless you are assigning a fixed post leave these as the start and end of the current planning year
• Working Hours - you can define the working hours or use the FTE as appropriate for part-time staff, if you change the working hours the FTE will adjust accordingly and vice versa
• Working weeks in a year - if staff are working less than 52 weeks in a year enter the number of working weeks here

Click Next to continue

Basic Salary

This screen allows you to define the pay for the post, the options are as follows :-

• Pay type - National uses the national pay scales such as Teacher Main or NJC or Flexible which will allow you type in the salary number
• Pay range - choose the pay scale that you want to use for this post
• Spine Point - choose the starting spine point for the post
• Upper scale limit - choose the upper scale limit for the post, this will cap the automatic spine point salary increases when reached
• Basic Salary - if using a scale this is calculated for you the salary will be calculated , if using flexible then type in the salary figure

Allowance

This screen allows you to add allowances to the post, you can add multiple allowances.

Allowance Type - choose the allowance type or if needed create your own using Create New on the drop down menu

Range - if there are several ranges of the allowance then choose the one you want

Amount - type in the annual amount for the allowance

Profile - these are drawn from Arbor Finance - choose the profile spend for the allowance if there are none then it will be assumed this is 1/12ths

Click Add to complete and add additional allowances if required

Allowances can be edited and deleted using the pencil or bin on each allowance line.

Employer contribution

On this page you will see the calculations for each of the 3 areas - NI, Pension and salary. Allocate the budget codes that you want the amounts to be coded to.

To complete the post click Save. 

If the member of staff has more than one post then you can add more posts after clicking save.

To finish with the member of staff click Update Staff. To return to the list of staff click the staff icon on the left.

Pupil

The pupil area allows you to enter your pupil numbers and AWPU. You can also define the budget codes which your entitlement be allocated to.

• Choose the year groups you want to add and then type in the current year numbers in the first column
• Enter the projected numbers for the next 4 years - all the future classes will be populated automatically
• Enter the AWPU for each Key Stage used, the future years will be calculated automatically

Forecast

This final area show two items:-

Balances - this is the top level view of the forecast showing the carry forward, income, expenditure and final position for 5 financial years.

Budget codes - this will show the forecast for all of the Budget Codes and allow you to enter the predicted spend for all budget codes that have not been used for either staff spend or pupil income.

Balances

The current predicted carry forward from Arbor Finance is carried to the first year Carry Forward. This can be overtyped if not correct. All other figures are calculated using the information in the Budget Code area.

Budget Codes

In this area you enter the figures for predicted spend/income for the next financial year. The current year allocation and spend is displayed for reference. Codes that have been allocated in the pupil or staff part of the wizard are not available for editing.

 

As the Budget codes list can be long the screen size can be adjusted by hiding certain elements of the screen using the double green arrows. 

When you have completed the wizard click Finish. A confirmation box will appear. Click Confirm to continue.

You can now update any part of the forecasting area by clicking on the menu on the left hand side of the screen.