Budgeting
School budgeting software. Boss your budgets, seamlessly
Designed exclusively for the education sector
School budgeting software 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. And, because all our software is delivered through our cloud-based platform, Access Workspace, all your Access software works together for optimal efficiency, productivity, and more informed decisions.
Over 8,500 professionals across the UK trust our budgeting software for 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 school budget software
School specific
Designed for 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 school budget for up to 5 years, increasing your visibility so your school can avoid deficits and track spending. Tweak as needed from the ‘snapshot’ view, avoiding manual data analysis and entry.
Scenario planning
Model the financial impact of multiple scenarios such as changes in staff, pay, pupils, income, expenditure and more. This is now even easier with our latest budget forecasting functionality, allowing you to make changes within the ‘snapshot’ view.
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 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 school’s income and expenditure to ensure your budget stays on track.
BRAND NEW! Reforecasting feature now available in the Snapshot view
Revolutionise budget management with direct adjustments, eliminating manual updates
Now you can track your budget year-round, tweaking it as needed - based on expected outcomes, end-of-year projections, and variances, all from one convenient view.
Bid farewell to manual data analysis and entry, and welcome faster decision-making, time savings, and enhanced data quality.
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.
Find out more about how our school budgeting software can save you money
Scenario planning and 5-year forecasting with our school budgeting software
Create precise 5-year budgets and forecasts with school-specific settings
Our system calculates staff costs, considering contracts, scales, FTE hours, pensions, and allowances.
Easily model 'What if?' scenarios for staff, pay, pupil numbers, income, or expenses, empowering you to craft effective short, medium, and long-term plans. This saves time with simplified decision-making for short, medium, and long-term plans.
Plus, utilise our latest budget adjustment feature for real-time modifications based on evolving variables.
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.
Budgeting software for schools integrations
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 finance software
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.
Excellent
Based on 2,254 reviews
Showing our favourite reviews
Martin Dunham provided a fantastic…
Great service from Tania
Website re-design
Kept in the loop.
Great service all around and great product!
High priority incident which posed a clinical risk
Alina Zarnescu Performance Review
Budgeting resources
Planning and forecasting your school budget effectively
This guide takes you through...
- Key stages of the school budget preparation process
- Gives you practical advice for better planning
- Provides hints and tips for more accurate forecasting
Your tender document cheat code
Procuring operational education software but don’t know where to begin? In this guide, we cover everything you need to create the perfect tender document.
Budget deficits - A guide to avoidance and recovery
Our guide looks at:
- The importance of planning and most common budgeting mistakes
- Key tips for budgeting your staffing costs
- Key recruitment tips
- Keeping costs under control and what budgeting tools are available to help
Introducing Budget Monitoring Snapshots – Budget Adjustments
This press release covers:
- About Access Education Budgets
- Evolution of our snapshot functionality
- New budget adjustments: what is it? How does it benefit you?
- What else is planned for development
On-demand webinar: Benefits of integrated Budgets & Finance
A webinar for schools and local authorities.
Watch the webinar to:
- Discover what’s ahead for your Budgets software - roadmap and plans for Access Education Budgets
- Learn about how to increase your school’s operational efficiency with integrated Finance & Budgets – Short demo
Best practices for school budget planning
The positive impact behind a comprehensive, robust budgeting process can be financial, reputational and educationally beneficial. Schools and trusts that have control over their budgeting process can focus on wider school objectives around teaching, attainment and student wellbeing.
Curriculum-based financial planning
Funding is becoming tighter, and finances are being squeezed. You’re expected to do more with the same – or even less. With staffing costs making up around 80% of an average school’s expenditure, balancing the budget while focusing on a broad and balanced curriculum is an ongoing challenge.
School budgeting software FAQs
What is school budgeting software?
School budgeting software is designed to help schools, academies and Multi-Academy Trusts accurately forecast and plan for future scenarios. By giving schools more visibility over their finances, school budgeting software can help schools to foresee and avoid financial deficits while keeping track of funding. Our school budgeting software helps over 9,000 schools across the UK do this and more.
What is the purpose of budgeting software for schools?
The purpose of school budgeting software is to help increase financial visibility and control in schools, academies and Multi-Academy Trusts. By giving schools this overview of their finances, the school budgeting software helps them to foresee and avoid potential financial deficits while keeping track of their funding. Our school budgeting software helps over 9,000 schools across the UK do this and more.
Education software created by educators, for educators
The Access Education software suite is purpose-built to address the unique needs and challenges of educational institutions. Created by education experts, it's not just another solution – it's a comprehensive approach to improving the entire educational experience.
We've collaborated closely with educators at every stage of development to ensure our software reflects their insights, needs, and goals. It goes beyond functionality, becoming a strategic ally for schools, MATs, and local authorities.
Our ultimate goal is to empower educators to focus on what truly matters: delivering exceptional learning experiences to their students.
Ready to increase efficiency and cut administrative overhead? Want more time for teaching, mentoring, and inspiring the next generation? Click on our each of our products to find out how they can improve processes within your setting.
