Education Budgeting
School budgeting software
Increasing financial visibility in over 9,000 schools and trusts across the UK, our budget planning software supports schools in creating accurate, balanced school budgets and forecasts for up to 5 years.
With our school budgeting software, schools can quickly and easily model the impact of changes while producing powerful, detailed reports, giving them greater financial visibility across their school or trust.
Key benefits of our school budget software
School specific
Supports maintained schools, academies, Local Authorities and Multi-Academy Trusts throughout the UK
Designed by education for education
Designed for education users, making it easy to use 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, 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 reports
In real-time, produce and view powerful reports, including income and expenditure, monthly staffing profile and pupil reports.
DfE & ESFA reports
Our Governor report combines your forecast budget with actual income and expenditure commitments, while our ESFA report helps academies submit their budget forecast returns.
Supports Multi-Academy Trusts
Plan and report at a school or trust level, or group select schools for reports while setting user permission controls for individual academies.
Find out more about our school budgeting software
Integrations with our budgeting software for schools
Access Education Finance
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 software
Integration with third-party financial management systems such as PS Financials, Sage, Civica, SIMS FMS and more through Access Education Links, as well as SIMS personnel 7.
Access Education People & Payroll
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
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.
Chosen by 9,000+
schools across the UK
8,500+
school business professionals using Access Education Budgets
Supporting 37
Local authorities across the UK
Additional features of our school budgeting software
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 school budgeting software
Teaching and support staff costs and adjustments are calculated for you, considering multiple contracts, scales, points/awards, FTE hours, pensions, increments and allowances such as maternity, paternity or sickness pay.
In addition, you can quickly and easily model the financial impact of multiple scenarios, such as changes in staff, pay, pupils, income or expenditure and more, saving you an abundance of time.
Insights through school budgeting software
Online budgeting software designed exclusively for the education sector
Access Education Budgets helps you create accurate, balanced school or MAT 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 software is delivered through our cloud-based platform, Access Workspace, all your Access software works together for optimal efficiency, productivity, and more informed decisions.
Create accurate school or MAT budgets and forecasts
You can create an accurate budget and forecasts 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.
Monitor budgets, forecasts and variances in real-time
Access Education Budgets seamlessly integrates with Access Education Finance and other accountancy software. This means you can easily transfer data between your budgeting and accounting software to monitor real-time spending against your original and current budget.
Manage staff costs and payroll reconciliation
Keep your staff costs up to date with nationally applied staffing costs and adjustments calculated for you.
These automatically take into account multiple contracts, pay scales, pensions and allowances. And 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, easily tracking budgeted spend against actual payments.
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 income and expenditure, monthly staffing profile and pupil reports.
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. While the ESFA compliant reporting helps academies submit budget forecast returns.
Supports multi-academy trusts
Special features help support the broader financial management requirements of multi-academy trusts: produce plans and reports at a trust or school level or select a specific group of schools for reports; set user permission controls for individual academies; scale the software as your academy trust grows and add unlimited users at no extra cost.
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 blogs and guides
Discover more software for the education sector
Finance
Seamlessly integrated with Access Education Budgets, Access Education Finance was created alongside leading education figures to improve financial visibility.
HR & payroll
Streamline your HR processes and ensure staff are paid accurately and on time, all while managing sickness and absence, analysing critical trends, or creating detailed reports.
Absence management
Proactively manage who’s off, who’s sick and where staff are working in just a few clicks using our sickness absence management system.
Parent communication
A powerful engagement platform connecting teachers, parents, pupils & guardians - providing instant access to what matters most about a child’s education.
Parents evening
Streamline your parents evening processes to make it simple for busy parents to schedule in the time they need with teachers.
School payments
A cashless, secure, and easy to use solution that enables parents and guardians to have more control and visibility over their children's school lunches and events.
Teaching resources
Content, assessment, and data all on one platform. Expert-led education resources combined with essential monitoring and reporting.
Career guidance
An interactive careers guidance platform for pupils in key stages 3-5. It provides a fun, personalised experience for pupils to explore the professional world at their own pace.
