Welcome back and Happy New Year to you all from everyone at SFS.

We hope you all had a well deserved Christmas break and you are all ready to start the year 2020.

To receive information about new school resource management resources, sign up to join the School Business Professionals contact list via the following link: www.gov.uk

The Institute of School Business Leadership (ISBL) are offering free training via webinars and workshops on Integrated Curriculum Financial Planning to school staff and governors.

Visit: https://isbl.org.uk/Training.aspx for details and dates of when this training is taking place or e-mail: [email protected]

Any Classcare rebate that relates to previous years will be permitted as an allowable exception to the BCM limit under late allocation.

NatWest sent out a new terms and conditions document to schools in December regarding the requirement to have Image Survivable Features (ISF) added to printed cheques and states that this will be in place from 15 January 2020.   NatWest have confirmed that they are working with printers to have ISF’s included in cheques. For the time being schools can continue using any printed cheques they have.  All newly produced manual chequebooks printed by NatWest should already have ISF’s added to them.

These new terms can be viewed by visiting www.natwest.com/terms, using the terms codes YBRUT and selecting “Important changes to your business account terms effective from 15 December 2019 and 15 January 2020”

The ESFA have updated the published pupil premium allocations for 2019 to 2020 to reflect quarter 3 payments. To find out more visit: https://www.gov.uk

• School Resource Management Bulletins
• Integrated Curriculum Financial Planning Training
• Updated pupil premium
• Allocations for 2019 to 2020
• Balance Control Mechanism
• NatWest - Printed Cheques
• SFVSTraining

The 2019/20 Balance Control Mechanism (BCM) form has been uploaded to the Help & User Guidance section of the BPS and will be available on the Financial Returns page on KELSI.

Please visit: https://www.kelsi.org.uk/school-finance/returns-and-monitoring/financial-returns

Just a reminder that Sports funding is not a permitted exception to the BCM limit going forward for 2019-20 Closedown.  You may wish to roll forward the November 2019 payment into the following financial year at 2019-20 Closedown, in order to use the funds within the academic year ending August 2020, but this will not fall within the permitted exceptions for excess BCM.

• 9 month monitoring - 17 Jan 2020
• BCM form return - 17 Jan 2020
• Academies Returns - 20 Jan 2020
• School Funding Information will be available - 28 Feb 2020

There has been a major update to the SFVS return for 2019-20. Schools Financial Services will be emailing more information regarding the SFVS very shortly. 

The key changes are a move from a word document to an Excel spreadsheet, and the introduction of a “Dashboard” tab. When this is completed it will give information on how the school is performing in relation to similar schools and academies across the country. Please bear in mind, this information does not replace the need to look at official benchmarking data.

Schools Financial Services have three courses available with spaces.

Healthcheck

SCH20/278 - 31 Jan 2020

FMS6 Beginners Closedown Courses

SCH20/282 - 25 Feb 2020

SCH20/283 - 27 Feb 2020

All courses are being held at EIS, Oxford Rd, Maidstone. To book your place please visit: CPD Online.