We have a number of courses still available for the summer term which are available to book on.

Some of these are:

• Introduction to School Finance
• BPS Budget Monitoring
• BPS Payroll Reconciliation
• FMS6 Healthcheck
• Financial Controls.

There is a course suitable for everyone. All of our programmed training is free to Kent maintained schools, but it is also available to academies and Medway schools (although not all is applicable). For further information on this, please email [email protected]

The autumn term courses are now available to book on.

Some of the courses available are:

• Introduction to School Finance
• Senior Leaders
• Strategic Financial Management in Difficult Times
• Introduction to BPS - Employees and Funding
• Introduction to BPS - Other I and E
• Introduction to Finance for Headteachers.

To view a full list of courses or to book onto them, please visit CPD Online.

We just wanted to take the time and advise you that the Helpdesk will be closed on 5 September for the whole day due to a staff training day.

• SFS Training
• Schools Supplementary Grant
• Pensions Re-Enrolment 1st June 2022
• Advanced notice
• Spotlight on Budget Monitoring
• HANDY HINT! - Getting ready for Budget Monitoring in BPS

The ESFA have published the schools supplementary grant (SSG) school-level allocations and conditions of grant. The SSG will be included in the core schools budget allocation from financial year 2023 to 2024.

Payments to schools will be made in the June and December school advances.

KCC is required by law to automatically re-enrol all qualifying staff including those in KCC maintained schools into the pension scheme every three years. KCC’s next enrolment date is Wednesday 1 June 2022. This may affect staff on your schools payroll. For more info please see Kelsi.

The Training Team are running Budget Monitoring webinars in June. These webinars will take you through monitoring your budget through the financial year, the remaining course available is.

• 21/06/2022 - SCH22/523

With further Budget Monitoring courses to be added to the autumn term soon.

It is a requirement of the Schools Financial Value Standard for Governors to see and review budget monitoring at least six times during the year. It is recommended that the first monitoring should take place once the budget has been submitted to the Local Authority.

Budget monitoring sessions cover/include the following.

• Keeping the Employee Scenario up to date.
• Importing data from FMS6 to create initial figures for monitoring the school’s budgets and making adjustments to inform the year end forecast amounts.
• Delegates will be shown how to use the Budget Planning Software to generate both cost centre and ledger code reports suitable for strategic use as well as day to day data scrutiny. These reports are ideal for sharing with headteachers, governors, finance managers etc.
• How to recalculate a 3-year plan using the updated year-end figures produced by the budget monitoring.

We would also like to take the time to remind you all of the following steps in order to ensure you are best prepared within BPS.

Once your budget has been ratified and submitted ensure the below is complete:

• create working copies of your scenarios
• create a new Budget Forecast using these working copies
• set the new Budget Forecast as Current.

For further information and guidance on budget monitoring, on BPS please see the "Budget Monitoring Manual" this can be located within the help and user guide section of BPS. A new version will be uploaded in the coming weeks with just minor cosmetic alterations.