Management Information Sheet

Following the successful roll out of the cloud version of Star Accounts, we are now able to rollout a cloud version of the Local Authority Budget Planner.

Our intention is to convert the budgets over the summer holidays, so that all schools will start using the cloud version from September 2021. In order to facilitate this, the following process will be carried out;

Finance Support holds the Budget: If your Finance Support Officer has a copy of the agreed Revision 1 budget as an Access database, this will be converted to the cloud version. Your Finance Support can then export the budget to Star Accounts on the schools’ behalf and roll it into Revision 2 when it has been agreed.

School holds the Budget: If your school holds the live copy of the budget, this will need to be finalised so that Revision 2 is the live revision. Once this has taken place, please use the “Email Budget Plan” button within the toolbar and ensure that the text file that is produced is successfully emailed / sent via AnyComms Plus before the end of term.

Note: Once the version has been submitted to your Finance Support Officer, you will not be able to carry out any further work on your budget until you have received the cloud version. (Or if work/changes have been carried out by schools after the budget has been submitted, then this information will not have transferred to the cloud version)

For enhanced schools – your Finance Support Officer will discuss the options above at your revision 1 meeting.

For standard schools – please ensure you contact your Finance Support Officer to ensure the appropriate budget is provided.

September 2021: After the budget has been converted, and checked for accuracy, an email will be sent to the Primary User of the budget with details of the file that needs to be downloaded to access the cloud version.

Note: The Primary user will be set as the same Primary User from Star Accounts datafile linked to the budget planner. That user will then need to add any other users required, e.g. the headteacher, or change the primary user to the required person.

Pre-conversion: To aid with the conversion, we would ask that any staffing forecasts that have been created that are no longer needed, are deleted from the budget planner, i.e. scenarios created that were never adopted (see Section 04 of the User Guide). Any unused staff members should also be removed from the Budget Planner (see Section 03 of the User Guide).