The deadline for Academy Trusts to complete their Budget Forecast Return Outturn is Monday 21st May 2018.
For the return, academies will need to provide data of their actuals for the period 1 September 2016 – 31 March 2018 (complete actuals from 2016/17 year and 7 months of 2017/18 year) and their forecast outturn from 1 April 2018 – 31 August 2018.
Guidance is available for the return on the GOV.UK website. The ESFA will release the online form for completion of the return on 9th April 2018. Schools’ Choice have been informed that academies actuals from the 2016/17 year will not pre-populate and therefore trusts will need to re-enter this data using a combination of last years BFR and their final Management Accounts of 2016/17 (agreeing to the statutory accounts for the year).
Please see below for information on resources we can provide to support you as well as guidance on procedures you can carry out to prepare for this return.
PSF Budget Forecast Report
PSF has a Budget Forecast Report built in to the Finance System. This can be run from the Reporting suite and selecting EFA Budget Forecast. The report will show your March actuals for 2017/18 and your forecast through to 31 August.
Schools’ Choice have created a recommended mapping for this report using the Schools’ Choice standard nominals. This mapping document is available to download under the Financial Reporting section of your Academies Finance Toolbox.
You can use the mapping by either finding your required code on the lookup screen or by using the list and entering the BFR code into the indices within the relevant nominal on PSF.
To edit nominals indices in PSF, navigate to Masters>Nominals>Select the relevant Nominal and then select Indices. You will see a list of relevant indices. Select the most recent EFA Budget Forecast Return available and enter the mapping into the box below:
Do not worry if your PSF has not been updated to read 2017/18 as yet, PSF will automatically transfer your mappings to the new line format once it has been released.
Accruals/Prepayments
The BFRO needs to be completed on an accruals basis and it is therefore important to ensure accruals accounting on your system is up-to-date. The Budget Toolbox includes a guidance document detailing accruals you will need to consider for your March close.
Creditors and Debtors as at 31 March 2018
As with last years return, you will need to analyse your balance sheet creditors and debtors as at 31 March. You will need to run a Trial Balance report with a criteria showing periods between 17/18 00 and 17/18 07. You can then find your debtors/creditors in the list.
Trusts will need to analyse whether a value is for less than or more than one year for the BFRO form.
Previous Year actuals
As well as the current year actuals/forecast, the BFRO also requires the previous years actuals to be entered. The ESFA have confirmed that these will not be pre-populated on the form and you will therefore need to add these manually. You will be able to retrieve the March 2017 actuals from your BFRO report submitted last year.
The actuals for the period 1 September 2016 – 31 August 2017 can be found by using your BFR figures from last year and adjusting these for any significant differences which occurred between the form submission and the year end accounts.
Depreciation Rule
Version 4
At March end close, the depreciation rule should be run by 30th April to post all depreciation to 31st March. If the rule is run from 1st May onwards it will post depreciation to 30th April. This treatment will apply at any point throughout the financial year that the depreciation rule is run.
Version 6
When running the depreciation rule in version 6 the DEP_CONTROLS list within Masters>Keylists tells the system what Yearcode and Period you would like to run the depreciation rule up to. You will need to enter this key list and input ‘31/03/2018’ into the ‘Text’ box for DEP_DATE and ‘2016/17.07’ into the ‘Text’ box for DEP_PERIOD to post depreciation up until March 2018.
FMS Reporting Pack
In preparation for the BFRO, we have updated the FMS Report Pack with the current BFRO lines. This is now available on page 8 of your Academies Finance Toolbox. The report pack will need to be completed with a cumulative expense analysis as at 31 March 2018 to generate the March actuals figures. It will then need to be completed again using a cumulative expense up to 30 April 2018 and including all commitments up until 31 August (these can be amended within the Budget Monitoring Commitment report within the pack).
The changes to the format of the report means that some codes have had to be remapped for the return. We have mapped the standard FMS codes within the report sent through, however we appreciate that trusts may have additional codes. These can be copied across from the previous toolkit, however it is important that you check the mapping of the BFR column as this may need to be amended. There is mapping guidance included within the report pack, however please see below for a list of codes which have been amended between versions:
|
Code |
Description |
|
Previous BFR Mapping |
New BFR Mapping |
|
30505 |
Insurance expenses |
|
98 |
378 |
|
80500 |
Loss on Disposal |
|
770 |
710 |
|
CAP03 |
Profit on disposal |
|
0 |
710 |
|
99998 |
Fixed Asset Purchases |
|
420 |
585 |
|
99999 |
Fixed Asset Fund Transfer |
|
420 |
585 |
|
27000 |
Apprenticeship Levy |
|
- |
311 |
Further to this, all staffing ledger codes for basic pay, NI, superannuation and overtimes have also had to be mapped to new codes. Again, if you are pasting in your previous mappings into the new report pack, these will need to be remapped for the BFR column only:
Basic Pay – 310
National Insurance – 311
Teachers Pension – 320
Other Pension – 325
Accruals/Prepayments
The BFRO needs to be completed on an accruals basis and it is therefore important to ensure accruals accounting on your system is up-to-date. The Budget Toolbox includes a guidance document detailing accruals you will need to consider for your March close.
Creditors and Debtors as at 31 March 2018
As with last years return, you will need to analyse your balance sheet creditors and debtors as at 31 March. The FMS Report Pack has been updated to include these balance sheet codes within the mapping. Trusts will need to analyse whether a value is for less than or more than one year within the ‘Balance Sheet Analysis’ tab. The analysed values will feed through to the BFR.
Previous Year actuals
As well as the current year actuals/forecast, the BFRO also requires the previous years actuals to be entered. The ESFA have confirmed that these will not be pre-populated on the form and you will therefore need to add these manually. You will be able to retrieve the March 2017 actuals from your BFRO report submitted last year.
The actuals for the period 1 September 2016 – 31 August 2017 can be found by taking the cumulative expense analysis from your August reporting pack and pasting this into the new report pack. Alternatively you could use your BFR figures from last year, adjusting these for any significant differences which occurred between the form submission and the year end accounts.
Depreciation
Trusts will need to ensure they have posted depreciation for the period up until 31 March 2018 before completing the BFRO to ensure the correct amount is disclosed in the return.