What's new on the curriculum this year for Yarborough School finance dept?..CATS of course

The new term brings in a new learning experience for the staff of the accounts department. Out with the old and in with CATS (Computerised Accounting - the solution) to implement a system to manage the schools expenditure and financial reporting requirements.

The newly appointed Headmaster, Mr. R J Boothroyd was key to this change, as his ideas for a more successful school, would only be achieved through the careful use of the funds available.

Along with the Board of Governors, the school management team are tasked with controlling the spend within each and every department. A key part of the budgetary control has been the apportionment and calculation of current and future payroll costs - with the assistance of CATS, a completely integrated calculation and apportionment tool has been created, which allocates costs to the relevant departments all within the overall payroll spend.

Strict reporting requirements are placed on the school by Lincolnshire County Council - with the assistance of CATS, these reports are now produced quickly and easily.

CATS Implemented the core financial system and built on this to provide all the functionality the school required. Suppliers and service providers are paid through the Lloyd's BACS banking link integrated into the purchase ledger. Each department within the school raises its own purchase orders and with the automatic inclusion of a departmental code based on a the user ID, committed expenditure is added to actual costs to provide the Headmaster and management team with a strict budgetary control system. The Headmaster is assisted through the use of an automated alerts function, this alerts him if the value of an order exceeds those expected and allows him to instantly challenge the requirement.... a key step for total control.

CATS has assisted the Bursar, by creating custom reports using XL Reporter, to detail the progress of the schools spend and create management reports for the Headmaster and Board of Governors.