This blog is part of our 2025 budgeting season help series, where we’re helping MAT CFOs navigate the budgeting season and ensure Smarter MAT Finance. Download our interactive budgeting checklist here.
We’ve recently published updated guides from Warren Porter, Head of Education Strategy at IMP Software, on budget preparation and review. Here, we gather the perspectives of four MAT leaders who provide their top tips and shared experiences, including how they use IMP Planner to support them, as we approach budget-setting season.
Here we go!
1. Start early in the academic year
Claire Oates, Chief Operating and Financial Officer, Advance Learning Partnership:
“A well-planned budget cycle, starting early in the academic year, supports financial sustainability and ensures the efficient use of resources. Taking a structured approach allows schools and trusts to align budgets with strategic priorities, anticipate funding pressures, and make informed decisions on staffing and curriculum structures. Early planning reduces the need for reactive adjustments, creating a more stable and efficient financial model. This approach helps to ensure workforce planning reflects both current and projected pupil numbers, use scenario modelling to test different approaches in response to funding changes, and keep budget assumptions aligned with strategic priorities and operational needs.”
2. Set and share a clear budget timetable
Charity Main, Chief Operating Officer, Anglian Learning:
“Set and communicate a clear budget timetable with Trustees and academy leaders. Ensure this focuses on the importance of ICFP and staffing costs to counteract the natural tendency of leaders to focus on the non-staffing, many of which they have less control over. If you include a number of drafts in the cycle, be clear about what amendments can be made at each stage. We only allow significant changes later in the cycle to avoid non-material adjustments and an inefficient use of time. In a larger Trust, consider RAG rating your schools as you move through the budget-setting cycle so other senior Trust leaders are clear where the concerns remain. Include a sensitivity analysis in your budget-setting reports so Trustees are aware of the financial risks (upside and downside) of variations from your key assumptions.”
3. Balance forecasts to the master
Amanda Dale, Chief Financial Officer, The Athelstan Trust:
“I can’t emphasise enough how impactful it’s been for our forecasting and budgeting processes to balance our forecast to our master, taking advantage of the multi-year view that IMP Planner provides. How appropriate this approach is depends on how different trusts operate, but for us it’s made sense to have that ongoing link between the two, as we ultimately use the forecasting process as an opportunity to check and update the master. As we of course freeze the forecast, it means we can track changes in our master outlook. To allow us to monitor more effectively, we’re also going to start freezing scenarios when we forecast, deleting them when we get to the end of the year. This means that as well as tracking changes to the master, we can also drill into the detail of what those changes are when needed, which is particularly important for staffing. It’s not always clear where the movement has come from, and so saving those scenarios and taking the (relatively little) time to administer will really enhance our ability to understand and get comfort on our position and movements.”
4. Align key budget updates with key milestones
Claire Oates, Chief Operating and Financial Officer, Advance Learning Partnership:
“Throughout the year, budgets should be reviewed and refined using critical data points:
- Census figures (Autumn, Spring, Summer) – Accurately forecasting pupil numbers mitigates the impact of lagged funding adjustments.
- Staffing implications – Reviewing Trust-wide workforce needs ensures staffing levels remain cost-effective and aligned with curriculum delivery.
- Funding allocations and inflationary pressures – Regularly updating projections based on ASCL, ISBL, and DfE guidance ensures that budgets reflect changes in funding rates, pay scales and other financial pressures.”
5. Make savings assumptions clear
Amanda Dale, Chief Financial Officer, The Athelstan Trust:
“I would encourage users to make savings clear within IMP Planner, which there’s of course functionality to do. We have had a problem in the past where employee contracts are ended as a means of modelling savings, which is, of course, really risky and lacks clarity. If we want to model staffing savings for particular positions, we enter this in as a negative vacancy/contract so that we and headteachers understand what is incorporated in projections. To model savings more generally, such as a staff turnover saving (we incorporate this to reflect the savings we expect to make from churn to give us a more realistic budget that a static staffing scenario can’t provide), we include a negative cost in the non I&E budgets to pull this out as a distinct value.”
6. Use ICFP key metrics to drive efficiency
Claire Oates, Chief Operating and Financial Officer, Advance Learning Partnership:
“ICFP benchmarking helps assess whether financial and curriculum decisions are both efficient and sustainable. Key metrics include:
- Pupil-teacher ratios – Ensuring staffing structures align with pupil numbers and available funding.
- Contact ratios – Optimising teaching hours to ensure the best use of staffing resources.
- Average class sizes and curriculum breadth – Balancing cost-effectiveness with delivering a broad and high-quality curriculum.
7. Make sure staffing is up-to-date – all the time
Amanda Dale, Chief Financial Officer, The Athelstan Trust:
“Do make sure that business/finance managers involved in overseeing staffing within a school make it a part of their own processes to keep IMP Planner up-to-date. We have good internal practice guidance on how/when IMP should be updated (i.e. when someone has handed in their notice – input leaver/input vacancy). We use IMP for our payroll recs, which helps ensure this practice is followed, but IMP is also part of our recruitment approval process. All recruitment requests are required to be approved by school finance managers ahead of being approved by me. As part of that process, finance managers approve the vacancy to say it’s affordable, but they’re also required to confirm that it’s reflected in IMP. This means that when I review a recruitment request, I can be assured that the vacancy is captured in the figures and I can review the request in the context of the performance of the school as a whole, not just the staffing movement alone.”
8. Consider contextual factors
Claire Oates, Chief Operating and Financial Officer, Advance Learning Partnership:
“Ensure budgets consider each school’s unique financial and operational context:
- Lagged funding implications – For schools with fluctuating pupil numbers, long-term financial planning mitigates the risk of funding shortfalls.
- Deprivation and SEND considerations – Targeted funding streams must be factored in to ensure effective resource allocation.
- Multi-year budgeting – A longer-term approach prevents short-term fixes that may lead to financial instability.”
9. Rely on IMP Planner to strengthen decision-making
Simon Eakins, Finance Director, Cathedral Schools Trust:
“As we all know, a minute after you have frozen your budget and had it approved by Trustees, it’s out of date. This was particularly poignant when I sat in a Trustees meeting waiting for our budget to be approved only for the government to announce a 6.5% pay rise for teachers, which none of us had budgeted for. The ability for IMP Planner to get up-to-date information quickly and accurately was never more acute than this day as by the end of the meeting I was able to inform Trustees of the impact of that on our financial position. The ability to use IMP to get updates immediately means we have always started our new financial year with the most up-to-date financial information and take any action. Historically, before IMP, we rarely did any forecasting before Christmas as we were so involved in the year-end and audit but IMP allows us to seamlessly re-forecast constantly without days and days of work.”
Claire Oates, Chief Operating and Financial Officer, Advance Learning Partnership:
“Using IMP Planner and IMP ICFP has brought consistency and efficiency to our budget planning, ensuring resources are used effectively while meeting the needs of pupils. With real-time data, reliance on manual processes is reduced, improving accuracy and responsiveness.
Key benefits include:
- Integrated data – Financial and curriculum planning work together seamlessly.
- Scenario modelling – Different staffing and curriculum structures can be tested before decisions are made.
- Benchmarking insights – Trust-wide and national comparisons help support informed decision-making.”
This blog is part of our MAT Budgeting 101 where we’re helping MAT CFOs navigate the budgeting season and ensure Smarter MAT Finance through free MAT-first resources. Explore them below:
MAT Budgeting Checklist: Download here
Webinar: MAT Budgeting 101: Save your seat
