Budget setting is never quick or easy. It takes months of preparation, lots of meetings, agreeing assumptions, resolving tricky issues, and balancing priorities across multiple schools. Without clear structures, all that hard work can unravel at the final hurdle.
Finalising the budget shouldn’t feel like herding cats. But for many MAT finance teams, that’s exactly how it feels – chasing incomplete submissions, second-guessing assumptions, and trying to pull together inconsistent figures across schools.
Budget finalisation is one of the most critical moments in the MAT finance calendar. Yet without clear structures and trust-wide visibility, it can become reactive, fragmented, and stressful.
With the right approach, budget finalisation can move from a scramble to a controlled, collaborative process that gives leaders confidence in the numbers.
Why budget finalisation often breaks down
There are common reasons why budget finalisation can fall apart:
- Schools working in silos on different timelines, with their own assumptions.
- Limited trust-level visibility, making it hard to see where changes have been made.
- Manual reviews and duplicated work as teams compare multiple versions.
- Last-minute tweaks that slip through without proper sign-off.
- Disconnected tools that create more friction than clarity.
The result? A final budget that may be locked in without full assurance – and central teams left to make sense of the gaps.
What good budget finalisation looks like
A strong finalisation process is structured, collaborative, and visible. Here’s what good looks like:
- Schools start early, building drafts using the previous year’s forecast as a baseline.
- All schools work within a shared framework of drivers, assumptions, and templates.
- Reviews happen first at school level, then at trust level – with clear deadlines and responsibilities.
- Budget movements and adjustments are tracked and easy to follow.
- Benchmarking is used to sense-check realism and spot outliers before sign-off.
- Preparing the BFR becomes a natural next step, not a separate scramble.
How IMP Planner helps
With the right system in place, these good practices become the norm – not the exception. IMP Planner supports trusts to:
- Build baseline budgets using live forecast data, so schools aren’t starting from scratch.
- Use shared templates and assumptions while giving schools flexibility where it matters.
- Manage reviews with clear workflows, tracked changes, and version control.
- Benchmark budgets to test assumptions and compare schools.
- Lock down final budgets to prevent unapproved last-minute changes.
- Bridge seamlessly into BFR preparation with built-in reporting.
The result is less chasing, fewer surprises, and more trust in the final numbers.
Wrapping up
Budget finalisation doesn’t have to be a rush job — and review shouldn’t be a blind approval.
With IMP Planner, MATs can move from fragmented spreadsheets and inconsistent assumptions to a unified, transparent process that puts finance leaders in control.
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