All Birmingham Maintained Schools will be a “Full Cheque Book” school by April 2025. drb has plenty of experience of working with schools through the transition from a maintained school to a Cheque Book School.
We have learnt that, operationally, there are many challenges which a school needs to prepare for:-
- Reviewing the Finance & Administration team skill-set to effectively manage the operation of the cheque book
- Correcting the school’s current ledger system / Trial Balance to correct the effects of the previous year’s balances and transactions
- Ensuring the new system set up is complete and codes mapped accordingly
- The operational impact of reporting in a Consolidated Financial Reporting format
- Establishing opening balance journals along with accruals and prepayments
- Completion of the BCC compliance returns and monthly returns
- BACS system setup
This is a major change to the way in which the schools operate and inevitably there will be issues which will arise from both BCC and the schools perspective. Having worked with cheque book schools and managed their conversions in Birmingham, drb is fully aware of the potential issues and the resolutions needed.
If you would like to find out more about our support, please contact Doug Skinner on 07843 282535
