Salary Reconciliation and Monitoring

Available for both maintained schools and academies

Schools spend between 75% and 80% of their funding on staffing costs. SMS recommends that staffing budgets are based on an accurate calculation of on-costs, rather than on estimates, and are monitored based on actual contractual commitments. In our experience budget monitoring can quickly become inaccurate or is time-consuming to produce over the course of the year as the staffing complement changes. SMS can help schools to increase the accuracy and speed of producing effective reports, giving senior leaders and governors the ability to make informed staffing and budgeting decisions.

Many schools use Capita SIMS for their HR database and accounting software. Automated links are available, generating commitments in the accounting system based on the contractual information held in the personnel system. This enables schools to reconcile payroll information monthly, and complete a variance analysis on individual payments. SMS can assist schools with every aspect of this process, including the following:

1. Configuring the links between SIMS Personnel and SMS FMS6

2. Setting up the automatic reconciliation of payroll information (see below)

3. Data cleansing of SMS Personnel Data

4. Salary variance reporting.

Note: for schools using other accounting software, it is possible to implement spreadsheet solutions to replicate the above processes.

SMS recommends the use of the salary auto reconciliation feature available within SIMS FMS6. Automating the process of posting payroll can save valuable time, and we can assist on setting this up. Configuration arrangements will depend on the format of the information available from your payroll provider.

Where your payroll provider does not provide a text file for direct import into FMS, we can usually create a text file for you.

A site visit will be undertaken to set up the system parameters within FMS, after which the files will be produced off site, with files securely stored for retrieval by authorised staff via a web link.