View My Financial Insights (VMFI) tool
We wanted to make our Finance & Accountancy blog subscribers aware of the View My Financial Insights (VMFI) tool.
This blog contains information and guidance on the View My Financial Insights (VMFI) tool which provides users with insights into the financial position and performance of schools.
Is it difficult to find time for tools like this? Would it help your workload if SBS handled your annual returns? Consider a Finance Essentials subscripton: Academies | Maintained
As ever, if you have any questions about what DfE and ESFA updates and resources really mean for your school please feel free to contact our team on financeservicedesk@schoolbusinessservices.co.uk and 0345 222 1551 | Opt 5.
What does the tool do?
View My Financial Insights (VMFI) is an online tool which helps schools view and improve their financial performance. It enables academy trusts and local authorities to see all their schools in one place and provides users with an automated assessment of their data based on similar schools. This assessment identifies areas with the greatest variance, providing users with a helpful starting to point to investigate, potentially leading to improved resource management.
Significant feature: VMFI compares the financial performance of each school in an academy trust or local authority against the 30 most statistically similar schools across a range of cost categories.
Further information on the VMFI tool and sign-in instructions can be found on the ESFA website and we've provided the thoughts of the SBS Finance & Accountancy team below.
Who in a school could benefit from this?
The data and benchmarking could be beneficial to:
- Trustees: are your Trustees gaining perspective from the financial insights tool ahead of meetings?
- School finance professionals: could it offer practical day-to-day data and CPD for Finance Managers, Bursars and SBMs?
- Trust Executive teams: does SLT know how it compares to other trusts in the area when planning?
- The person responsible for the statutory returns in your school or trust (remember! SBS could take responsibility for your returns via a Finance Essentials subscription)
How does the VMFI work alongside the SRMSAT?
Whilst there is no requirement for benchmarking data to be produced at the same time as the SRMSA Checklist, one of the questions (in the SRMSAT) is 'Has the trust considered the results of the self-assessment dashboard or other DfE benchmarking tools?' and Trusts should be able to confirm that they have done this at least once in the previous academic year using the latest data available at that time. This is where the VMFI would come in.
MAT level benchmarking view
The self-assessment dashboard is one way of producing benchmarking data but it can only be done at school level and a MAT will probably want to see all their schools together. This is where the VMFI can be used as an alternative (this data used to be included in the self-assessment tool spreadsheet but has since been removed by the DfE).
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Academies/MATs Maintained Schools
This blog sources information from the ESFA
The Education Skills and Funding Agency rings together the former responsibilities of the Education Funding Agency (EFA) and Skills Funding Agency (SFA) to create a single agency accountable for funding education and skills for children, young people and adults. The SBS Finance & Accountancy team will continue to highlight updates from the ESFA that our subscribers may find useful.
