Not one, but TWO releases in May...

Our early May release introduced 'contract types' to SBS Online, enabling schools to create multiple types of teacher and support contracts. Assigned to each 'contract type' are settings for weeks per year, hours per week (therefore differing FTE calculations), pension contributions and inflation levels. This therefore allows for even greater in-depth staffing workforce models and restructure analysis.

Additionally, in early May, we released:

• The Multi-school Budget Monitor. This allows trusts and other multi-school organisations to run a consolidated budget monitor, achieving an overall projected year end financial forecast.
• A new 'Budget comparison' report, allowing users to directly compare any two budget scenarios, for any financial year, highlighting variances.

The second release in May saw a shift in focus to address the menus and reports in SBS Online. A number of our users had mentioned that they would like to be able to export the reports in a more consolidated format. We were also aware that the menu items were growing and were keen for these to not appear 'cluttered'.

The results of this May release were:

• Second-level menus under the 'Budget Planning' and 'Multi-school' menus when more than one reporting code is selected at budget level. From these sub-menus users can access those reports which are less frequently used.
• Consolidated reporting views allowing for a more compact PDF export, condensing the reports to the minimum possible number of pages.
• All user notes showing on reports and monitors now appear as footnotes on export files.

Additionally, we tightened up the controls for budget codes and budget entries. Users are no longer able to enter a budget entry or create a budget code where the selected reporting codes contradict one another in relation to the category (brought forward, income, expenditure).

As ever, should you have any questions or concerns, please contact the helpdesk!

What Next?: Third tier reporting and monitoring...

Our main development focus is third tier reporting and monitoring, known to many as cost centres. This will be a huge breakthrough for SBS Online, but more importantly our customers, as it will enable you to dissect your budgets in any way you wish (as existing in your finance system) and not only report on it, but run monitor reports to achieve year end financial forecasts by cost centre!

Cost centres will:

• be set up in SBS Online through manual input or import with basic information
  overlay any nominal / budget code (2nd tier)
• be applied to any budget entry, manually or through import
• be applied to a Service term, applied at Basic, NI and Super
• be reported as a whole or individually
• have available monitoring where users can select which cost centre to view
• be available at Multi-school level

As with all new releases, full details will be offered in the home screen with updated interactive help articles.