Accounts and budgets report

Budgeting

The Accounts and budgets report is probably one of the most important report to be presented to Councillor’s. It is also one of the requirements in the AGAR Internal Audit report is:

D. The precept or rates requirement resulted from an adequate budgetary process; progress against the budget was regularly monitored; and reserves were appropriate.

AGAR Annual Internal Audit Report

Easy PC Accounts encourages profiled budgeting, a method preferred by general accounts packages like Quickbooks or Sage. This approach combines Bottom-up Budgeting and Incremental Budgeting, splitting the annual budget into months. We believe this provides better insight into the true financial position of the Council, requiring less explanation to understand the figures.

According to the NALC Model Financial Regulations:

The RFO shall regularly provide the council with a statement of receipts and payments to date under each head of the budgets, comparing actual expenditure to the appropriate date against that planned as shown in the budget. These statements are to be prepared at least at the end of each financial quarter and shall show explanations of material variances. For this purpose “material” shall be in excess of £250 or 5% of the budget, whichever is the greater.

NALC Model Financial Regulations

We believe using this approach profiled budgets is the only realistic way for Councils to follow this provision and so this page describes in detail the basic budget report using this option.

Detailed Budget Report Information

The detailed information provided by the Period Budget report relies on Budgets set up when the account codes are created. Full details on Account Groups and Code can be found here;

For details on reports that show spend against budget. They are available here.

Bottom-up Budgeting

Bottom-up Budgeting involves staff, Councillors, senior management, and department managers in the budgeting process.

Advantages:

  • Councillors feel involved.
  • More likely to achieve the plans in the budget.
  • Clerk/RFO’s are closer to the business and have better knowledge of unique issues and challenges.

Incremental Budgeting

Incremental budgeting builds on past budgets, starting with the previous budget and adding (or subtracting) an incremental amount to cover inflation and other known changes.

Advantages:

  • Quick and easy to maintain.
  • Suitable for stable organisations with acceptable historic figures.

Disadvantages:

  • Embeds earlier issues and inefficiencies.
  • Economically inefficient activities can continue.
  • Encourages artificial behaviour (e.g., spending the whole budget so the same amount is included the following year).
  • Staff might be demotivated by the significant time and effort required.

Compilation Approach

Councils should consider a compilation approach, consolidating all subsidiary budgets and building a budgeted profit and loss account, balance sheet, and cash-flow statement. Easy PC offers options to improve reporting, including on specific reserves.

Budgeting has evolved beyond traditional methods to include techniques that drill down into the data driving decision-making. If our current reports don’t meet your needs, please tell us and provide examples of how we can assist you.

This report provides a list of all the account codes you have set up, together with the profiled budgets. The budgets displayed are for the current financial year.

Note: This report only displays the budgets. To see a comparison between actual spending and the budgets, use the Budget Report screen.

The report can be

  • filtered based on Reserve selected.
  • Exported to a Spreadsheet

Where you have two Reserves set against a single Account Name (Code) it lists each line separately.