Our finance solutions support schools, academies and MATs with the tools they need to effectively manage finances to drive efficiency. From better budget forecasting to simple bill management and Integrated Curriculum Financial Planning, we support educators to make wise investments, maximise their resources, provide value for money to parents and easily manage day-to-day financial tasks.
A clear picture of your financial health
With school finances growing in complexity, you need a solution that makes things easier. SIMS FMS supports schools of all types to bring together all income and expenditure in one place to give you a real-time snapshot of your school’s finances, helping you make the right financial decisions for your school. You can instantly see the financial impact of an investment in a new computer suite or an additional teacher, helping you plan for the future more effectively. Try out different budget scenarios based on expected pupil numbers and staff levels, so you can see the combinations that work best for your school.
"SIMS FMS gives us the clarity of information to make realistic cost savings."
The Coventry School Foundation
Managing MAT and academy finances
SIMS Finance is our powerful new cloud-based solution for managing finances across academies and academy groups. The solution has been designed with the complex needs of educational users in mind to help improve efficiency and save time in the finance office. With SIMS Finance, an academy or trust will easily be able to report on, manage and improve their financial activities. Users are able to drill down from a summary of their overall budgets to transactional views in a matter of clicks and intelligent workflows streamline your key financial processes.
Simple billing management
SIMS Fees Billing supports independent schools with generating invoices and the timely collection of outstanding monies, maintaining a steady cash flow throughout the school year. With SIMS Fees Billing, you can simplify the fees process with email invoices and direct debit payment options, making it easier for parents to pay their bills on time, wherever they are. SIMS Fees Billing helps schools to reduce the time spent collecting outstanding monies and provides easy access to detailed records of overdue payments.
Integrated Curriculum Financial Planning
Working with ASCL, we have produced a series of resources which will allow schools, academies and trusts to calculate key financial and curriculum figures by combining data from SIMS and their financial package, including SIMS Finance. Driven by Power BI, the tools create a report which provide key figures and statistics and quickly allow various parameters to be changed and to see the effect.
Making Tax Digital
As you may be aware HMRC are introducing a change to the way businesses submit their VAT returns from April 2019. Both SIMS FMS6 and SIMS Finance will support customers needing to make this change to be able to submit their VAT returns electronically.
HMRC requires that from April 2019, businesses with a turnover above the VAT threshold (currently £85,000) will have to keep digital records for VAT purposes and submit their VAT returns electronically from this point. This change will affect:
- Academies and Multi Academy Trusts who are VAT registered and above VAT Threshold (currently £85,000) that submit their VAT return directly to HMRC.
- Independent schools who are VAT registered and above VAT Threshold (currently £85,000) that submit their VAT return directly to HMRC.
- Single site Maintained schools who are VAT registered and above VAT Threshold (currently £85,000) that submit their VAT return directly to HMRC.
Customers below the threshold and not registered for VAT that are currently using VAT126 returns from FMS6 will continue to do so, there are no changes to HMRC VAT126 process currently. For more information about this change visit gov.uk.
Get in touch
Are you looking for ways to manage your school’s finances easily and efficiently? Speak to a member of our dedicated sales team to learn how SIMS help schools maximise their resources. Use the contact form below or call the following numbers:
Maintained schools - 0800 170 1736
Independent or international schools - +44 (0) 1285 647500