1. University Challenge.. Or how Planner is used at the University of Southampton! Alan Nicholas (Head of Financial Systems, Finance Department ) 3rd February 2015

2. 2 What am I going to cover The University Context ‘Project’ Budgets ‘Targets’ and ‘Financial’ Budgets ‘Forecasts’

3. The University of Southampton Context Russell Group Member, focused on teaching and research Turnover approximately £490 million Research Income approximately £110million Number of New Research Project Budgets per yr - 500 Number of Non Research Budget Lines per year – 140k ABW (since Sep 2007) –currently 5.5.3 u14 (Milestone4 in UAT) 3

4. Project Budgets Cover the entire lifecycle of a Research Project Entered as combination of Account and SubProject Entered into a single period (To enable lifetime enquiries) Balance to zero Entered manually by Faculty Finance Teams (Junior staff) Positive Benefit: –Budget holders (and Finance!) can see ‘Left to spend’ values 4

5. Project Budget – Completed Entry 5

6. Project Budget – B’Holder Enquiry 6

7. Targets and Financial Budgets - 1 Cover a Financial Year (eg Income, Staff Costs, Other costs) Entered as combination of Account and SubProject Entered into multi-periods (To enable Fin YTD enquiries) Base calculations excel-based, transferred to excel template Entered via Excelerator Post Back by Central Finance Team Create ‘Targets’ (fixed) and ‘Financial Budgets’ (can then be ‘zero-sum adjusted/vired by Faculty Finance Teams using Post Back) 7

8. Targets and Financial Budgets - 2 Challenges: –Getting Targets/ Financial Budgets set at the right level of detail (most successfully done in Professional Service Departments) –Changes to Financial Budgets ‘add’ to existing entries –Notes can be held within Planner (right amount of meaningful detail) –Excelerator is sometimes grumpy (unresponsive)! 8

9. Target – Upload Template 9

10. Financial Budget – B’Holder Enquiry 10

11. Forecasts Estimate of position at end of Financial Year Entered as combination of Account and SubProject Entered into a single period (To enable Year End Budget v Forecast Reports In Management Accounts Pack) Entered via Excelerator Post Back by Faculty Finance Teams Forecasts created for Jan, then each month from April Forecasts overwrite the previous Forecast (so history is not retained, although notes can be held against forecasts) 11

12. Alan Nicholas apn2@soton.ac.uk