This guide explains how to produce and export the Budget Forecast Return (BFR), and how actuals are imported into the template.
Budget Forecast Return export
You can run the Budget Forecast Return template for a single school from the Academy Reports tab in the Reporting module. To run a consolidated version, follow the steps below:
Click Manage Budgets then ensure you've published the relevant scenarios.
Click Consolidated Reporting then click the Academy Reports tab.
Under Academies Budget Forecast, click Export.
The Budget Forecast Return requires you to submit both a one-year forecast and a three-year forecast. The budget values you enter into your scenario populate the Forecast column on the worksheet for the one-year BFR, and the two subsequent academic years' columns for the three-year forecast. The specific academic years covered, and the name of the worksheet, are confirmed each year in the relevant year's BFR update article.
This applies to all income and expenditure lines including capital.
Automatic Import of actuals
The Academy Budget Forecast report automatically populates with the Trial Balance data from Education Finance, to populate the Previous Year and Current Year actuals.
This improves accuracy by ensuring figures match the official finance system, and saves staff time previously spent copying numbers between systems.
📌Note: To benefit from this, your organisation needs to have an active Education Finance product subscription. If your organisation does not use Education Finance, you'll need to import actuals manually using the steps below.
Manual import of actuals
If your organisation doesn't use Access Education Finance, you can import actuals into the BFR template manually:
In your finance system, run a Trial Balance Report grouped by ledger code, for the relevant periods (e.g. the previous academic year and the current academic year to date).
Export the report, then select and copy the data rows, from the first data row down to the bottom totals.
Open the BFR template and click the Trial Balance Data tab.
Paste the copied data onto the corresponding table.
Click Data, then click Refresh All.
Once you've done this, the actuals will be summed by formulas in the corresponding cells on the BFR tab. You can type over these formulas if you need to manually enter a Forecast figure for the current year column.
📌Note: If you don't have the DfE Chart of Accounts, you can enter the Trial Balance data manually instead, using the relevant sections of the DfE's BFR workbook to map your ledger or nominal codes against the correct BFR line numbers.
Section Code mappings
Actuals and budget values are mapped from Access Education Budgets Sections to BFR Row numbers using the DfE Chart of Accounts. These mappings are maintained by Access and reviewed each year; any changes to the mappings for a given year are detailed in that year's BFR update article.