20 April 2018
The online form for the academies BFRO has now been made available by the Education & Skills Funding Agency.
The deadline for submission is Monday 21 May 2018.
The good news is that the BFRO uses the same IT platform that trusts used for their accounts return.
This means that the preparer or approver of the accounts return have been allocated the same role for the completion of the BFRO. Please note that if any of your roles have changed, then you’ll need to register on the academies financial returns online form registration page.
All active academy trusts as at 31 March 2018 are required to complete the BFRO on an accruals and prepayments basis.
Multi-academy trusts (MATS) preparing aggregated financial statements of more than one academy must submit a consolidated return, which aggregates the budgets of each of its academies.
In order to reduce the number of returns trusts have to submit, new trusts and established trusts that opened new academies in April 2018 do not need to submit separate in-year budget forecast return for new openers.
Instead, trusts should include financial outturn information for their new academies in their BFRO by 21 May.
Where an academy transfers out of a trust the financial data submitted should only apply to the periods where the academy is actually a part of the trust.
Why a 31 March reporting date?
The Department for Education is required to provide HM Treasury with updated financial information from the academy sector for the financial year ending 31 March 2018 to support the Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses national statistics release.
The second return called the Budget Forecast Return – BFR which focuses on the projected financial position of trusts up to August 2019 will go live in June 2018. The deadline for academy trusts to submit their BFR 2018 is Monday 30 July 2018.
If you require any help with understanding the requirements or completing your BRFO, please contact me or your local academy expert. To read more of our academy school blogs, click here.
