In Financial Management we introduced the tracking and control of ICT costs. We
gave you an overview of the whole process and an implementation guide giving
step-by-step instructions to help you implement a financial management process
that we believe is appropriate for the needs of schools. An operations guide gave
you a list of ongoing activities required by the process in order for you to keep it
going and reap the benefits. We described roles and responsibilities and offered
guidance on how to assign roles. We removed anything non- essential to give you a
lean process requiring the minimum of effort and resource.
Check your understanding of the process by following:
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Step
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Tasks
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Budget for future expenditure
on ICT equipment, services
and related items.
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Estimate how much money is needed to provide,
maintain and support the ICT services that are required
by the users and/or decide how to spend the money
that will be available.
This exercise must take into account all ICT-related
expenditure, not just the cost of equipment. This may
include maintenance contracts, consumables, repairs,
upgrades, replacements, staff costs, third-party support
costs and so on.
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Account for expenditure
against the ICT budget.
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Keep records of your expenditure so that you can
measure actual costs against forecast costs. This helps
to refine the budgeting step for next time by providing
more accurate data.
These records are also useful for identifying potential
cost savings in the future, such as buying in bulk,
consolidating suppliers, negotiating discounts and so
on.
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Recover costs through
charging for ICT services, if
appropriate.
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Agree fees for ICT services to enable those
responsible for ICT technical support to recover some
of the cost of their service provision.
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What you should expect now that you have implemented financial
management
- ICT expenditure is carried out by those authorised to do so.
- All staff involved in the purchasing of ICT equipment and services are familiar
with FITS Financial Management.
- Any staff who are required to do so, keep a record of their expenditure. on ICT
- Expenditure on end-user requirements is incurred only with appropriate
authorisation.
- There is a culture of cost- consciousness in ICT
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What you should have achieved through financial management
- Details are recorded of all financial transactions relating to ICT equipment and
services.
- You have a clear picture at all times of how much money has been spent on ICT.
- ICT budgets include expenditure required on supporting items, not just
hardware and software.
- ICT budgets are refined each budgetary period, using the records of actual
expenditure from the previous or current period.
- Regular expenditure reports are produced.
- If charging for ICT services is appropriate, you can use actual costs as a
starting point for setting charges.
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Benefits of having implemented Financial Management
- You can account for all money spent on ICT equipment.
- Knowing how much money is left in the budget helps you to decide whether you
can meet any unplanned expense.
- You can identify expenditure on items not budgeted for to prevent overall
overspend.
- Budgeting becomes increasingly accurate as financial information improves.
- Being able to see patterns in spending can highlight potential cost savings such
as bulk buying.
- Keeping a record of expenditure helps to highlight any problem areas such as
unauthorised purchasing.
- You can see the bigger picture of how money is distributed across ICT
requirements.
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