Ahead of the upcoming closure of school accounts, please see a cross-team update for Devon Maintained Schools.
School Coding Changes – April 2026
Following a consultation period during the Autumn Term, it was decided to move schools over to the Unit 4 coding structure from April 2026. This process will involve closure of the current Finest coding structure used by schools in the Bromcom Finance software package.
The Education Finance Team will work with schools in the conversion of codes to the new Unit 4 coding structure, using extracted reports from Bromcom, which are then converted to the new codes and imported back into the system, ready for go-live in April this year.
Bromcom Finance
- The project team have taken feedback into consideration and have completed thorough end to end process testing, to reduce risk as far as possible.
- Following successful testing, the Finance Consultants will expect to begin the conversion process for their allocated schools week commencing Monday 26th January.
- Please Note: If you haven’t already, please ensure you Finance Consultant has the necessary remote access to your Bromcom system to assist with these changes.
- They will be in touch directly to arrange slots to complete the necessary updates to Bromcom, to enable the Unit 4 coding structure to be used in the system from April 2026.
- Once the Finance Consultants have completed the conversion process, schools must check the data to ensure the conversions have completed correctly and report any errors to their Finance Consultant contact.
- Schools are to be aware that a remote operation will be undertaken to expire the current ledger codes on March 31st and import the new Unit 4 codes globally to schools via Vision. Please ensure that you do not amend any of these changes once they are implemented.
Code Conversion
Schools will soon be able to access a code conversion sheet, to assist in conversion of old (Finest) ledger codes to new (Unit 4) account codes and vice versa. Whilst this is in development stage, please see the Schools Financial Data Power BI Dashboard, where there is a code conversion tool, accessible via the following link under the heading ‘PowerBI Reports’: Maintained School Data – Support for schools and settings
Guidance on how to find the conversion report can be found at the bottom of the page linked above.
Data Cleansing
It is important that schools complete a data cleansing exercise to ensure all transactions have been recorded against the correct item codes. Please complete any journal corrections using the Online Journal Transfer System (OJTS) ahead of the end of year closedown process. To access the OJTS, please visit the following link:Coding and consistent financial reporting (CFR) – Support for schools and settings
If you do not have access to this system, please following guidance provided via the link given above to register as a user.
Please also review Bromcom housekeeping guidance provided below to assist in preparation for closedown.
This will be the County Council’s first closedown on the Unit 4 finance software package, alongside the first closedown of the Bromcom Finance system for schools. Rest assured that Education Finance and SCOMIS Teams will be on hand to support schools through the process. Please regularly review both the Education Finance Blog and SCOMIS newsletters for the latest updates.