Welcome back, and we hope you had a good Easter break and enjoyed the sunshine, chocolate and no school finance. Hopefully you are now fully recharged and ready for the coming Summer term…
A big thank you for meeting the deadlines for submission of information.
The end of year process is all somewhat new with DCC undertaking its first close down in Unit 4, and the challenges around coding changes have meant that we need to set out some practical suggestions for schools around the 2025/26 year end and the opening of 2026/27.
Historically to introduce your end adjustments( Accruals and Prepayments) submitted as part of the year end process you have entered a Reversing journal in your finance system, which the system then puts into the new financial year as the opposite entry to the old financial year. For example, creditors were entered as a debit in the old financial year and the system put a credit into the new financial year so that when you paid the bills there was no impact on the new financial year for the outstanding old year transactions.
As a result of the coding changes the process this year will need to be different and as was said at the bursar briefings we can’t do reversing journals as the codes will be different.
Accruals and Prepayments – Process to follow below is:
In 2025/26 enter a standard journal to reflect the transactions you submitted on your year end work book and x-back form, you will see something like the screen shot below.
After entering all the transactions as per the workbook, you will be able to save and post in the old year. It can only be in the old year as the codes used in this journal don’t exist in 2026/27!
Please note the following:
X-Back submissions will show on the PowerBI Dashboard and have been processed into the system based on your submissions via AnyComms pre-populated form. If you did not submit entries for processing, or a nil return, accruals will have been posted based on previous year actuals.
End of Year Adjustment workbook entries will not be suppressed and will be downloaded as part of the old year reconciliation files, you can just delete them after entering the standard journal.
The end of year adjustment transactions will be easily identifiable as they will all start with the narrative EAL 25/26 and a unique sequence number.
Period 13 Reconciliation files –
Period 13 reconciliation files can be downloaded from DTSApps but cannot be imported into Bromcom until you close all prior financial years and run a preliminary closedown, this will allow you to import and reconcile to period 13. You will get an error running preliminary closedown for 25/26 if previous years are not closed.
Please see page 6 in Bromcom guidance Finance End of Year Guide
Important – Remember to open the 2026/27 financial year! When the code conversion was undertaken we did not open the year!
Important – In 2026/27 you will need to enter a further standard journal doing the reverse of the above journal in the 2025/26 year. Please see screenshot below
Balance to Finest for 2024/25 year –
It is important that you balance to Finest before you do final close for that year, Bromcom will charge for reopening the year so that you can correct the carry forward.
The figures brought forward should match the notified carry forwards..
Again, the transactions will come down on suspense and you will need to delete them if you have undertaken the standard journal as above.
Please do not process the journal and the transactions on suspense as it will cause you to not balance to Unit4, and you have had enough challenges over the last 12 months with not balancing to Unit4!
Our thanks go to several schools who bravely volunteered to send up some transactions for us to test the new payments system. Their help should mean that when you try to pay bills in 2026/27 the process should work as expected and your suppliers will get paid.
Following checking the batches that were submitted as part of the test we are able confirm that you can now pay bills in 2026/27 on the unit 4 codes.
If you have any questions please contact your finance consultant, and we want to take this opportunity to wish you a Happy New Financial Year!
As a reminder, please submit an outturn FRS by the 1st May, and submitting your budget by the end of June. If you have any issues with setting a balanced budget, please get in touch.
Schools Online Journal Transfer System
An updated version of the Schools OJTS is being worked on by the team to bring this up to date with the new coding structure. This system is in testing phase at present and further updates will be shared as soon as this is ready for your use.