Case study · Education
Central finance, with every school in control of its budget
A group of schools needs one finance team and one set of books, while each head teacher still owns a budget. This is how we set up Business Central so schools can see and spend their budgets, and the central team can close and report for the whole group.
Project overview
Central finance with school-level budgets in Business Central.
- Industry
- Education
- Client
- Confidential
- Solution
- Group finance and budgeting
- Platform
- Business Central
- Timeline
- 12–18 weeks
- Team
- 3 people
- Structure
- Dimensions per school
- Funding
- Restricted and unrestricted grants
- Deployment
- Business Central online
Expected business outcomes
What the client set out to achieve
The biggest change is budget visibility in schools and less time spent answering 'how much is left?'.
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Live
Budget position for every school
Head teachers and business managers see committed and actual spend against budget at any time.
Where purchase orders are raised before ordering
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30–50%
Faster month-end
Schools post into one set of books with shared structures, so central finance stops merging spreadsheets.
Target range; depends on the number of schools
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On demand
Grant spend reports
Restricted funding tracked with dimensions, so grant returns come straight from the ledger.
Where grant codes are used consistently
Business challenges
How finance worked before
Schools joined the group with different systems and habits.
Books
Some schools on their own accounting packages, others on spreadsheets.
Budgets
Budgets set in Excel and compared with spend a few times a year.
Purchasing
Orders placed by staff and approved after the invoice arrives.
Grants
Restricted funding tracked separately to prove how it was spent.
Reporting
Central finance spends the first weeks of each month collecting figures from schools.
Proposed solution
What the Business Central build covers
One company with dimensions per school, or a company per school where statutory needs require it.
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School structure
Each school as a dimension with its own budget, approvers and reports.
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Purchase approvals
Requisitions approved by the school's budget holder before ordering, with commitments shown.
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Budgets
Annual budgets per school and cost centre, with forecast updates during the year.
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Grant tracking
Restricted funding tracked with dimensions and reported against its conditions.
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School dashboards
Budget, committed and actual spend for each school in Business Central and Power BI.
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Central team tools
Month-end, payroll journals and group reporting for the central finance team.
Project requirements
What the client asked us for
The request was centralisation, but schools worry about losing control. The design gives both: one set of books centrally, and live budgets for each school.
Purchase approvals are what make budgets meaningful, so we make raising a requisition easy for teaching staff who order only occasionally.
What the project had to deliver
- 01One set of books for the group
- 02Live budgets for every school
- 03Approvals before spend, not after
- 04Grant returns from the ledger
Key challenges & considerations
What made it harder, and what we did
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Schools joining mid-year
What we did
New schools were onboarded from a standard template, with opening balances loaded mid-year where needed.
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Different funding streams and conditions
What we did
Each funding stream was given its own dimension, so restricted funds could be reported separately.
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Occasional users who forget how to order
What we did
Requisitions were reduced to a short guided form that an occasional user could complete without training.
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Year-end timing tied to the academic calendar
What we did
Year-end and budgeting were configured around the academic year rather than the calendar year.
What we watched for
- Keep requisitions simple for occasional users
- Agree grant codes before migrating
- Onboard schools in manageable waves
- Show schools their own dashboard first
Development process
Central design, school by school rollout
Schools move over in groups so the central team isn't overwhelmed.
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Finance design
Chart of accounts, school dimensions, grant codes and approval rules agreed centrally.
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Pilot schools
Two or three schools go live first to test purchasing and budgets.
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Budgets and grants
Budget templates and grant tracking set up and checked against previous returns.
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Remaining schools
Other schools onboarded in waves, with training for business managers.
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Year-end and reporting
The first year-end run with the central team, then reports refined.
Technology stack
Business Central for the whole group
Standard finance and purchasing, organised around schools and funding.
ERP
- Business Central
- Dimensions
- Approval workflows
Purchasing
- Requisitions
- Purchase orders
- Invoice capture
Reporting
- Power BI
- Financial reports
Integration
- Payroll journals
- Bank feeds
Quality assurance & deployment
Proved on the client's own data before go-live
An ERP is trusted when the numbers agree. Configuration and extensions were tested in a sandbox on the client's own data, and finance signed off the figures before cut-over.
- Sandbox testing of every process on the client's own data
- User acceptance testing with key users, by scenario
- Migration rehearsals, reconciled to the old system
- Automated tests for extensions, run before each release
- Permission sets checked role by role
Deployment
- 01Remaining schoolsOther schools onboarded in waves, with training for business managers.
- 02Year-end and reportingThe first year-end run with the central team, then reports refined.
- 03Cut-over planA rehearsed cut-over with a checklist, opening balances signed off by finance, and a rollback point.
- 04Hypercare and warrantyConsultants on hand through the first month-end, and six months of free bug fixing.
Final deliverables
One finance function, many budget holders
The central team runs one set of books and closes the month without chasing schools for spreadsheets.
Each school sees its own budget live and approves spend before it happens, so there are fewer surprises at year-end for anyone.
- Live budgets per school
- Approvals before spend
- Grant tracking in the ledger
- A faster group month-end
Handed over to the client
- 01Configured Business CentralProduction and sandbox environments
- 02ExtensionsSource code and documentation
- 03Migrated dataReconciled and signed off
- 04Key-user trainingWith process guides
- 05Six-month warrantyFree bug fixing after delivery
Success metrics
How success is measured
| Measure | Outcome | How it is measured |
|---|---|---|
| Budget position for every school | Live | Where purchase orders are raised before ordering |
| Faster month-end | 30–50% | Target range; depends on the number of schools |
| Grant spend reports | On demand | Where grant codes are used consistently |
Verified reviews
What clients say about our Dynamics work
Verified reviews from our clients on the same kind of work, published on Clutch.
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