SMART Finance News You Can Use

Coding salaries to the new Covid grant finance dimensions is proving to be a challenge.  Some funds are being carried forward for one or more years which means districts will have to use different course numbers for each year (one time only), then the accounts have to be changed back.  Some salary accounts have to be coded differently up to 3 ways during the same fiscal year depending on when the funds were requested from MDE and spent by the district. All districts seem to have d...

As you are working through your accounting before the year end, remember that a great tool to use is the SERVS/UFARS budget comparison report. Currently you will not see any dollars in the UFARS columns, but this report will guide you on what your district has requested for Object and Course year so that you can make sure your revenue and expenses in UFARS match.Go to:  MDE/Data Center/Data Reports and Analytics/SERVS Financial Public ReportsChoose the year:  2020 for last year, 2...

The SMART Finance Budget Workpapers can be a very useful tool for completing the FY22 budget.  Here are some of the features that can be used: For both revenue and expense, as a starting point, copy the FY21 budget to FY22. For revenues, highlight the rows that have been addressed/changed by clicking the box in front of the account.  This will cause the line to highlight in yellow. For expenses, increase all accounts or ranges of account by a specified percent.  For example, incre...

With the enrollment fluctuations and unexpected Covid revenue, now might be a good time to review both revenue and expenditure budgets. On the revenue side, note the following: Compare your current enrollment with the enrollment used to prepare the original budget.  If there are material differences, use MDE’s revenue projection model to review/change the revenue budget.  When using the Revenue Projection Model, on the Gen Ed tab at the bottom of the spreadsheet, don’t forg...