The Finance module in Edvance is your board-facing finance preparation workspace. It is not an accounting system — it is where you bring your school's financial picture together into a form the board can review, understand, and stand over at each meeting.

Finance is organised into five sections, each corresponding to a distinct input the board needs:

Section 1 — Enrolment & funding

Enter your school's enrolment figures to generate a funding estimate based on current capitation and grant rates. Edvance calculates the expected income from the Department of Education based on your school type (primary, post-primary, DEIS, fee-paying, etc.) and enrolment numbers. The output is a structured estimate you can submit to the board and, for primary schools, use to generate the October Returns workbook for submission to your funding authority.

Section 2 — Finance material for the board

Upload the finance documents that give the board the clearest picture of your school's position — any combination of:

• Annual budget
• Management accounts
• Audited annual accounts
• Cashflow projection / bank & cash position
• Payroll summaries
• Funding reports

None of these are individually required — you include what is relevant for each board cycle. Edvance analyses each upload, extracts the key figures, and routes them through a short confirmation step before anything goes into a board pack.

Section 3 — Financial developments

Capture the school-specific financial context the board should be aware of at this meeting — things that are not visible in the numbers alone. This might include unexpected grant delays, cost pressures, staffing changes, capital receipts, or cashflow risks since the last meeting. This section is freeform and manual, written by you for the board.

Section 4 — Official finance updates

Review any Department of Education or FSSU publications since the last board meeting that have a financial bearing on your school — new grant circulars, capitation changes, or financial reporting guidance. Edvance surfaces these from your Circulars & Guidance feed. You confirm which updates are relevant to include before they appear in the board pack.

Section 5 — Board finance position

The assembled, board-ready view of your school's financial position for this cycle — drawing from Sections 1–4 once confirmed. This is what the board sees in the board pack. Once you are satisfied, you hand it off to the board pack as a locked finance section. The figures and materials are frozen at that point — any later changes require you to explicitly update the pack.

Supporting workspaces

For detailed work on specific finance areas, Edvance provides dedicated workspaces accessible from the Finance module:

• Budgets — build and finalise your annual budget with line-level detail
• Cashflow — model your cash position across 12 months
• October Returns — generate and review the Department of Education October Returns workbook, with figure extraction from standard workbook formats

These workspaces feed into the board finance position — their finalised figures are pulled through automatically once locked.

What the Finance module does not do

Edvance does not submit returns to the Department of Education or FSSU on your behalf. It does not replace your school's accounting software or payroll system. It organises and structures the financial picture for board oversight — the actual submission and accounting workflows remain with your existing systems.