Provision of Financial Management and Procurement system

The Academies for Character and Excellence is a growing primary school Multi-Academy Trust currently comprising 20 schools, with anticipated growth to 25 schools during the tender period with future further growth anticipated in coming years. The Trust is undertaking pre-market engagement to inform a forthcoming procurement for a new Financial Management System to be deployed across the Trust and its schools. The solution will be required to support all core finance functions including general ledger, budgetary controls, accounts payable and receivable, bank and cash management, fixed assets, and statutory and management reporting in line with ESFA and DfE requirements.

The Trust is seeking a modern, cloud hosted system that offers strong multi entity capability, enabling central Trust oversight alongside appropriate devolved access for individual schools. A key element of this procurement is the provision of an integrated purchasing and procurement portal for school based users. This is expected to support requisitioning, approval workflows, purchase ordering, goods receipting, supplier management, and budgetary controls.

The Trust is particularly interested in solutions that improve visibility and control of spend, reduce manual processing, and support consistent processes across a growing Trust. The Trust currently uses IMP for budget planning and forecasting and would welcome engagement with suppliers whose solutions can integrate effectively with this environment. Scalability, automation, efficiency of transactions, and robust reporting will be central considerations, with a strong emphasis on reducing central administrative workload while improving access to timely financial information.