Financial Management Administration Guide
Overview
The Financial Management module is located under the Organisation (grid icon) menu and is where Purchase Orders and Sub-Program Budgets are managed.
Permissions
For staff to access the Administration features of the Financial Management module, they will require the BudgetAdmin permission. To have administrative access to all Purchase Orders, staff will also require the PurchaseOrderAdmin permission.
For information on Permissions in Compass, please refer to the 'Permissions' article from our Knowledge Base.
School Details
Compass Purchase Orders are generated including your school's details - this includes the school's delivery address, contact number and ABN. You can add these details to Compass by going to Administration Tools (under the cog icon) and click 'Campus Details'. From here you can add any additional campuses if you are a multi-campus school, and add addresses (both billing and delivery) for each campus. Please note that to access Administration Tools, staff require the Configure permission.
Financial Periods
A financial period is a period of time covered by a certain school budget. Generally, most schools use a calendar year. Any Purchase Orders generated are done so in whichever financial period you currently have set as 'Relevant'.
To create a new financial period click on the 'Financial Period' button at the top of the Financial Management page in Compass.
This will take you to the Financial Period screen. Click the 'Add Financial Year' button.
Give the Financial Period a name and complete the details.
| Current Period | Denotes that this year is the current financial period. All reports and tables will default to display this financial period within Compass. |
| Units | Selecting 'Use Units' gives the school the ability to further divide each sub-program within the budget into Units, allowing expenses to be divided into different categories within a sub-program. This setting is used to control options within the Budgeting module, please refer to the Budgets documentation for more information. |
| Calculated Request | Allows for expenses to be calculated per head. This setting is used to control options within the Budgeting module, please refer to the Budgets documentation for more information. |
| Evaluation | Selecting 'Include Eval' will require sub-program managers to submit an evaluation of their budget from the previous year before submitting their budget requests for the next cycle. This setting is used to control options within the Budgeting module, please refer to the Budgets documentation for more information. |
| Previous Period | Defines the previous financial year or budget, if set up within Compass. This can be left blank. This setting is used to control options within the Budgeting module, please refer to the Budgets documentation for more information. |
Once you have completed all the settings for the newly created Financial Period, click on the green tick to save.
Revenue and Expense Accounts
Revenue and Expense accounts can be imported into Compass.
The exported data can be imported into Compass via the 'Accounts' page of the Financial Management module. This is accessed through the 'Accounts' button at the top of the screen. The applicable account can then be selected when adding items to Purchase Orders or preparing Budgets.
This screen will show any already imported Accounts for your school. In the lower section is the option to Import your latest Account file. Click 'Choose File', select the file from your device and then click 'Upload'.
Please Note: When importing a new file of your Accounts, any existing Accounts not in the new file will be archived in Compass.Settings control which Revenue and Expense categories are available for staff to use within the Purchase Order and Budgeting module. By default when the categories are imported, Expense and Revenue items will be set to AllStaff, Asset items will be set to AdminOnly.
To edit this click on the 'Edit' (pencil) icon against the account category and change the settings using the options in the drop down menu. Click the tick icon to save your change.
Schools use these settings to restrict access to certain categories so that Purchase Orders cannot be created in all categories.
Sub-Programs
Please refer to the 'Budgets and Sub-Programs' article from our Knowledge Base for information on Sub-Programs.
Creditors
A Creditor is a business that provides goods or services to the school and is the recipient of purchase orders from the school.
Creditors imported are referred to as System Creditors and are available to all staff for selection when creating a Purchase Order.
A list of the school's current creditors can be imported into Compass. Please contact the Compass support team for a copy of the latest SQL script and export instructions.
The Creditors file can be uploaded to Compass via the 'Creditors' section, which can be accessed using the button at the top of the Financial Management dashboard.
Please Note: Any existing Creditors not included in your newly imported file will be archived in Compass.Victorian Public Schools: For further details on exporting this data from CASES, please refer to the 'Financial Management and CASES' article from our Knowledge Base.The school can choose to allow staff to create additional creditors directly into Compass. These additional creditors are stored on a per-user basis in the staff member's 'My Creditors' section on the Creditors page and can only be used in Purchaser Orders by the person who created the creditor. Because of this, Compass recommends importing all needed creditors for ease of access for staff.
To allow staff to create their own creditors, click the 'Configure Settings' option at the top of the Financial Management page.
Ensure the 'Purchaser Ordering:Show 'My Creditors' option is ticked. Click 'Update' to save the setting. Likewise to turn this feature off, untick the option and click 'Update'.
Approving a Purchase Order
All purchase orders go through a two step approval process - the Sub-Program Manager's approval (which may include multiple sub-program managers) and the Business Manager. For information on the approval process please refer to the 'Purchase Order' article from our Knowledge Base.
By default, any user who has the PurchaseOrderAdmin permission and who creates a purchase order cannot approve their own order. It requires the approval of another staff member who has the PurchaseOrderAdmin permission. If you would like to allow staff with this permission to approve their own orders, click the 'Configure Settings' button at the top of the Financial Management page.
Tick the box for the 'PurchaseOrderAdmins can approve their own POs:' and click 'Update' to save your change. Likewise to turn this off at any time, untick the box and click 'Update'.
Throughout the approval process, users with administration access to the Purchase Order module, such as the Business Manager or staff with the PurchaseOrderAdmin permission, have the ability to edit the details of any section of a purchase order.
Managing Purchase Orders
You can view the list of Purchase Orders by using the options in the 'Currently Viewing' filter.
Once a purchase order has been completed and the goods received, the status of the purchase order can be updated to 'Archived' by clicking on the 'Update Status' button at the top of a purchase order. You can also bulk archive multiple orders at once by selecting them and then clicking 'Action Selected' and then 'Archive Selected'.
ABN
To add your school's ABN, click the 'Configure Settings' option at the top of the Financial Management page and enter the ABN in the associated field. Click 'Update' to save.
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