In general Chest budgets are set at the beginning of the financial year. It is the responsibility of the School Business Partners and institution heads of finance to organise the upload of institutional budgets, as detailed in the Blue Book, into UFS.
During the financial year it is possible to vire (or transfer) budgets. The main categories of budget virement are:
| Grant of additional resources to an institution from a School reserve. |
For academic institutions in Schools and divisions within the UAS, devolved budgeting has meant that the School or UAS is expected to manage within a total budget envelope. In practice this means that monies for specific ad hoc items, e.g. the purchase of a new photocopier, is now funded from School/UAS reserves instead of the non-recurrent grant pot. The only difference between this and the previous type of budget virement is where the monies come from. |
| Transfer of monies within an institution from one source of funds to another. |
A budget is an estimate of planned future expenditure. Therefore, it can make sense to revise the budget in-year to reflect a known change in activity. A typical example is where the budget for institutional cleaning was set up on Wages (source of funds ACAA) and during the year contract cleaners are employed. The cleaning budget can be vired from Wages to Other Charges (AAAA) so that budget and expenditure are in the same place, assisting in the process of budgetary control. |
However, it is not good practice simply to vire budgets so that budget and actual are in line i.e. surpluses or deficits do not mean a budget virement is required. All budget virements must be processed via your Finance Business Partner and Institution head of finance.