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Star Academy accounting software

The accounting and budgeting platform specifically developed for the education sector by school finance specialists with over 20 years experience.

  • Developed by academy finance managers for academy finance managers
  • Customisable to your trust
  • Cloud-based - available any time and anywhere
  • Cost-effective
  • Fully-compliant with DfE and ESFA requirements

Star Academy is the result of collaboration between EducationFinance and our group of academy stakeholders. The result is a fully-integrated, cost effective accounting and budgeting platform that specifically meets the needs of academies and MATs.

Note: The audio for this video is background music only, but a screen-reader-friendly transcript of the text on the slides can be downloaded. (PDF) [117KB]

Meeting your needs flexibly

Star Academy enables you to carry out all the accounting and budgeting processes required of an academy. It gives you complete flexibility to customise your chart of accounts and apply a reporting framework that characterises how your trust operates. You can manage your supplier customer records to create orders, transactions, invoicing, receipts, payments and carry out reconciliations efficiently.

Star supports both single-academy trusts (SATs) and multi-academy trusts (MATs). MATs can produce reports on individual sites, a selection of sites or the entire trust with the ability to post journals across the various entities. MATs with a central finance function are able to control all of the finance operations on behalf of their schools or deploy certain accounting tasks to their schools. It's a totally flexible solution.

Key features

  • Enhanced staff monitoring - to ensure you keep on track with your budget
  • Payroll import function - saving time on manual entries
  • Comprehensive and personalised set of reports - meeting the needs of trustees, DfE, ESFA and EFA
  • Asset register - to ensure all assets are tracked in one place
  • Budget planner software included (this can also be purchased as a standalone budgeting toolkit
  • Document storage facility
  • Web portal enables access to ordering and reports with new features coming soon!
  • Accessible on your laptop, smartphone and tablet wherever you are

Please note: full functionality is listed below.

Expert support included

Annual subscription includes a dedicated helpline, user guides and a selection of e-learning courses included in the price - so no hidden costs. The technical and operational helpline support is provided by the developers and users of the system, so they really know all the details.

Because EducationFinance is a not-for-profit organisation our focus is on helping you to provide the best education possible. We're able to bring Star Academy to you at a very cost-effective annual subscription rate. Our roadmap of future developments is informed by the academy stakeholder group and ensures that improvements continue to be made.

"At every stage of development, myself and other end users have been involved, consulted and listened to via the STAR Academy Network Group which meets regularly to discuss developments and share ideas. The end result is a user-friendly financial accounting software system which fully meets our needs and those of our Trustees and external auditors." - Business Manager

"STAR Accounts is used in all of our schools in The Yare Education Trust and is both very user friendly, easy to navigate and has scope to produce financial information to satisfy our requirements. The support we receive is prompt and positive, with a comprehensive online user guide easily accessible." - Assistant School Business Manager

Star Academy functionality

  • Staff monitoring - provides detailed analysis of each staff member month by month comparing budget to actual
  • Payroll important feature - ability to import your payroll details into the accounting system saving time on manual journal entries
  • Debtors module - feature to create invoices to parents and lettings. Data will link to your accounts
  • BACS facility - ability to create weekly/monthly bacs file to pay suppliers electronically
  • Monthly monitoring reporting - summary and detailed reports - annual budget compared to current month and year to date
  • Inventory register - track all your items that need to be included on an asset register
  • Multiple income posting facility
  • Activity accounts - provide reports to trustees on each trip or activity
  • VAT returns - paperwork required is produced
  • Aged creditor report
  • Aged debtor report
  • Debtor chase letters
  • Month end reports - automatically prints package of reports
  • Budget profiling
  • Split VAT transactions
  • Future year payments
  • Petty cash reconciliation
  • Bank reconciliation
  • Multiple coding transactions
  • Year end posting, ie debtors, creditors, depreciation, pension, funds, etc
  • Year end reports package
  • Web based order portal
  • Web based reporting portal
  • Integrated budget planner software - saving you time with creating manual budget spreadsheets as the system is updated for you
  • Cashflow forecast
  • Advanced management account reports
  • Web based accounting suite - currently cloud based in MS Access
  • Monthly accrual and prepayment posting
  • Scan prime documents to the system
  • Online authorisation of orders and transactions - can be set at different levels and turned on or off

Download the Star Academy Accounting Software brochure (PDF) [1MB].

For more information and all your EducationFinance enquiries please ring our designated Finance helpline number 01603 307758 or email finance.support@norfolk.gov.uk.