IMP Software launches finance platform for schools

IMP Software has launched IMP Finance for multi-academy trusts, independent schools and further education colleges, extending its education finance software range.

The platform is aimed at education finance teams managing complex structures across schools, campuses, funding streams, central teams and projects. It is built specifically for the way finance functions operate in multi-academy trusts, independent schools and colleges, rather than adapted from software designed for other sectors.

At the centre of the system is a budget-led posting model designed to address a common finance problem: budgets and actual transactions often do not align until staff reclassify entries at month-end. With IMP Finance, purchase orders, invoices and journals post directly against budgets, so actual spending aligns with budget structures from the outset.

That allows finance teams to track remaining balances against budget lines throughout the month instead of waiting for month-end reconciliations. Transactions can also carry multiple dimensions of analysis, including school or campus, department, activity, project, fund and individual staff member.

This reflects the range of operating models across the education sector. Some academy trusts pool General Annual Grant funding, some top-slice budgets, some centralise finance and others devolve responsibility to individual schools. Independent schools may operate as a single institution, part of a wider group or within a foundation structure, while colleges can span more than one campus.

Before launch, the first customers had already signed up, with 34 going live in the current month. IMP Software added that 125 trusts and more than 1,000 schools had signed up to IMP Finance.

Sector focus

IMP Finance is positioned as part of the wider IMP Unified Platform, which already includes tools for financial planning, budgeting and management in education. The latest release adds transactional finance management to that portfolio.

Features include drill-down from summary figures to underlying transactions, audit trails showing who made changes and which budget line was used, and configurable approval workflows covering payment runs, journals, VAT return postings and period-close adjustments.

The system also includes Open Banking feeds and one-to-many matching for bank reconciliation across multiple accounts. Payment runs can be organised at different levels, including individual schools, hubs, whole trusts, campuses or separate accounts, with approvals handled within the run and files generated for BACS payments and remittances. Direct debit suppliers can be excluded automatically.

VAT is another area the software covers. VAT treatment can be applied at finance-code level so transactions carry the correct treatment when posted. For academy trusts, the system handles both VAT 100 and VAT 126 processes, while independent schools can apply standard, reduced, exempt and zero-rated codes automatically by nominal account.

The platform also allows organisations to begin a new financial year before formally closing the previous one, while keeping completed year-end information fixed once signed off. That may appeal to institutions working to tight reporting cycles while managing multiple entities or sites.

Will Jordan, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of IMP Software, said the software had been developed specifically for education finance teams rather than repurposed from broader finance tools.

"IMP Finance has launched as the first finance platform built for the education sector from day one, not a system that has been adapted from corporate finance tools. Every button, every feature, every report, every workflow, every automation has been designed specifically for education. Education finance teams need flexibility to deal with complexities that are natural within them. But equally, they don't need things they don't need, for example stock control or multicurrency, functionality that sits there in mid-market systems. We've built it from the ground up, so you get the depth that gives you what you want without the complexity of having to maintain it and keep it alive," Jordan said.

Jordan added that the system is intended to reduce manual correction work in finance teams.

"IMP Finance is fundamentally about taking the complexity out of financial management without taking away the flexibility trusts, schools and colleges need," he said. "The underlying principle is the same across education: finance teams should be able to trust the data they are looking at, rather than spending their time fixing it."

One early customer is The Bluebell MAT. Dan Bresnahan, Chief Finance and Operations Officer at The Bluebell MAT, said the trust's previous use of another IMP Software product had informed its decision.

"Having successfully implemented IMP Planner at a previous trust, I already had a high level of confidence in IMP Software and its approach," Bresnahan said. "The software is intuitive, efficient and constantly improving. Most importantly, IMP genuinely listens to its customers and uses their feedback to shape product development, giving us confidence that the platform will continue to evolve alongside our needs and the continually evolving academy trust sector."

Bresnahan added: "IMP Finance will transform many of our day-to-day finance processes. The team will benefit from faster approvals, easier access to information and better reporting. Ultimately, it will free up valuable time that can be redirected towards supporting our schools and improving outcomes for pupils."