End Of Year Spending

What is a leader to do with end-of-year surplus?

If you are like most school districts, you will end the year with a small amount of unspent general funds. This is not due to inaccurate or inefficient budgeting. In fact, even perfect budgeting will be just a little loose to account for "unknowns". End-of-year funds can be even larger than anticipated due to a wide variety of reasons: warmer weather than predicted, salary avoidance due to unfilled positions, unexpected grants, and many other variables.

But how can the savvy administrator ensure that end-of-year surplus is invested wisely, and not simply frittered away? Does the district really need another pallet of paper or another box of toners?

Consider applying your funds to next year's technology contracts. Most districts have annual expenses associated with printer contracts, or consulting agreements, or cloud license agreements, or some other kind of ongoing expenses that can be partially pre-paid by using end-of-year funds.

By prepaying* some or all of next year's technology agreements with end-of-year funds, you can reserve space in next year's 101 and 201 budgets with additional time to plan on how to best use the resources!

Curious about how to budget for technology spending more efficiently? K12Panel.com has a full budgeting module to allow you to plan your annual refresh cycle effectively, and to budget accordingly. Contact us to learn more!

*Make sure to follow your auditor's guidelines for prepayments.

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