What's new
Budgets
Hide zero values on Manage Budgets
A new option on the Manage Budgets screen lets you hide budget lines with zero values. This option is on by default, and will remove all budget lines from the grid that do not have a budget value set for the selected financial year.
This reduces clutter when reviewing budgets, making it easier to focus on budget lines in use.
Published and locked budget scenarios included when linking to Education Budgets
When linking budgets to Education Finance from Education Budgets, published and locked budget scenarios are now included in the selection. This gives you a more complete view when making that connection.
Evo Feeds
New feed notifications for transaction approvals
Feed notifications have been introduced for the approval workflow across the purchase requisition, purchase order, and purchase invoice transaction lifecycles.
For each of these transactions, feed notifications will be produced for configured users when an item is awaiting approval, as an approval reminder, when the approval is approved or rejected, and if the transaction is cancelled and an approval is no longer required.
Transaction type | Feed notification | How to set up an user |
Purchase Requisition |
|
User must be selectable as authoriser. |
Purchase Order |
|
User must be selectable as authoriser. |
Purchase Invoice |
|
User must be selectable as authoriser. |
Purchase orders
Don't Use GRN setting cannot be updated while outstanding purchase order exists
Education Finance Administrators are now prevented from changing the Don't Use GRN setting when there are outstanding purchase orders. This avoids inconsistent order processing caused by changing the setting mid-workflow.
⚠️Important: Changing the Don't Use GRN setting while purchase orders are outstanding is no longer permitted. Resolve all outstanding purchase orders before changing this setting.
Reports
Consolidated Payment Practice and Performance Report: Sum of Payments by Range
A new row has been added to the Payment Statistics box for "Sum of Payments by Range (£)". This will appear for financial year 2025 onwards.
The sum row pulls the gross value from the invoice data rows below, bucketed into the same 0–30, 31–60, and 61+ day ranges using the same day-count logic as the existing count and percentage rows.
This is a statutory update in line with obligations under the 2024 Amendment Regulations. Schools are required to include this information when submitting to Companies House.
Updates to Customer Turnover and Transactions Report
The Customer Turnover and Transactions report is now available at the establishment layer, and the redundant Total column has been removed from the Excel export, making the output cleaner and easier to work with.
Education Purchasing
On-hold suppliers no longer sent to Education Purchasing
uppliers placed on hold in Finance are now automatically excluded from the hourly supplier export to Education Purchasing. Previously, an on-hold supplier could still be included in this export, risking payments being raised against a supplier you had intentionally paused.
To pause a supplier, set them to On Hold on their supplier record in Finance as usual — no transactions can be processed against them, and they will also be excluded from the next export to Education Purchasing.
Supplier email address now sent to Education Purchasing for purchase orders
The supplier's email address is now included when supplier details are sent to Education Purchasing, enabling it to be used on purchase orders. This removes the need to enter the supplier email address separately in Education Purchasing.
SoFA Assistant
The SoFA Assistant is a downloadable Excel tool that helps academies and trusts complete their Statement of Financial Activities (SoFA) return. It is generated directly from Access Education Finance and pre-populated with your data.
Updated templates for 2025/26
The SoFA Assistant templates have been updated to reflect the 2025/26 statutory requirements. Any changes from the previous year are highlighted in red within the document, making it easy to see what's new.
The template now automatically pulls in your current budget year — no manual entry required.
The SoFA Assistant is now enabled for financial year 2025. If you attempt to generate it before it has been made available for your financial year, you will see the following message:
⚠️Important: If you see "There's a problem — The SoFA Assistant has not been made available for this Financial Year", please contact your system administrator or Access support.
Access Education Finance retains SoFA Assistant templates for the current year plus the previous two years. Templates older than this are removed as part of the annual update process. As part of this release, the template for financial year 2022/23 has been removed.
How this update will be made available
Hide zero values on Manage Budgets: navigate to the Manage Budgets screen and use the new option to hide budget lines with zero values.
Published and locked budget scenarios when linking: no action is required. When linking budgets from Education Budgets to Education Finance, published and locked scenarios will now appear automatically.
New feed notifications for transaction approvals: navigate to User Access Profiles and check"Notifications" for any user who should receive feed notifications. The user must also be selectable as an authoriser.
Consolidated Payment Practice & Performance Report: no action is required. Open the report under Reports, then select Consolidated Payment Practice & Performance to see the new sum of payments row. This is a central report and appears on the central MAT rather than at establishment level.
Customer Turnover and Transactions Report updates: navigate to Reports, then click Customers. Select Customer Turnover and Transactions Report. The report is now available at the establishment layer, and a consolidated version appears under the same Customers submenu on the central MAT. Administrators can manage access via System Set-Up, then selecting Users & Access Profiles.
Education Purchasing updates: no action is required. Supplier sync improvements and email address inclusion apply automatically.
SoFA Assistant — Establishment users:
Navigate to Establishment, then click Reports.
Click Returns, then select SoFA Assistant.
Select Generate.
The SoFA Assistant Excel file will download automatically to your browser.
SoFA Assistant — Central / Trust users:
Navigate to Central , then click Reports.
Click Returns, then select Consolidated SoFA Assistant.
Select Generate.
The Consolidated SoFA Assistant Excel file will download automatically to your browser.