Why School Activity Fund Management Matters
Your school activity fund supplies an essential part of your school’s day-to-day, encompassing extracurriculars, student-led events, field trips, and more.
These funds hold large sums, ranging from $10,000 to $300,000, and sometimes even $1 million. SAFs are almost always managed by the school’s bookkeeper, who is not a traditional accountant and may lack the extensive financial training of one. This puts schools in a tricky spot: their large funds need to be managed, but they don’t have the processes to manage them effectively and accurately on their own.
Proper management enables your school to keep its activities running, and your processes to pass judgment. But challenges, such as complications with compliance, inconsistent tracking, or other common errors, can be frequent and frustrating in a manual process.
TrackYourFunds knows that as an educator, your plate is already overflowing. That’s why it’s our mission to empower school bookkeepers as they manage their finances, making it simple, organized, and automated.
Let’s dive deeper into common challenges associated with fund management and the best practices you can employ to stay on track!
Want to see how TrackYourFunds simplifies your activity fund oversight? Schedule a personalized demo →
Common Pitfalls in Fund Management
Manual tracking can turn into paperwork overload, making it easy to miss records or leave them incomplete. Lacking real-time visibility, centralized reporting, and standardized reconciliations means your processes are delayed, complicated, and confusing. It’s these snags and hold-ups that contribute to chaos in your SAFs.
TrackYourFunds comes from schools, for schools. We are constantly adapting, working to ensure no detail is delayed, complicated, or left behind.
Manage Your Activity Funds With the Best Practices
Take a look at some best practices for your school’s finances, and see how TrackYourFunds can transform the way you manage your school’s activity fund.
1. Establish Clear Fund Management Policies
Sending and receiving payments can be stressful, especially without a great system. If it feels like you have to follow a million strands, your policies might need clarifying.
Set clear policies with TrackYourFunds, and keep your processes standardized and simple. Easily view, follow, and confirm your financial records with guidelines you trust. We help you define rules for collecting and spending with an easy-to-use, automated process.
We are implementing a new way to use approval workflows, so stay tuned!
2. Centralize Oversight Without Losing Flexibility
Sometimes, centralizing leads to restricting. You want your processes to be simple, but if they are too restricted, it makes account management harder.
The solution? Enable school users to manage their accounts with defined limits. TrackYourFunds lets teachers and advisors manage accounts within limits. Our controlled access, role-based permissions, and approvals take the worry out of SAF oversight.
The Reports & Registers feature gives you visibility without the load of manual roll-ups. Export to multiple formats and customize accessibility, all while maintaining oversight.
3. Track Every Transaction Digitally
Bookkeeping can feel tedious, and when it’s done manually, the margins for error are almost unavoidable. This means lost information, mistakes going unnoticed, and details left out.
The Solution: Digital receipts, requests, and reimbursements reduce your rate of error. Our real-time entries improve transparency, continuously extracting and syncing data to streamline reconciliations.
TrackYourFunds records your payments made online and by check with our Checks & Payments feature. Save vendor information for fast and easy recall, and file with a breeze.
Additionally, we integrate payment providers using our Collections feature. Accept payments in person or online, and keep it organized.
4. Regular and Transparent Reconciliation
Reconciling should be transparent, but too often, it’s the messiest part. To continue improving your books, you can establish a consistent, organized routine to make your end-of-year processes go smoothly.
It’s important to reconcile regularly, implement independent reviews, and keep audit trails. We recommend setting a monthly schedule and sticking to it. Have everything organized, and your notes nearby for a streamlined year-end review.
TrackYourFunds implemented the Reconcile feature to speed your processes, eliminate the paper chase, and keep your practice simple. Click here to learn more about how we can help your school prepare for audit time.
5. Train Your Staff
Finances don’t have to be intimidating! Implement simple training for non-finance users, and help your entire staff confidently track funds.
The TrackYourFunds user interface is friendly and intuitive. We offer onboarding training, and supply guided questions for reconciling.
We know that bookkeeping doesn’t have to be hard (and managing your SAF shouldn’t require a degree in finance)!
Tools to Make it Easy
Your fund tracking system should be intuitive and audit-friendly. A good system offers real-time visibility, while still supporting the unique structure of your school.
The creators of TrackYourFunds are school-savvy. Our features are made for you, simplifying what used to seem complex.
Learn more about our features →
Activity Fund Management, Made Easy
We get it—finances are probably not why you became an educator. If financial management leaves you feeling uncertain, we’re here to help. With the right tools and practices, managing your school’s activity funds doesn’t have to be stressful. In fact, when you streamline the process with us, it can be a breeze!
