What is the Purpose of an Annual Budget?
Budgets must be written regardless of whether you are applying for a grant or not. You can consider your Annual Budget your ‘Master Budget’ for the year. Writing a budget will help you to:
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What is the Purpose of Union grant?
The grant exists to support activity, not fully fund it. The rest of your CSPs costs should be covered by a combination of:
- Membership (your joining-fee, sometimes known as "subs")
- Ticket income (e.g. for specific events or sessions)
- Sponsorship (funding from external organisations)
- Other funding sources where relevant (e.g. ICTrust for trips, Harlington Fund for large equipment purchases)
Reserves Justification
CSPs are required to fill in the Reserves Justification Form if they meet any of the requirements listed below. This is to provide strong justification for your continued allocation of Union grant, and any surplus of reserves.
- Has a Designated Members Fund
- Has over £10,000 in SGI
- Has total reserves which exceeds a total of 2 years average expenditure
- Have any funding codes (Grant, SGI, ICTrust, Harlington, College) in deficit, even if your total funds are not in deficit
All CSPs which this affects will be contacted DIRECTLY.
Reviewing Previous Budgets & Spending
Your CSP's budget for the current year (completed by last year's committee) is available to view here. You should take into account your previous budget and compare it to your actual spending this year
There are two ways to view your previous transactions:
Financial Documentation splits transactions into Income and Expenditure and the various type of transactions (e.g. claims, purchase orders, credit cards). This will not show your grant income for the year, but is an easy way to locate specific transactions in full.
Transaction Pages split transactions by funding codes e.g. grant, SGI. Here you can see your previous grant allocations and how much of this grant you spent. This is a good way to check that your CSP fully utilises its grant. The trend graphs will show you the fluctuation of money in each of the funding codes, or overall in your account.
Once you have familiarised yourself with both your previous budget and historic spending, you should compare them. This allows you to determine which expenditure items need to increase or decrease in your new budget.
