Using the Budgeting Tool


Ready to start?  Go to the Annual Budgeting System.

Starting Your Budget

Before starting your budget, ensure that you are in the correct role. This is especially important if you have roles on multiple CSPs or MGs.

Once you've checked this, hit start.

Once started, you can access two sections: Membership Data and Lines

Membership Data shows the past 5 years of membership costs, targets, and actual members. You can then input your membership cost and target for next academic year.  All CSPs must have a minimum membership target of 20 members, and to be eligible for grant a minimum membership cost of £3.

Within Lines, you can add new rows for each line of income and expenditure. 


Adding Membership

To add membership, click "Edit Membership Details".  You should base your membership cost on the total expenditure of your CSP and your expected number of members.  Your membership income will show up automatically as a line in your budget.


Adding Lines

To add a line click "Add Line" at the bottom of the page.  This will take you to a new page where you can add both income and expenditure lines to your budget.

The first section is for details of the new line.

  • Activity Code: This is a pre-set code used to categorise your income and expenditure.  Core expenditure should normally be coded under "General (00)" with other codes used for special events.  Every CSP will have different codes which can be set up here. We recommend not creating too many activity codes as this can cause confusion.  You will likely have all the codes you need already created, based on historic spending.
  • Activity Grouping: Not necessary, but useful if you have multiple lines for one activity e.g. BUCS 1st Team, Annual Dinner
  • Title: A short title of the specific expenditure/income
  • Description: A space for you to add detail regarding the need & cost of the item.

Below this, you can include the specific financial details of the income or expenditure, and choose whether grant is being requested. Where requesting grant, make sure to include a comment in Grant Rationale to explain why that item is considered core, and why you want that percentage of expenditure covered. Grant cannot be requested for income lines.

  • Income/Expenditure: Make sure to indicate whether the line is for income or expenditure.  This will change the options available to you.
  • Account: This is the type of expenditure - e.g. "Hospitality" for dinners/food/drink, "Instructors" for all coaches and conductors, "Ground Hire" for all facilities bookings, etc.  If you request grant and get the account code wrong, you may not receive funding, or funding may go into the wrong account, therefore please double-check this.
  • VAT Code: Most income/expenditure will be standard rated (P1 for expenditure, S1 for income), however certain products/services have different VAT rates.  As our budgeting tool calculates VAT it is important to get this right.  You can find an explanation of common VAT rates here.
  • Income/Expenditure per Unit: This is the total cost or income from the item, per unit (i.e. how much does each one cost/make)
  • Quantity: The number of items you are buying or selling.
  • Amount of Grant Requested: If you are requesting grant, this needs to be filled out. You should request an appropriate amount of grant for the item, in line with Annual Budgeting Policy.  The best budgets are those that balance grant requests with other income sources such as membership.

Budget Submission

Your budget will be force-submitted on 9th February 2024 if it has not been started or has yet to be submitted.

Budget Queries

MG1 and MG2 may query your budget back to you while reviewing it. This will give you the opportunity to make edits to your budget, like adding further description for items or amending values. This can occur until the review stage ends on 8th March 2024.

It is important to respond to email notifications about queries promptly, to ensure that your budget is as high quality as possible.

When responding to queries it is often useful to check the action log, to see what has been done to your budget and why.  You can view it on your main budget page by clicking "View action log".

Tracking Progress

On your budgeting main page, you will be able to follow the progress of your budget. You can also view it in further detail by selecting 'View action log' under Actions.


Now that you know how to use the budgeting tool, head to the next section to understand how budgets are reviewed fairly.

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