Administrative cost saving. Online payments?

[user1483972886]

Dcs are at a small primary (less than 100 on roll) so finances are tight. However we have 2 administration people. 2 x 80%. Which is a lot compared to other schools aound us (most have 1).
Has anyone looked at ways to reduce administration costs? How about online banking currently everything is cash / cheque so £2s for this and that and in some cases people paying daily for lunch...
I can only think this is an administrative burden.
Has anyone else gone to online banking or one of these school payment systems?
Our nursery swopped from cash to online banking and the parents aND staff found it easier.
I am thinking if we can reduce cash payments we can reduce administration staff and hence wages?
Anyone have any experience of this?

Many thanks

You don't need a skills check.

You need to find out exactly what tasks are taking up their time.

No point in fiddling by making changes that seem good (and for which you'd need a work-around) when you don't actually know if that's where the 'problem' lies. Money-handling, with good systems, isn't necessarily time-consuming, especially for a smaller organisation. A volunteer treasurer for a nursery isn't a comparable role to school admin, who have a wider range of tasks.

Start by examining the entire administration process - start with the Governors, and how effective their school management is, whilst getting a proper estimate of time on admin tasks by everyone.

We are a much bigger school and have one secretary (this isn't a reduction)

No don't worry no chance of taking your advice ;-) just asking for experiences of the systems..

I don't think a cashless system saves a dramatic amount of time, especially in a small school, as the payments still have to be reconciled against the cost code for dinnners, trips etc. There is also a cost involved with each system.
It can be difficult comparing the number of admin staff at schools, as they may do very different roles. For example in our school, we are responsible for driving a lot of the processes - attendance, marketing, parents evening, all starters & leavers, a lot of the assessment data entry etc, as well as all the day to day things that parents see, with no or very minimal input from the management team. At other schools the head or deputy are often in charge of the processes, even if they don't actually do the work themselves.

Is the 38k just on 2 x .80 salaries, as that seems very high for a admin role ?

The £38K probably includes everything costed to 'admin', not just the salaries.

Er no.

There are two of us at my small (not as small as the OPs). One on 35 hours per week, 40 weeks per year (she is a member of the SLT, sets budgets, deals with HR etc - definitely much more than a secretary); the other is 25 hours per week for 39 weeks per year. Between both of us we might just about cost £38,000 per year (including pensions). London salaries.

Are you really sure that figure is purely salary?

It will include things like National Insurance contributions employers contributions to pensions

School Business Manager here. Cashless is safer because we don't have money lying about and we can track everything. However, it doesn't save any time and you pay charges on the money paid in. There is also the administration charges per annum. Overall, I'd suspect that it may cost you to use the system for such a small school compared to the cost of staffing.

Yes it is gross cost ie includes pension and NI.

Thank you for the input.

TBH £20K and £38K must be small percentages of the total school budget. Where are the biggest areas of spend? Trying to save 5% of a big cost is likely to be easier than trying to cut 50% of a small cost.

I'm the only school admin in a school with 150 children. I work 30 hours per week term time only. Dealing with cash is a tiny part of my overall job, takes about 15 minutes Monday to Thursday, and 1hr on a Friday for cashing up, banking and associated paperwork. I have looked into cashless systems, but for the size of our school and the amount of money that we take the charges are proportionally way too high, and I don't think there would be any time saving for me. Some of the parents would like it, but an equal number would refuse to engage with it.

Thanks peachypeaches.

Don't forget the cost of any staff redundancy - especially if they have been there a lot of years.

I've a vested interest in this as I am in school admin.
I have no idea if 2 staff is excessive for your 100 pupils - we have 1 admin per 75 pupils if that makes sense.

But I do think purchasing an online cash payment system is unlikely to reduce admin time much if at all. The counting cash and taking it to the bank is a small part of the (audited) account process.

As others have mentioned you still have to allow other payment methods. We've pushed our online payment system but still a third of payments are cash or cheque.

DC go to a state secondary. All payments on line. Lunch paid by fingerprint. On line payment system also used for stuff like parental approval for trips. All communication by email and online. I can't believe it doesn't save time and money. At lot less paper, photocopying, time wasted chasing up missing stuff. Time wasted by parents searching through school bags for missing letters.

Our primary school was like something from 1950s and used to drive me mad

Agnesf- it will save time in counting money and printing letters out but it costs money to buy the software (it's significant cost) and you Still need someone to set it all up and keep it running. It's good and from a parent point of view really helpful but it's not free

The benefit of online payments is security but it is costly for most average and smaller than average primaries.

Grass pigeons we have 1 administration for each 40 children.we have a teaching head but so do all the other primaries around us who only have 1 FTE administration / support staff.

It does seem high. I miscalculated as I wasn't focused ( making dinner and a paper mache project) it's 1 FTE per 106 pupils

But something there aren't really economies of scale eg clerking The board of governors would take the same whether we had half the pupils as would stuff like typing up a letter.

We have one full time admin for 250 pupils

Why is this your concern?

Because if we cannot find cost savings we will cut a teacher.