04/03 - November

Dear Colleagues

2003/04 HESA Finance Statistics Return (Ref C03031)

This Circular contains links to documents and further guidance that are required for the C03031 Finance Statistics Return (FSR) data collection. Institutions are therefore requested to review the information contained in the following documents:

Coding Manual

The Coding Manual for use in making the 2003/04 FSR has been updated.

Template

The template for use in making the 2003/04 FSR has been updated as outlined in this circular. Data must be returned on the template provided by HESA for the 2003/04 year. The template is available to download from the following address: index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=156&Itemid=233

Data Quality

Institutions are asked to give attention to the data quality reports and queries produced during data collection and to endeavour to resubmit data in order to resolve quality issues where they arise. The following specific checks will be undertaken as part of the verification procedure.

1. Published Accounts

HESA will be checking for consistency between the FSR and the published accounts.

2. Electronic Accounts Returned to HEFCE

For institutions in England and Northern Ireland that return electronic financial statements to HEFCE, HESA will be checking for consistency between the FSR and the electronic financial statements. Colleagues responsible for completing the FSR should therefore refer to these electronic financial statements. (Please note that the electronic financial statements are an extract of information from the accounts).

3. Cost Centres

HESA will also be checking for the consistent use of cost centres across all data streams, and as such the distribution of student FTE, staff FTE, expenditure and research income by cost centre will be checked.

4. Summary Statistics

HESA will supply a series of summary statistics (including the HEMS financial ratios) to institutions for verification.

5. Year-on-year Checks

In addition, HESA has included on the check documentation previous and current year comparative checks (using a combination of absolute values and ratios) in the cells of tables as follows:

1. Table 1 - Heads 1 to 5 and Heads 7 to 10
2. Table 4 - All heads for column 9
3. Table 5a - All heads
4. Table 5b - All heads
5. Table 6 - All heads for columns 1, 2, 4 and 6.

Further Guidance

The following changes have been made to this year’s template - please note particularly the positional changes in Table 1 and 2 emboldened below:

Table 1

• Head 18 ‘Transfer from/(to) accumulated income within specific endowments’ has been added to the template at row 39.
• Head 19 ‘(Deficit)/surplus for the year retained within general reserves’ has been added to the template at row 41.

These two new heads bring the FSR into line with the SORP ‘Model financial statements’ (October 2003) which can be downloaded in PDF format via http://bookshop.universitiesuk.ac.uk/downloads/SORPOct03.pdf

• Previous Heads 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 (Note of historical cost surpluses rows) have now become Heads 20, 21, 22, 23 and 24, moving down two rows from last year’s position.

Table 2

• Head 2 sub-heads i ‘Cash at bank’ and ii ‘Other investments’ have been deleted, which now leaves Head 2 ‘Endowment assets’ at row 68 of the template. A direct entry is required for Endowment assets.

As a consequence of these changes, the following first stage validation rule cannot be performed and so has been removed:

• Rule 31066 Table 2: (Cash at bank + Cash at bank & in hand – bank overdrafts at 31 July 2004) – ((Cash at bank + Cash at bank & in hand – bank overdrafts 31 July 2003) = Increase/(decrease) in cash in the period +/- £2000.

Table 5b

• Column 2 text heading has changed from ‘NHS/RONE/SHHD’ to ‘DH/RONE/SHHD’ (Department of Health (including the NHS)).
• Head 1ai text has changed from ‘Recurrent (T)’ to ‘Recurrent (Teaching)’.
• Head 1aii text has changed from ‘Recurrent (R)’ to ‘Recurrent (Research)’.
• Head 4aii text has changed from ‘Teaching companies’ to ‘Knowledge Transfer Partnerships’.

Table 8

As Pay Group information is now collected via the New Individualised Staff Record (NISR) Table 8 has been removed from the FSR template. As a consequence of this change, the following first stage validation rules have been removed:

• Rule 31001 Total Staff Expenditure must = Table 6 Staff Costs Total, and
• Rule 31022 Pay Group Category must not be zero.

Who to Contact During Data Collection

Institutions should consider Institutional Liaison as a general first point of contact for any HESA issue.

Further Information

If you have any queries on the issues raised in this Circular, please contact the Institutional Liaison team (Alison Berry, Marietta Nkweta, Janet Earl or Clara Elcocks) at HESA, or email (liaison@hesa.ac.uk).

Yours sincerely

C. Jane Wild
Director of Operations