Education Spend Controls and Audit Readiness (ANZ) | ProSpend

TL;DR

If you are trying to improve education spend management across schools, TAFEs, colleges or universities, focus on five things:

• Visibility before spend: budget holders can see committed spend, not just actuals.
• Approvals that do not stall: clear routing and backup approvers.
• Evidence captured early: receipts, purpose, coding and allocations captured at point of spend.
• AP controls that reduce chasing: one invoice intake path, approval before pay, duplicate checks, clear status.
• Audit readiness as default: evidence and approvals are attached to transactions, not reconstructed later.

Download the Education Finance Checklist to run a structured self-assessment across all six areas and align your team on where to start.

What is education spend management?

Education spend management is how an education provider requests, approves, tracks, codes, and evidences spend across purchase orders, invoices, staff expenses, and cards, so budgets and funding rules are met and audits are straightforward.

Explore Spend Management for Education Institutions

Who this guide is for (and what you are dealing with)

This guide is for ANZ mid-market education providers across schools, TAFEs, colleges and universities, including CFOs, finance managers, finance controllers, bursars, business managers, and AP managers.

You might recognise these patterns:

• Budget surprises because committed spend is not visible until after the fact
• Approvals that stall when key people are off-site or on leave
• Receipt chasing after excursions, PD, and day-to-day purchasing
• Invoices arriving via multiple channels and getting stuck in inboxes
• Audit and acquittal stress because evidence is scattered across email, drives, and paper

Workload is a real constraint in education institutions. OECD TALIS 2024 reports Australian teachers spend 4.7 hours per week on administrative work, so finance workflows that reduce chasing and rework are more likely to be adopted and followed consistently.

The 5 control points that stop budget surprises and reduce finance chasing

You do not need more process. You need fewer surprises and less rework. The simplest way to get there is to tighten controls at five points where education institutions typically lose time, evidence, or budget accuracy.

1) Stop budget surprises with committed spend visibility

If you only see spend after an invoice arrives or a card statement closes, you are reacting.

What to tighten:

• Ensure non-routine purchases go through a request and approval path
• Track committed spend against budget by faculty, department, cost centre, plus program, grant, campus, and funding source
• Make it easy for budget holders to answer: “What is the remaining budget today, including commitments?”

Example: A faculty manager approving a technology order should be able to see current commitments against the ICT budget, not just last month’s actuals.

2) Make approvals move, even when principals are off-site

Approvals fail when they rely on perfect conditions.

Practical upgrades:

• Route approvals by value, category, campus, program, and funding source
• Align approvals to delegations of authority and keep them consistent
• Use backup approvers so workflows do not stall during leave, excursions, peak periods, or term transitions

Example: When a principal or campus leader is off-campus, invoice and purchase approvals should still progress via an agreed delegate, not sit in an inbox.

3) Fix receipts and card leakage at the point of spend

In education, small spend becomes a big issue when evidence and coding are delayed.

Start here:

• Digital submission (mobile or web), not paper forms and emailed spreadsheets
• Receipt capture at the time of purchase, not weeks later
• Clear rules for P-cards, purchasing cards, and virtual cards, including limits and merchant restrictions
• Make exceptions visible early (missing receipts, unclear purpose, out-of-policy spend) so finance manages issues before month end

Example: Excursions and camps usually fail on evidence. Capturing receipts and purpose at the time of spend reduces end-of-term acquittal stress.

4) Get AP under control: one intake path, fewer bottlenecks

Accounts Payable becomes the pressure point when invoices arrive everywhere and status is unclear.

Get the basics right:

• One invoice intake method (central AP inbox or portal)
• Automated capture (OCR or eInvoicing) instead of re-keying
• Approval before pay discipline, with remote approvals supported
• Duplicate detection and clear invoice status visibility end to end

Example: If a supplier resends an invoice to a campus admin team, duplicate detection prevents accidental double payment.

5) Make audit readiness automatic with a built-in evidence trail

Audit readiness should be built into daily work, not treated as a scramble.

What “normal” looks like:

• Every transaction has complete evidence attached (invoice or receipt, approvals, coding, allocations)
• Policies and approval limits are applied consistently across departments and campuses
• Evidence is easy to produce for boards, auditors, and funding bodies, including grant and donor acquittals

Example: For a grant-funded purchase, the record should show the item, approval, funding source, and allocation to the correct program without chasing files across email chains.

What good looks like in education: a CFO-level snapshot

This is a simple way to sanity-check whether controls are working without doing a full process review:

• Budgets: Budget holders can see budget, committed, and actual spend by cost centre and program
• Approvals: Approvals happen before spend and do not stall when key approvers are away
• AP: Invoices enter one intake channel and invoice status is visible end to end
• Evidence: Receipts, approvals, coding, and allocations are attached to transactions as work happens
• Reporting: Grant and donor reporting does not rely on manual spreadsheet consolidation

If any of these rely on “one spreadsheet” or “one person who knows the process”, that is usually your first improvement opportunity.

Australia-specific compliance: evidence, GST and record keeping

Not tax advice. This is a practical view of what education finance teams manage.

• GST documentation and coding: Controls should support consistent documentation and coding so GST treatment can be applied correctly and evidenced where required.
• Record keeping: The ATO generally expects most business records to be kept for at least five years (sometimes longer depending on record type). Build controls that keep invoices, receipts, approvals, and coding together.
• Grant and donor funds: If spend is linked to a program budget, grant, or restricted fund, you need to show what was purchased, why, who approved it, which program it relates to, and what evidence supports it.

Proof in practice: an Australian education provider’s paperless purchase-to-approval workflow

Friends School (Hobart) describes using ProSpend to automate and make paperless their purchase-to-approval process, including successful integration into MYOB Acumatica.

Takeaway for education finance teams: the win is when purchase requests, approvals, and supporting evidence are captured in the workflow, so finance is not reconstructing the audit trail later.

Read the complete customer story

Do not rip out your ERP: fix workflow first, integrate second

You do not always need to replace your finance system to improve controls. Start with workflow and evidence standards, then integrate where it removes double handling.

ProSpend integrates with major ANZ accounting and ERP systems including Xero, MYOB, NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, and Acumatica, which can help education providers improve workflow while keeping their general ledger in place.

Implementation focus areas:

• Chart of accounts, cost centres, programs, campuses, funding sources
• Delegations of authority and approval coverage
• Invoice intake rules and approval steps
• Card and expense policy rules and required fields
• Evidence standards (what must be captured, when, and by whom)

Download: Education Finance Checklist

If you want a fast way to align your team, use the Education Finance Checklist as a structured self-assessment.

Download the Education Finance Checklist

What you get in the downloadable checklist:

• A single set of questions across all six areas (capture Yes / No / Not sure quickly)
• A simple way to spot gaps across programs, campuses, cost centres and funding sources
• An easy-to-share tool to run a short workshop with finance and budget holders

Conclusion

If you are trying to work out how schools and education institutions can improve spend management, the goal is not more process. It is better workflow design: visibility before spend, approvals that match the real world, point-of-spend evidence capture, cleaner AP controls, and consistent documentation. Done well, this strengthens audit readiness and reduces finance rework without pushing admin onto educators.

Download the Education Finance Checklist

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