--- title: What financial resilience in schools really means description: Discover what financial resilience in schools really means. Learn how connected systems, embedded controls and greater visibility help reduce risk, prevent fraud and strengthen financial management. image: https://blog.isams.com/hubfs/financial%20resilience.png --- [![isams logo by iris](https://blog.isams.com/hubfs/raw_assets/public/Isams_May2021/images/isams-by-iris-wordmark-white-landscape-rgb.svg "isams logo by iris")](https://www.isams.com/) [![isams logo by iris](https://blog.isams.com/hubfs/raw_assets/public/Isams_May2021/images/isams-by-iris-wordmark-grey-landscape-rgba.svg "isams logo by iris")](https://www.isams.com/) ![Menu collapsed](https://blog.isams.com/hubfs/raw_assets/public/Isams_May2021/images/cross-gray.svg) - [Identity Portal](https://go.isams.com/?id=identity) - [Support](https://go.isams.com/?id=support) - [Contact Us](https://www.isams.com/company/contact-us/) - Solutions - By School Type - [![groups-grey](https://blog.isams.com/hubfs/Icons/more/groups-grey.svg)Groups](https://www.isams.com/solutions/school-type/group-schools/) - 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The bigger challenge is making sure it never gets that far. Financial resilience in schools means not relying on individuals to catch every mistake or spot every suspicious request. Resilient schools build safeguards into the way they work, creating processes that continue to operate effectively when workloads increase, key staff are unavailable, or financial risks become harder to identify. Resilience goes beyond responding well when something goes wrong. It means creating the conditions that make problems less likely in the first place, even as financial scrutiny, operational demands, and fraud attempts grow. **What does financial resilience mean for a school finance team?** Financial resilience is the ability to maintain accuracy, control, and confidence in financial processes regardless of day-to-day pressures. For school finance teams, that means more than balancing budgets and processing payments. It means being able to demonstrate that school financial controls are working, that information can be trusted, and that risks are being managed consistently. The strongest finance functions aren't dependent on individual knowledge or manual workarounds. Instead, they build resilience into their systems and processes through clear controls, connected data, and visibility into performance. When those foundations are in place, finance teams can spend less time checking information and more time supporting strategic decisions, planning for the future, and providing assurance to school leaders and governors. **Why isn't spotting problems enough?** Bursars and finance teams are highly skilled at identifying issues before they escalate. The challenge is that spotting issues depends on time, attention, and experience, all of which come under pressure during busy periods. At the start of term, fee collection, supplier invoices, budget reporting, and parent enquiries can all arrive at once. Even the most capable teams can find it harder to identify the one request that doesn't look quite right. The scale of the challenge is clear. [IRIS Education research](https://www.iris.co.uk/news/fake-fee-requests-con-parents-out-of-thousands-iris-education-research/) found that 100% of respondents had experienced a fee-fraud attempt within the past five years, while 69% said the threat had increased. At the same time, 37% reported lacking confidence in their fee collection processes. When every school is a potential target and over a third are uncertain about parts of their collection process, relying solely on people to identify risks becomes a vulnerability. As we explored in [*Beware of the Bogus Bursar*](https://www.isams.com/resources/blog/knowledge/safeguarding-parent-payments-and-reputation-webinar/), fraud succeeds when it finds a gap in an existing process. The more a finance function depends on memory, judgement, and manual intervention, the more opportunities there are for errors and risks to slip through. **How do disconnected systems increase financial risk?** Many financial risks are introduced through everyday tasks rather than major failures. Every time information is re-entered, exported into a spreadsheet, or moved between systems, another opportunity for error is created. Over time, those small points of friction make it harder to trust the information being used to make decisions. Consider a school where fee schedules sit in one system, parent records in another, and financial reporting is managed through separate spreadsheets. When a request arrives to change payment details or investigate an account, establishing which version of the information is correct can become a process in itself. That uncertainty creates risk. It also consumes valuable time. Instead of focusing on analysis, forecasting, or financial planning, finance teams often find themselves reconciling records and validating data. When governors ask for evidence that controls are working, producing that evidence may require days of manual effort rather than a clear, immediate view. For schools facing increasing expectations around accountability and oversight, that's a challenge that extends well beyond fraud prevention. [![WATCH A DEMO See the iSAMS iFinance accounting solution in action. Watch a product video.  ](https://no-cache.hubspot.com/cta/default/9303363/interactive-147027915336.png)](https://blog.isams.com/hs/cta/wi/redirect?encryptedPayload=AVxigLJhkJzxuTSnT4a0wBJcrC%2BZwCK4x4CDSfue4q1AKl3Kc7gUspwuYp9rqcQSpJ23LrXHM7dJKjxMBQDZ6P%2BmwsNcyiGw6JFPfv5jlSN2F5SiFfdCnEFV1Jj%2BVvGLCrByRFSCyuUz85%2F8avVtCHdJGu1p3O7okC72AjRwr62Qwlh6vjJuiMh%2FbxC1OdHMhMFQFRzyDPgCT24m9ZBHYFrCBT2e0NRT0M3U43Z9nVgKxn94&webInteractiveContentId=147027915336&portalId=9303363&hsLang=en-gb) **What does a resilient finance function look like?** Resilient finance functions are designed to reduce risk, strengthen control, and improve visibility across the organisation. The first step is embedding controls into everyday workflows. Changes to payment details, unusual transactions, or activity outside expected patterns can trigger additional review automatically, ensuring checks happen consistently rather than relying on individuals to remember them. The second is connected school finance, with a single source of financial truth. When fees, billing, parent records, and reporting draw from the same underlying data, teams spend less time reconciling information and more time acting on it with confidence. Finally, resilient finance functions make control visible. School leaders, bursars, and governors can access the information they need through real-time reporting, making it easier to monitor performance, demonstrate compliance, and identify emerging risks before they become larger issues. [iFinance](https://www.isams.com/school-finance-software/) is designed to help schools build resilience by bringing together financial management, operational processes, and reporting within the wider iSAMS by IRIS ecosystem. By reducing reliance on disconnected systems and manual processes, schools can strengthen controls, improve visibility, and create a more resilient foundation for financial management. **Where can a school start?** Improving financial resilience in schools doesn't require a complete finance transformation. Small changes can quickly highlight where risks exist and where improvements will deliver the greatest impact. **1. Map your handoffs** Identify every point where financial information is manually re-entered, exported, or transferred between systems. Each handoff represents a potential source of error, delay, or risk. **2. Review your highest-risk processes** Look for activities that depend heavily on individual knowledge or manual checks, such as changes to payment details or approval processes. Consider where controls could be embedded directly into the workflow. **3. Assess how visible your controls really are** If governors or senior leaders ask for evidence that controls are working, how quickly can it be produced? Resilient finance functions make that information readily available through trusted reporting rather than manual investigation. Financial resilience builds up through a series of decisions that make financial processes easier to trust, harder to disrupt, and more capable of supporting schools through future challenges. To understand how your school measures up across controls, connected systems, and reporting, [**take our financial resilience audit**](https://info.isams.com/school-financial-resilience-audit?hsLang=en-gb). ![Nicholas Clark](https://blog.isams.com/hubfs/Nic.Clark.jpg) ### Nicholas Clark Nic is the Product Director for iSAMS by IRIS, and along with the rest of the product team is responsible for the direction and roadmap to make sure that we continue to develop iSAMS in a way that continues to bring new tools and features to the platform that our customers need to run modern schools and groups. Nic is a teacher by training and spent 12 years as a primary teacher, 8 of those as a deputy headteacher in several schools. Nic qualified as a teacher in the early 2000s, just as broadband internet started to transform the way schools work, he became heavily involved in developing the use of technology in and out of the classroom and is still passionate about the way tech can transform ways of working in schools. In 2016, Nic escaped teaching to work with a startup called Hable, a Microsoft partner, to help schools adopt Office 365. During the next 5 years, he worked with independent and international schools across the world to enable them to develop technology strategies around Microsoft 365. In 2021, Nic joined IRIS to lead the Ed:gen product launch into the UK state school market and the development of our unique analytics and data platform for schools ### Sign up to receive our newsletter ### Most Popular - [The benefits of effective communication in schools July 17, 2026](https://blog.isams.com/benefits-of-effective-communication-in-schools?hsLang=en-gb) - [How to prepare your school’s timetables: a practical guide for administrators June 24, 2026](https://blog.isams.com/how-to-prepare-your-schools-timetables?hsLang=en-gb) - [The importance of benchmarking for schools July 22, 2026](https://blog.isams.com/the-importance-of-benchmarking-for-schools?hsLang=en-gb) - [5 top tips to make writing your end of term report easier June 22, 2026](https://blog.isams.com/5-top-tips-to-make-writing-your-end-of-term-reports-easier?hsLang=en-gb) - [New school year checklist for MIS administrators June 23, 2026](https://blog.isams.com/start-of-new-school-year-mis-checklist-for-school-administrators?hsLang=en-gb) LinkedIn Twitter Facebook [![Isams](https://blog.isams.com/hubfs/raw_assets/public/Isams_May2021/images/isams-by-iris-wordmark-white-landscape-rgb.svg "Isams")](https://www.isams.com/) - [Home](https://www.isams.com/) - [Platform](https://www.isams.com/platform/) - [Services](https://www.isams.com/services/) - [Company](https://www.isams.com/company/about-us/) - [Press](https://www.isams.com/company/press/) - [Contact Us](https://www.isams.com/company/contact-us/) - [isams.com](https://go.isams.com/?id=website) - [Support](https://go.isams.com/?id=support) - [Community](https://go.isams.com/?id=community) - [Developer](https://go.isams.com/?id=developer) - [Marketplace](https://go.isams.com/?id=marketplace) - [UserVoice](https://go.isams.com/?id=uservoice) - [Twitter](https://go.isams.com/?id=twitter) - [Facebook](https://go.isams.com/?id=facebook) - [Linkedin](https://go.isams.com/?id=linkedin) - [YouTube](https://go.isams.com/?id=youtube) - [Dribbble](https://go.isams.com/?id=dribbble) - [Feeds](https://go.isams.com/?id=feeds) GET INSIGHTS FROM OUR BLOG - [Academic](https://www.isams.com/resources/blog/category/academic/) - [Administration](https://www.isams.com/resources/blog/category/administration/) - [Admissions](https://www.isams.com/resources/blog/category/admissions/) - [Communication](https://www.isams.com/resources/blog/category/communication/) - [Finance](https://www.isams.com/resources/blog/category/finance/) - [Integrations](https://www.isams.com/resources/blog/category/integrations/) - [Teaching](https://www.isams.com/resources/blog/category/teaching/) - [Wellbeing](https://www.isams.com/resources/blog/category/wellbeing/) ### Proud members of [![besa\_logo](https://blog.isams.com/hubfs/besa_logo.svg)](https://www.besa.org.uk/) [![bsme-logo-white](https://blog.isams.com/hubfs/Logos/bsme-logo-white.svg)](http://www.bsme.org.uk) [![cobis\_logo](https://blog.isams.com/hubfs/cobis_logo.svg)](https://www.cobis.org.uk) [![ecis\_logo](https://blog.isams.com/hubfs/ecis_logo.svg)](https://www.ecis.org/) [![fobisia\_logo](https://blog.isams.com/hubfs/fobisia_logo.svg)](https://www.fobisia.org/) [![isba-logo-white](https://blog.isams.com/hubfs/Logos/isba-logo-white.svg)](https://www.theisba.org.uk/) - [Compliance](https://www.isams.com/compliance/) - [Privacy](https://www.isams.com/company/privacy/) - [Terms](https://www.isams.com/terms/) - [Trademark](https://www.isams.com/trademark/) [All Systems Operational](https://status.isams.com/) © 2021 iSAMS Pty Ltd | iSAMS Ltd