Fri 7 March (9am) to Fri 28 March (9am)
You have 3 weeks to submit the budgeted core expenditure for your CSP. You must submit your Annual Budget for 2025 by Fri 28 March, 9am at the latest. Please submit your budget earlier than this, if possible, in order to allow us time to give you feedback before the deadline.
Late submissions will not be able to be accepted, and your budget will be force-submitted in its current state.
This stage of budgeting is where you outline all of core expenditure of your CSP.
What is Core Expenditure?
At this stage in budgeting we only want to see your core expenditure. This is so that we can get an accurate understanding of the cost to run core activity.
Core activities (and expenditure) are defined as activities in line with the Aims & Objectives of your group, and which are accessible to a majority of members.
Your Aims & Objectives can be found in your constitution, located on eActivities in Administration > CSPs > Documentation > Constitution & Committee.
Examples of core expenditure are:
- Facilities and travel to/for core activity
- Training/coaching/teaching costs
- Insurance & affiliations
- Belonging & community events
- The things your CSP does every week / the flagship event you build up to
Examples of what isn't core expenditure:
- Dinners (e.g. Christmas dinner / annual dinners)
- Publicity for your CSP
- Club nights and parties
- One-off events that aren't in line with your core activity
You can still do non-core things (we encourage you to!) but these aren't eligible for grant and we don't need to see them in your annual budget.
The annual budgeting committee will use supporting evidence from your core risk assessment/event proposals/trips to determine your core activity, at their discretion. This is a common sense process which isn't meant to catch you out - so don't worry too much!
Eligibility for Grant Funding
All CSPs are eligible for grant funding provided their budgets comply with the following policies:
Annual Budgeting Principles - Key document
There is no minimum membership fee required for grant to be allocated, however grant will only cover a portion of your costs. You are expected to cover costs with a combination of grant funding, membership, ticket income, and other fundraising.
To be eligible for grant funding, a CSP must have:
- At least 20 members, all of whom are Full Members of the Union (not associate/life members)
- An approved constitution
- An approved core risk assessment
- Submitted a Reserves Justification Form (if applicable)
Build Your Budget
Now that you have established your core expenditure, you need to actually build your budget. You should do this via the eActivities budgeting tool.
a) Start 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. Once you've checked this, hit start.
b) Add a Membership Target
"Edit Membership Details" shows the past 5 years of membership costs, targets, and actual members. You can then input your membership target for next academic year. All CSPs must have a minimum membership target of 20 members. At this stage, you don't need to decide upon the membership price.
c) Add Core Expenditure
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 lines to your budget. The first section is for details of the new line.
Need a reminder of what is core expenditure?
Not reporting expected expenditure truthfully can result in disciplinary procedures against your CSP, with a possible result of £0 grant allocation for the next academic year.
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- 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. You 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: Use this to describe what the activity code means to your CSP e.g. BUCS 1st Team, Spring Show
- Title: A short title of the specific expenditure/income (please keep to 5 words max.)
- 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 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.
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- Income/Expenditure: Make sure to indicate expenditure.
- 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 expenditure will be standard rated (P1 for expenditure), 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.
- Expenditure per Unit: This is the cost of the item, per unit (i.e. how much does each one cost)
- Quantity: The number of items you are buying.
- 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.
d) Add Fundraising Targets & Sponsorship
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 lines to your budget. At this stage we only want to see fundraising and sponsorship, not costs that members will be paying.
INCLUDE
- guaranteed external funding such as sponsorships - as a single income line for each funding source.
- fundraising targets from non-core socials (e.g. £200 target profit from annual dinner) - as a single income line showing the profit.
DON'T INCLUDE (in this stage)
- membership
- core income from members (e.g. session passes or tickets) that members of your CSP will pay.
- Income/Expenditure: Make sure to indicate income.
- Account: This is the type of expenditure - e.g. "Sponsorship" for external sponsors, "Ticket income" for fundraising target, etc.
- VAT Code: Most income will be standard rated (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 per Unit: This is the total income from the item, per unit (i.e. how much does each one make)
- Quantity: The number of items you are selling.
At the end of this stage, your budget should have a list of core expenses plus any fundraising/external income.
At the end of this stage, your budget should not have any core income from members.
This means that your budget will show a deficit - don't worry, this allows us to effectively allocate grant, then you can make up the rest with membership and ticket sales to members.
