Financing the Trip

For trips costing less that £15, the charge can be put on sundries. If the trip costs more than £15, permission should be obtained from the parents to meet the charge.

For a more extensive and expensive trip, once a proposal has been accepted, the trip organiser must contact the Accountant and sort out a sensible scheme of how to collect in the various payments and various other budgeting considerations. This will all be done by filling in the yellow boxes on the excel sheet called accounts file on the intranet. After that meeting, the parents should receive a proforma produced from this file indicating when the payments are due and whether refundable etc.

It is sensible to discuss with the Accounts office the level of any non returnable deposit. On trips less than £200 it may be deemed sensible to ask for all the money upfront. Parents can, and do, change their minds about trips so it is important to be sure of the finances and also to stay in regular contact with parents once pupils have signed up so that you get early warning if anyone is likely to pull out.

The trip organiser will then keep in touch with the accountant and the accountant will check that the deadlines on the proforma are met. All monies in and out should therefore go via the leader to the bursary which makes for ease of accounting. If they are paid to individuals it is possible that the school insurance will not cover the activities.

This accounts file will be kept on an area on the v drive with write access for the bursary and read access for all CR. It will be treated as the definitive nominal roll.

Financing adults on trips can be a thorny issue. The principle that the Common Room accompanying the trip go free is sensible as long as the ratios are not extreme. Most commercial companies operate a ratio of either one free place to eight or one free place to ten and we ought to operate within those guidelines.

Other adults going free is another issue. On a Wellington trip, any suitable Wellington member of Common Room should have priority if they wish to go over a non-member of staff - mainly because of the responsibility involved. This would give priority to teachers over wives, husbands, boyfriends and girlfriends - unless they were one and the same. Therefore taking a non-teaching adult with the trip should require prior clearance from the Deputy Organisation well in advance, probably at the initial proposal stage.

rca 28/05/09
reveiwed and updated eaw 19/10/11