Committee Business Matters

Consideration must be given to preparing a forecast of probable income and expenditure for the coming year

Early Years will enable your group to work out how much the service will cost to run, to decide what fees to charge per week and help you prepare and plan a cashflow forecast.

The Committee 'resource pack' supplied by Early Years to members will inform you how to identify where the income is coming from within your setting, how to deal with income and the responsibility for the finance as well as providing good practice guidelines for the group when organising the finances of the setting.

Safeguarding is the prevention of Fraud.

Management Committee's have a responsibility to ensure that the resources of the early years group are safeguarded. The Early Years resource pack will provide good practice guidelines to safeguard the setting, help with your control system against fraud and advice on what action to take if fraud occurs.
Committee Responsibilities include:

Actions to take if fraud occurs include:

If you have any further queries on safeguarding your setting please refer to your resource pack or contact your community development advisor.

To assist management committees Early Years has negotiated the early Years Insurance Scheme, arranged by Lockton Company international. This policy offers an extensive range of cover at competitive rates for Early years members.

Refer to your Committee 'Resource pack' to view details of cover provided.

Please Note: Insurance certificates and accident records should be kept for a minimum of 40 years.

Business plans are an excellent decision-making tool for management committees to use as a basis for developing all aspects of their business. A business plan can be used to map out ideas.

Early Years will provide you with the information your Committee group requires to create your settings business plan. It will explain what a business plan is, what it is used for and how to evolve your plan overtime.

The financial manual is the document which brings together all the financial policies and procedures set down by an organisation to guide the handling, use, recording and review of financial transactions and avoid misunderstandings.

This is a time consuming process similar to drawing up policies & procedures for a setting and it is probably best to do this work in a sub-committee and share the work load among committee members with relevant skills and knowledge.

Early Years Resource pack will assist you in explaining what information should form your financial manual.

If you are an Early Years member you have the opportunity to avail of our Payroll service whereby your group's payroll processing, Inland Revenue returns, information for funders and other general payroll queries can be managed by a member of Early Years staff on your behalf (Northern Ireland only).

Your Committee Advisor will advise you on the settings payroll and salaries. For additional reading please visit HM Revenue and Customs Advice Team website. To ensure that correct procedures are followed Early Years recommends that treasurers on the committee avail of the free training and advice sessions from HRMC.

The Pension Reform Scheme

While the full proposals include reforming the State Pension to make it simpler and more generous and potentially extending people's working lives, the key reforms affecting employers relate to the Government's ideas for making it easier for more people to save for retirement.

The Government estimates that about seven million people are currently under saving for retirement. As a result, it is putting the onus on employers to help encourage more people to save. This new scheme will be compulsory.

Early Years currently have an existing staff pension scheme. This will be extended to those groups of employees who wish to avail of it. In conjunction with Early Years, financial advisers Muldoon & McAllister, will give the employers groups advice about the scheme, its costs and how it should be set up.

In addition Muldoon & McAllister are qualified to advise employees on their personal situation in relation to the pension scheme.