Managing Environment and Resources

Chris Ashman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134020256
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación general

Making management ideas easy to grasp and providing practical advice on management theory and practice, this book focuses on how to make policy work in practice:

• providing comprehensive advice on managing resources
• including advice on Health & Safety and promoting a healthy environment
• clear explanations of how to measure cost, incomes, ratios and effective efficiency
• Suggestions on how to bring about change and improvement.

Chapter 1

MONEY MATTERS

This chapter covers:

● Useful methods to help you manage money

● How to set a budget and monitor spending

● Managing income and expenditure

Some people are spenders and others savers! Managers need to be good at both things: spending time, money and resources to get the job done as efficiently and effectively as possible; and saving energy, time and resources to reinvest in other activities.

Some people are very comfortable using numbers in their daily life and their working environment. Others may have an instant reaction of ‘I can't do the maths!’

Who is the role model?

As an Early Years manager you will already work with numbers and money. As with other things, the more you use and practise the skills the more comfortable you will feel about using them.

USEFUL METHODS TO HELP YOU MANAGE MONEY

Planning is a skill you already possess. Within your practitioner role you will have developed methods to create ideas, organise activities and identify ways of evaluating outcomes for a whole range of curriculum-related actions. Managing money will call on many of these skills. When planning finance or money, management budgets will be used to set out aims and then monitor progress.

Definition

Budgets are plans that relate to activities measured by numbers.

Do not be afraid of your budget! It is a very useful system to control resources.

Examples of budgets will include:

❑ Ratios – lists of the total number of children in an age range compared to the total of qualified and unqualified staff on duty

❑ Salary costs – of employing staff

❑ Estimates – of the bills expected for consumables or gas, electricity, water, etc.

In this chapter it will be the budgets that we focus on. Understanding and using such financial plans and monitoring processes are vital aspects of any manager's successful career. It may not seem exciting to be a good financial manager, but even if your curriculum activities or your support of parents is superb, you still need to be solvent to carry on next year.

Setting a budget

Often you will be asked to set a budget, to create a plan, alongside other managers. Depending upon the size of the organisation that you work for, the budgets may be set by financial experts, the senior manager or owner of the service.

Even if you are not directly involved in deciding what goes into a budget plan it is important for you to have an understanding of how budgets are set. Such an understanding helps you to manage it more efficiently and effectively.

There are two broad approaches to setting a budget that can be categorised as (a) annual update and (b) blank sheet.

Annual-update budgets

When planning personal spending many people will go through a process similar to this, perhaps on a monthly basis:

❑ I need to know how much money I will receive – e.g. monthly salary

❑ Allocate regular expenses that are fixed – e.g. rent or mortgage, insurance

❑ Allocate money for other regular expenses that may vary from month to month – e.g. food bills, entertainment, travel and transport, savings or paying off debts.

Some people do this as a conscious activity by getting bank statements, salary slips, utility bills, shopping receipts or other documents and working out the difference between income (salary) and expenditure (outgoings). Other people do something less consciously, but they have to do something to make sure that over time they have the money to spend on necessary things as well as desirable things.

Managers need to consciously plan and check the money. Taking the less conscious approach is inappropriate. Remember that as a manager the money you are dealing with, whether it ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Also Available
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgement
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Money Matters
• Chapter 2: Managing To Be Healthy and Safe
• Chapter 3: Beyond Compliance
• Index