The Future of Budgeting and Forecasting in Education: XfE Talks to Anago

As multi-academy trusts continue to grow and the financial pressures facing the education sector increase, having clear, accurate and accessible financial information has never been more important.

In our latest XfE conversation, we sat down with Euan from Anago to discuss how trusts are approaching budgeting and forecasting, what the UK can learn from the education sector in the Netherlands, and how technology, integrations and AI could shape the future of school finance.

Anago has been operating in the Netherlands for more than 25 years, with a particular focus on budgeting and forecasting. After seeing many of the same challenges developing within the UK education sector, Anago entered the UK market in 2024, focusing specifically on education.

Looking beyond the annual budget

One of the key themes of our conversation was the importance of moving beyond simply understanding where a trust is financially today.

For growing trusts, financial planning increasingly needs to consider the longer-term impact of decisions.

A change may be affordable within the current financial year, but what does that decision look like in three years’ time? How will changes to staffing, funding or other costs affect the trust further down the line?

This is where rolling forecasts and longer-term financial visibility become particularly valuable.

Anago explained how its platform has been designed with consolidation at its heart, allowing finance teams to move from an individual school view through to the overall trust position, while using actual financial data to understand performance against budget.

For trust leaders, that means being able to look beyond the numbers today and make more informed decisions about what comes next.

Making financial information accessible

However, better financial information is only useful if people can actually understand and use it.

During the discussion, we explored an example from the Netherlands involving a school group with 87 schools, where individual school leaders are able to access budgeting information, review their financial position and explore different scenarios.

It highlights an interesting difference in approach.

Budgeting does not necessarily have to sit exclusively with the central finance team. With the right controls and the right technology, financial information can potentially become more accessible to the people making decisions throughout an organisation.

That makes ease of use particularly important.

Anago highlighted simplicity as one of the key areas it has focused on throughout the development of its platform. Rather than requiring users to understand complex financial software, information can be displayed through flexible dashboards and reports, with the ability to drill down when more detail is needed.

The aim is for the technology to fit around the trust, rather than forcing the trust to change the way it works to fit the technology.

Best of breed or one system for everything?

Another major topic was the ongoing debate around all-in-one platforms versus a best-of-breed approach.

There is an understandable attraction to having finance, purchasing, budgeting and other systems provided within one ecosystem.

But there is also another approach: choosing specialist technology for each individual requirement and connecting those systems together.

Anago sits firmly within the best-of-breed camp.

The argument is that trusts should be able to choose the system that works best for each particular area. If requirements change, or one element of the technology stack is no longer performing as required, that system can potentially be replaced without having to move everything else at the same time.

For that approach to work effectively, however, integrations and APIs are essential.

The Netherlands provides an interesting example of what this can look like. Anago explained that APIs are much more embedded within the technology landscape there, allowing systems covering areas such as finance, payroll, MIS and budgeting to communicate more freely.

As technology within UK education continues to develop, greater connectivity between systems could give trusts considerably more freedom over the technology they choose.

The role of XfE and Anago

This ability for specialist systems to work together is particularly relevant to the relationship between XfE and Anago.

XfE provides trusts with a cloud-based finance solution and access to their up-to-date financial information, while Anago focuses specifically on budgeting, forecasting and financial planning.

Bringing these areas together can give finance teams access to current actuals alongside forward-looking budgets and forecasts, helping trusts understand both where they are today and where they could be heading.

It reflects the wider best-of-breed philosophy: different platforms focusing on what they do best while sharing information between them.

What happens when AI enters school finance?

It would be difficult to talk about the future of finance technology without discussing artificial intelligence.

Anago has already started exploring how AI could become part of its platform, including the development of AI-powered budgeting functionality within the Netherlands.

But the potential opportunity goes much further.

Imagine a finance system automatically feeding current financial information into a forecasting platform. AI could then analyse that information, identify trends or potential concerns and highlight the questions that finance leaders may want to raise at their next board meeting.

Rather than spending time manually moving, preparing and interpreting information, finance teams could increasingly focus on the decisions behind the numbers.

There are, of course, important considerations around security, governance and the infrastructure sitting behind these tools. But both XfE and Anago agreed that we are still at the beginning of what AI could ultimately mean for finance teams.

Over the next five years, the way we interact with financial software could look very different.

Keeping things simple

Despite all the discussion around integrations, APIs, automation and AI, the conversation ultimately returned to something much simpler.

Technology has to be easy to use.

When asked what currently helps Anago stand out within the UK budgeting market, Euan pointed to the feedback he hears repeatedly from trusts: simplicity and ease of use.

Flexible dashboards, customisable reporting and the ability to access important information without navigating unnecessarily complicated systems can make a significant difference to how widely technology is adopted across a trust.

Ultimately, the best technology is not necessarily the system with the longest list of features. It is the technology that gives people the information they need, when they need it, and helps them make better decisions.

Watch the full conversation

There is plenty more covered in our discussion with Anago, including the differences between the UK and Dutch education sectors, how budgeting technology could develop over the coming years and what the continued growth of AI could mean for trust finance teams.

Find out more about XfE

At XfE, we believe that modern school finance should be simple, connected and give trusts access to the information they need to make confident decisions.

By combining Xero with XfE and a wider ecosystem of specialist technology, trusts can build a finance setup around their own requirements rather than being restricted by a single system.

Want to see how XfE could work for your school or multi-academy trust?

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