Period 1, August · 2026–27
R01
The first return of the funding year. Volumes are low, which makes it the cheapest opportunity of the year to find a systemic setup problem before it is repeated eleven more times.
Preparation
Preparation for this return normally starts about 10 days out.
Readiness checklist
Generate a checklist scoped to this return, your streams and your role.
Generate itThis date follows the published monthly pattern and is marked provisional in the Academy until it has been reconciled against the official timetable. Confirm it against Data Collection Timetable 2026 to 2027 before planning around it.
What this return drives
- The first earnings of the funding year, from delivery in August.
- The first sight of whether enrolment data has come through cleanly from the new year's setup.
What each role should do
MIS or ILR officer
Before
- Confirm the student record system has been rolled over to the new funding year and is generating against the new specification.
- Check that the new year's aims, funding models and monitoring codes have been set up.
- Run a validation pass as early as possible: a specification problem found now saves the whole year.
After
- Compare the funding report against what you expected for August. Investigate anything that looks structurally odd rather than merely small.
Head or director of MIS
Before
- Confirm the team has access to the new year's systems, reports and submission credentials.
After
- Agree the monthly return routine for the year with Finance and curriculum, including notification deadlines.
Finance director or finance manager
Before
- Agree with MIS how the monthly reconciliation will be produced and when you will receive it.
After
- Set the baseline for the year's monthly reconciliation.
Checks before you submit
- Confirm the ILR specification version in use is the one for this funding year.
- Confirm funding models and monitoring codes for the new year are configured.
- Check the provider header details, including UKPRN, are correct on the generated file.
- Run validation locally before submitting, and work the errors by rule rather than record by record.
- Check learners still recorded as in learning whose planned end date has passed.
- Check aims that have ended with no outcome recorded.
- Reconcile the funding report for the period against your own expectation, and explain any movement since last period.
- Confirm withdrawals notified by curriculum this month have actually been recorded.
Sign-off
- MIS confirms validation is clean or that every remaining error is understood and accepted.
- Finance confirms the earnings shape is plausible for the first period of the year.
After submission
- Download and keep the funding reports for the period. They are your record of what the submission earned.
- Circulate the reconciliation position to Finance, with the explanation for any movement.
- Log any issue you could not resolve in time, so it is picked up rather than forgotten next month.
What commonly goes wrong
- Delivery recorded against last year's configuration because the system rollover was incomplete.
- Aims that are no longer valid for the new funding year still in use.
- Enrolments entered but not yet completed, so learners are missing from the return entirely.
Each of these has a full diagnostic in the error and assurance lookup, with the causes, the investigation, the fix and the control that prevents it.
Sources
These are the official documents this page rests on. Where a figure, a deadline or an exact rule matters, the document is the authority and this page is the explanation.
Content reused from GOV.UK is Crown copyright, used under the Open Government Licence. FEFunding is not endorsed by the Department for Education.