At the onset of the 2020-2021 school year, School District 36, Surrey Schools — the largest school district in British Columbia — enrolled approximately 75,000 students from kindergarten through Grade 12. The district operates 103 elementary schools, 21 secondary schools, five learning centres, three adult education centres, one community college, and a distributed learning program.
Surrey Schools operates with an $900,000,000 budget, and sought greater accuracy and granularity for their personnel budget and forecasting needs. With approximately 12,250 employees, including over 6,500 teachers, Surrey Schools elected to modernize its budget and forecasting process by migrating away from complex spreadsheets and toward Questica Budget.
Questica Budget will integrate with the district’s ERP system to populate updated budget actuals and personnel data.
The district anticipates improved detail through Questica Budget’s Personnel module, alongside multi-user budgeting, workflows for original budget requests and amendments, allocations, and configurable reporting. Surrey Schools will also use Questica’s OpenBook transparency product to share financial information in easily consumable, visualized formats.
Questica has focused on providing budgeting and forecasting software exclusively to the public sector for nearly 25 years. Questica is a full-service partner, where in-house staff are responsible for software development, implementation, training, and post-implementation customer care.
Customers include Wetaskiwin Regional Public Schools, Horizon School Division, and Greater Saskatoon Catholic Schools.
Using Questica’s Performance, OpenBook, Operating, and Personnel modules will allow Surrey Schools to save time, money, and energy while improving the accuracy and efficiency of their K-12 budget development and maintenance.
