For many university finance teams, the most difficult part of TRAC is no longer the pressure of the return itself. The pressure comes from producing figures that can be explained, tested and defended when senior colleagues begin asking how the results were reached.
TRAC, the Transparent Approach to Costing, is a familiar process for Higher Education finance directors, chief financial officers and TRAC accountants across the UK. The purpose is to allocate institutional income and costs across teaching, research and other activities, with the results used externally by funding bodies and internally by universities reviewing sustainability, recovery and cross-subsidy initiatives.
This ‘external and internal use’ changes the standards expected of the model behind the return. A TRAC model does not simply need to produce the right template, but also show how the figures have been built, where the material drivers sit, how changes affect the outcome and why results differ from last year, from another department or from sector benchmarks.
This depends on whether the figures can be easily scrutinised and cross-referenced in their current format. The statutory return is relatively small compared with the analysis needed to support it. Behind the submitted figures sit workload or Time Allocation Survey data, staff and student Full-Time Equivalent data, space data, finance system mappings, central service allocations, activity definitions, cost categories and research charge-out rates. The list goes on – and any one of these areas can influence the final result, creating difficult questions if the model cannot trace the path from source data to output.
This becomes particularly important when research cost rates look unusually high or low, when recovery by activity moves unexpectedly, or when a steering group wants to understand what has changed. A model that relies too heavily on linked spreadsheets, email chains, inherited workbooks or manual adjustments can make these questions harder to answer with confidence – at least within a reasonable timeframe. And even when the final return is submitted, the process may leave your finance team exposed to avoidable uncertainty.
Yes, but enterprise finance systems do not always solve the problem either, as TRAC requires a specific combination of allocation rules, driver logic, reporting analysis and scenario testing. A commercial finance system or budgeting software platform may hold source data well, but the TRAC process still needs a bespoke model that can apply the methodology, provide transparency and support the explanations your senior leaders need.
The best moment to review a TRAC model is before the year-end process takes over; as once accounts, drivers, validation checks, senior review and submission deadlines begin to compete for attention, your finance team often has limited room to challenge the structure of the model itself. Problems then get worked around for another year, usually through extra manual effort, additional reconciliations or the continued use of fixes that were never intended to become permanent. It’s a headache that everyone wants to avoid.
Account-Ability’s sector-standard TRAC solution is used by more than 40 higher education institutions in the UK and reflects more than 25 years of TRAC experience. It has been designed to replace fragile manual models with a transparent, compliant and flexible approach that supports the return itself and the analysis behind it.
The solution produces the statutory TRAC output you need, but its value does not stop there. It also enables detailed reporting by department and activity, recovery analysis, cost-rate analysis, driver review, prior-year comparison and scenario testing. This gives your finance teams a stronger basis for answering the questions that often sit behind the return, such as why a rate has moved, or what would happen if a driver value or weighting changed.
For institutions with limited internal TRAC capacity, the implementation route is also important. Our standard model is proven, structured and supported, with implementation designed to be completed with minimal disruption. The aim is to give your finance people a model they can understand, operate and explain, rather than another bespoke build that depends too heavily on one individual.
If your current TRAC model takes too long to run, is difficult to explain, depends on legacy spreadsheets or does not give senior leaders the analysis they need, now is the right point to review your options. Please click here to book a demo with our TRAC specialists, and see how a more transparent model can make the process faster, clearer and easier to defend.
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