Guidance

How to access the view my financial insights tool

Updated 26 September 2024

Applies to England

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This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/view-my-financial-insights/how-to-access-the-view-my-financial-insights-tool

1. How to sign in

  1. Go to the view your education data service and select ‘start now’.

  2. Sign in using your DfE Sign-in account.

  3. You can register for a DfE Sign-in account if you don’t have one.

  4. If you are registered against more than one organisation (institution), choose which one you would like to see the data for.

  5. Select Academies and schools financial reporting and then the view my financial insights tool (VMFI) to access the tool and guidance.

2. Access

Access to view my financial insights is via DfE Sign-in. Read the guidance on how to register for a DfE Sign-in account.

The first user registered in an organisation is assigned the role of approver. When you request an account, an approver within your organisation will approve or reject your request and assign you a role. There are instructions for DfE Sign-in approvers on how to grant access to the organisation and assign services and roles. Approvers may also assign additional approvers.

View my financial insights is found under the view your education data service.

Roles

Roles affect the permission levels you have within view my financial insights. If you don’t have a role, you will not be able to use view my financial insights.

All roles have a view that shows summary information for the whole local authority or academy trust.

For read-only roles, you will have read only access to view my financial insights.

For full-user roles, you will have full access to view my financial insights with additional features:

  • select your comparators
  • data modelling
  • the ICFP tool
  • the ability to give access to an SRMA

Users from the local authority or the academy trust can choose schools to view within the organisation.

For academy trusts, if a user already has an Accounts return internal preparer and Accounts return internal approver role, they will automatically have full user access.

3. Further help

The user guide provides detailed help on using the tool. If you have any questions about the latest version of the VMFI tool, visit the customer help portal.

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