X
Facebook
LinkedIn
WhatsApp
Mail
Copy linkWhat academy trusts need to know: DfE automation pause for 2025/26 financial returns
Updated 16th September 2026 | 3 min read Published 15th September 2026
The Department for Education (DfE) has paused automated submission of the 2025/26 accounts return. If your trust submits through IRIS Financials, this changes how you’ll complete this year’s return, and it’s worth understanding why before you plan your finance team’s time.
This affects any academy trust, single academy or multi-academy trust, that has used or considered automated submission through IRIS Financials. It’s also worth reading if you’re an auditor working with a trust, or a CFO or finance director signing off the return, since the manual process changes what evidence and sign-off steps look like this cycle.
Why the DfE is pausing automation for 2025/26
Automated submission has been available to trusts for five years, but take-up across the sector sits at just 3.2%. Faced with numbers that low, the DfE is reviewing the data collection process behind the accounts return, rather than continuing to support a route that hardly anyone uses.
For the 2025/26 accounts return, that means one thing in practice: there’s no automated submission route this year. Every trust, including those who’ve used automation before, will complete the return manually. The DfE hasn’t ruled out automation returning in a future year once its review concludes, but for now, treat 2025/26 as a manual-only cycle and plan accordingly.
What’s being removed, and when
Three automated features go: pre-population of the accounts return itself, pre-population of the draft trust financial statement template, and pre-population of 2025/26 balance sheet return (BFR) data. If your team has relied on any of these to save time at year-end, build that time back into your return process for this cycle.
Two changes on the DfE’s side go alongside this. The FMS comparison matrix webpage is closing, and DfE guidance on academy accounts is being consolidated into fewer pages on GOV.UK. If you’ve bookmarked either for reference, you’ll need to find your way to the updated guidance through GOV.UK’s main academies pages instead.
None of this changes what you’re required to report. The accounts return itself, the trust financial statement, and the BFR all still need completing to the same standard. What changes is who does the initial data entry: previously the system, now your finance team.
Getting your return process ready
Your 2025/26 accounts return workflow reverts to manual completion. The submission deadline is 26 January 2027, so there’s time to adjust your process, but it’s worth building the extra manual steps into your finance calendar now, rather than discovering them close to deadline.
In practice, that means allowing more time in your year-end timetable for data entry that used to happen automatically, briefing whoever prepares the return on the change, and flagging it to your auditor early so they know the return follows a different process this year. If your trust reports up to a MAT-level finance team, it’s worth raising this at trust level too, since every academy in the trust is affected in the same way.
The new summary page will be available within the Accounting module in IRIS Financials v7 ahead of this year’s return. For the DfE’s own guidance on the wider changes, the Academies Chart of Accounts publication on GOV.UK is the primary reference. The DfE is also running webinars on the changes for trusts who want to work through the detail before completing their return.
Get in touch if you have questions
If you’re unsure how the automation removal affects your trust, or you’d like a walkthrough of the new summary page in IRIS Financials, contact IRIS Support. They can talk you through what’s changed in the product and what it means for your return this cycle.
