IN$ITE: A FINANCE ANALYSIS MODEL FOR EDUCATION

An advanced software package for cost accounting and analysis, management reporting, performance assessment and decision support tool is described. The IN$ITE.TM. software package collects, organizes, manages and consolidates financial data and permits the standardized evaluation and comparison of different educational institutions. The software package implements the Finance Analysis Model For Education as a relational database for the efficient and cost-effective management of educational institutions. Financial data is organized into three dimensions: Functions, Programs and Locations. IN$ITE has five Functions which are subdivided into 15 Subfunctions and further divided into 32 Detail Functions, each of which provides greater clarity of fund use. The Program Dimension of IN$ITE permits the identification and determination of the costs of various special programs within the school system. The Organizational (or Locational) Dimension of IN$ITE comprises three levels: Expenses that are to be charged to the central location, to various school-sites, or to be retained as non-allocated expenses. IN$ITE also permits reporting of decision-support data by school-site or cost-center.