SchoolSpend is purchase order, invoice, budget and contract management for schools — built into the Microsoft 365 your school already has, with all your data staying in your own tenant.
It replaces paper PO pads, email approval chains and spreadsheet budget tracking with a single, auditable system that staff sign into with their existing school Microsoft accounts.
SchoolSpend is built for UK schools and multi-academy trusts — independent schools, academies and trusts. It's championed by School Business Managers, bursars, finance managers and senior leadership, and used day-to-day by any member of staff who raises purchase requests, the finance team, and the department heads who approve them.
It solves a familiar problem: spending happens across departments with no single view; POs get approved over email or on paper; invoices arrive with no matching PO; budgets live in spreadsheets that are always out of date; and there's no audit trail when auditors or governors ask “who approved this?”
SchoolSpend lives inside your school's own Microsoft 365. Your staff sign in with the accounts they already use, and all your spending data stays in your own Microsoft tenant — in a single dedicated area SchoolSpend can reach and nothing else can. We don't move your data to our servers.
Built into your Microsoft 365. Staff sign in with their normal school Microsoft accounts (single sign-on). No separate usernames or passwords.
Your data stays in your tenant. All SchoolSpend data — purchase orders, invoices, budgets, ledger codes, contracts and uploaded files — lives in a dedicated SharePoint site inside your own Microsoft 365, called /sites/SchoolSpend.
Locked to that one site. SchoolSpend uses Microsoft's Sites.Selected permission model, so its access is restricted to only its own site. It cannot see or touch any other site, file, mailbox or data in your tenant.
Roles from your own groups. Permissions are driven entirely by the Microsoft 365 security groups your IT team manages.
| Permission | Why | Scope |
|---|---|---|
| Sign in and read your profile | Identify the signed-in user | The signed-in user only |
| Read users' basic profiles | Route approvals to the right manager | Directory read, basic profile |
| Read your group memberships | Determine each user's SchoolSpend role | Group membership read |
| Access the SchoolSpend site only | Read/write SchoolSpend's own data | Sites.Selected — one site only |
| Read basic organisation info | Locate the SchoolSpend site automatically | Read-only org name + domains |
| Manage calendar reminders (optional) | Contract renewal reminders, only if Contracts is enabled | Calendar events |
Roles are controlled by Microsoft 365 security groups — add a person to a group and they get that role at their next sign-in. Higher roles include the ones below. There's no separate SchoolSpend administrator account to manage.
| Role | Microsoft 365 group | What they can do |
|---|---|---|
| User | SchoolSpend-Users | Raise purchase orders; see their own |
| Manager | SchoolSpend-Managers | Approve POs within their limit; see their department's POs and reports |
| Finance | SchoolSpend-Finance | Upload and sign off invoices; see all POs, budgets and reports |
| Admin | SchoolSpend-Admins | Everything above, plus settings, budgets, staff management and branding |
SchoolSpend is set up once per school by the school's IT administrator — typically in 30–45 minutes. There's no data hand-off to SchoolSpend; the school stays in control throughout.
Our team is here to help with anything not covered here. For data protection details, see our Privacy Policy.
Email us at support@schoolspend.co.uk