Collecting co-investment before completion

Apps Co-Investment Contributions Report as it indicates contributions from previous years.

This is one of the worst jobs. We use the Apps Monthly Payment report mostly, but we keep our own spreadsheet that tracks things across years. We find that useful for tracking who we've told what and when too. When we first started doing this, we had to look at the Co-Investment Contributions Report as Martin says, as it shows everything from previous years. Now we have that in our own tracker, it's less important. We do still cross check with that one, but we don't now use it as our main way of checking this, as it never showed whether they were levy or non-levy. I think they've changed it this year so it does include that now.

Ruth Canham-James Thanks - we are doing the same now as becoming difficult to track!

On a separate note, we have employer contributions due in previous funding years listed on our Co-Investment Contributions report that do not match the employer contribution collected. When I've checked our records we have received the total due to us but some payments were made in the next funding year by the employer. Do you know if that causes any issues with completion, as I think this is the cause of my initial query?

Yes, I've had examples of that issue. The co-investment report just wasn't showing payments I know were in the ILR. When I checked though, we hadn't had our completion payments withheld, so where it matters in ESFA's data, they do know we've received the correct co-investment. Why it didn't appear in the co-investment report, I'm unclear about. I diarise things for myself to check completion payment months in advance if I'm concerned. The difficult ones are where they come at year end, and the data goes in between R13 and R14, so you'll never know for sure until it's too late.

Hi

We have an apprentice that achieved his EPA in Sept 2023, on the monthly payments report it is showing that £50 is due from employer.  The full £250 co-investment has been paid so wondering why this is showing and will our payment be held back>?

thank you

Anni

If that's the Apps Monthly Payment report, it will always show the payments that were due that month, it doesn't tell you whether the employer already paid. You need the Apps Co-Investment report for that. If you're using the v2 report, it's column V that'll tell you if you've collected enough PMR so far. Since we collect co-investment up front in most cases, our % of co-investment collected if above 100% until right at the end.

Hi Ruth

Thank you for this I've just got access to these reports so trying to fathom my way through them.

So, one of our apprentices funded through Levy has a co-investment showing as below because of lack of levy funds, in column V is shows Zero does this mean i need to invoice the employer for the amount?

Thank you

Anni

Annabel Redshaw Yes. You always need to make sure these are sorted (and paid) before year end if the apprentices completed in a previous year, or you don't get the completion payment.

Working out insufficient funds and collecting the co-investment is a seriously work intensive process for us! The first time, we had to use that co-investment report, which is really challenging, as it doesn't accurately tell you if it was a levy payer that owed the amount or not. Once we'd cleared the decks, we set up a quarterly process where we look at the last 3 months in the Apps Monthly Payment report to see where co-investment was due from a levy payer (that report is split better to show that, you get multiple rows if they change employer). We then created our own tracker to record what was owed. We tell Finance and the account managers to invoice, and they have a template to explain how much is owed and from which months, with an explanation about why. Finance then add PMR records for payments received. The following quarter, we check on the Co-investment report to see which employers did pay, and which were still outstanding. Our Finance team and account managers do a great job, and we rarely have anything outstanding the following month, but many of them owe us a new batch of co-investment.

It's not easy, and we really struggled with the reports until we set up our own tracker. We copy and paste data from both reports, and it calculates what remains to be paid. It still takes manual work.

Thank you Ruth, I'm going to have to try and produce a tracker like you have, think like you say it's a big task.