How to reserve funding

As an employer who does not pay the apprenticeship levy, you must reserve apprenticeship funding for training and assessment in the finance section of your apprenticeship service account. 

You can also give your training provider permission to reserve funding on your behalf.

What you’ll need

You will need to know: 

• which apprenticeship standard the apprentice will be doing 
• what month the apprenticeship training will start

Before the apprentice starts their training, you can change the apprenticeship start date and standard. 

When you can use reserved funds

You can reserve funds up to 3 months in advance of the expected apprenticeship start date.     

The reserved funds are available to use from the selected month of the apprenticeship start date and the following 2 months. The reservation will expire at the end of the 3rd month if you do not use it.

Funding for an apprenticeship should be reserved before apprenticeship training starts. In cases where that is not possible, the option to select the previous month will now be available when setting up a reservation of funds. 

Example 

If you access your account in September 2023, you can reserve funding for an apprenticeship that has an expected start date between September 2023 and November 2023. You will also have the option to select August 2023.

You choose September 2023 as the apprenticeship start date.  This funding reservation can then be used for an apprenticeship that starts in September, October and November.  You must use this reservation and create a commitment on the service before the end of November 2023.  If you do not do this your reservation will expire.

As you have selected September 2023 as the start date in the apprenticeship service, you cannot use this reservation for an apprenticeship that starts before this. 

You are not able to amend the start date to the previous month once the reservation has been made as this option is only available when first selecting a reservation start date.

Funding status 

There are 3 funding statuses:

• active - you’ve reserved funds, but have not added or saved the apprentice’s details (if you can see ‘add apprentice details’ in your account, then the reservation is ‘active’) 
• used – you’ve reserved funds and added the apprentice’s details 
• expired – you did not add or save the apprentice’s details to a reservation within the 3 months that the reservation covers

Please note that this video has not yet been updated to include the previous month being available to select.

Last updated on 14 November 2023 09:07