GrantLink is a grant management and reporting workspace for nonprofit finance teams and their accountants. It copies accounting data from QuickBooks Online, matches that activity to grants, and keeps grant budgets, allocations, documents, reports, claims, and history in GrantLink.

Accounting boundary: QuickBooks remains the accounting source of truth. GrantLink doesn't replace the general ledger, decide whether a cost is allowable, or replace your organization's accounting policies and review.

Before you start

Confirm that you have:

Access to the correct GrantLink organization
An Intuit user who can authorize the intended QuickBooks Online company, if the company isn't connected yet
Agreement on which QuickBooks Classes, Customers, sub-customers, Projects, or Locations identify each grant's expenses and money received
Award documents, approved budgets, dates, and reporting requirements for the grants you will add
An accounting owner who can correct source transactions in QuickBooks Online

The GrantLink workflow

Stage	Where to work	What GrantLink keeps
Connect and sync	Settings > QuickBooks > Sync	Connection status, sync controls, and the copied QuickBooks data
Set the QuickBooks write policy	Settings > QuickBooks > Permissions	The organization's saved writeback policy
Create grants	Add Grant on the Grants page	Grant details, documents, dates, status, and reporting setup
Match QuickBooks activity	The QuickBooks section on the grant's Details page	The QuickBooks records that identify the grant's expenses and money received
Build the plan	The grant's Budget section	Budget periods, lines, and amounts
Review spending	Ledger, Allocations, and the grant's Transactions > Allocations	Grant assignments, splits, and budget lines
Review funding	The grant's Transactions > Invoices & receipts and Funding shares	Receipts, match, cost share, and in-kind tracking
Prepare outputs	Chats, Reporting, and Claims	Draft reports, saved reports, and claims
Follow up	Needs attention on the Dashboard, and Settings > Activity log	Open work and the history of changes

The sidebar also includes Funders, Initiatives, and Help & tutorials. Organizations on an agency plan see a shorter sidebar with Dashboard and Clients.

Add a grant

Open Grants and select Add Grant. You can type the details into the form, or you can drop PDF award letters, RFPs, or agreements on the page (or select Browse) to fill the form automatically.

GrantLink fills in only the fields you haven't edited. Review every field before you create the grant, because extracted values can be wrong. If GrantLink shows Couldn't read the documents, enter the details by hand.

When you create a grant with the status Awarded or Active, GrantLink opens the grant's QuickBooks setup next. You can link an existing QuickBooks record, create a new record in QuickBooks after a review step, or choose Not now. For full field guidance, see Creating and Managing Grants.

Link QuickBooks records to a grant

On the grant's Details page, find the QuickBooks section and select Manage (or Set up). The QuickBooks tracking dialog has two tabs:

Expenses, for the records whose costs belong to the grant
Money received, for the records whose income belongs to the grant

Each tab can use different records, and each can hold more than one compatible record. GrantLink uses these links to match synced activity to the grant. Only an organization Admin can add or remove a grant's QuickBooks links.

Product boundary: Adding or removing a link changes matching in GrantLink only. It doesn't create, edit, or retag anything in QuickBooks Online.

A grant with no links is valid, but QuickBooks transactions won't match it automatically. If activity is missing or coded wrong in QuickBooks, correct it in QuickBooks Online and sync again.

Use the grant workspace

Each grant has these sections:

Section	Pages	Main use
Overview		Funding position, progress, and items that need review
Details		Grant details, documents, and QuickBooks tracking
Budget	Matrix, Indirect costs	The approved budget, budget versus actual, and indirect cost setup
Transactions	Allocations, Invoices & receipts, Funding shares	Expenses assigned to the grant, money received, and match or cost share tracking
Reporting	Reports, Templates, Setup, Access	Reports for the grant and its reporting setup
Activity		The history of changes to the grant

When GrantLink can change QuickBooks

Settings > QuickBooks > Permissions opens the QuickBooks Permissions page. It offers three modes:

Read-only reporting
Selected writebacks
Full writeback / automation

In Read-only reporting mode, GrantLink never changes QuickBooks. Syncing, linking existing records, and assigning transactions to grants for reporting never change QuickBooks in any mode.

When the saved policy allows it, a few workflows can change QuickBooks. The workflows create or update a grant's or funder's QuickBooks record, update grant tracking on transactions, and post allocation journal entries. GrantLink is making these changes available in stages, so some may not be available yet. Your organization decides which available changes to allow. Each one shows the exact change for review first, and nothing is sent until a permitted user selects Apply to QuickBooks. Claim invoices, indirect cost journal entries, and custom field updates are not available. For details, see QuickBooks Permissions and Current Writeback Availability.

If no policy has been saved, GrantLink treats the organization as read-only, even though the page shows a notice about legacy writeback behavior. An Admin should save the intended mode so the choice is on record. A saved mode is not proof that a QuickBooks change happened, so verify material accounting changes in QuickBooks itself.

Verify your setup

Before you rely on a grant report, check the following:

In Settings > QuickBooks > Sync, confirm that the company is the intended QuickBooks Online company and that the latest sync finished.
In the grant's QuickBooks tracking, check both Expenses and Money received, or confirm that the grant is meant to have no QuickBooks links.
Compare the grant dates, award amount, funder, and budget with the approved documents.
Trace a sample expense from Ledger to the grant's Allocations page and to the QuickBooks transaction.
Review Needs attention on the Dashboard, because not every synced transaction matches a grant automatically.
Reconcile money received, spending, and report scope to your accounting records before you submit a report.

See the Quick Start Guide for a first grant walkthrough, and see Grant Detail Navigation for a closer tour of the grant workspace.