GrantLink is a grant-management and reporting workspace for nonprofit finance teams and accountants. It syncs accounting data from QuickBooks Online (QuickBooks Online), matches that activity to grants, and adds GrantLink-owned budgets, allocations, reporting classifications, documents, reports, claims, and history.

Accounting boundary: QuickBooks remains the accounting source of truth. GrantLink does not replace the general ledger, decide whether a cost is allowable, or remove the need for 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 it is not connected yet
Agreement on which QuickBooks Online Customers, sub-customers, Projects, Locations, or Classes 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 resolve incorrect source transactions in QuickBooks Online

The GrantLink Workflow

Stage	Where to work	What GrantLink owns
Connect and sync	Settings > Sync	Connection status, sync controls, and imported QuickBooks Online data
Set the product boundary	Settings > Permissions	The organization's saved permission configuration; see the current limitation below
Create grants	Grants > Add Grant	Grant metadata, documents, dates, status, and reporting setup
Match QuickBooks Online activity	Grant Details > QuickBooks links	Rules that match existing QuickBooks Online records to a grant
Build the plan	Grant Budget	GrantLink budget periods, lines, and amounts
Review spending	Ledger, Allocations, and grant Allocations	Grant reporting assignments, splits, budget-line categories, and exception review
Review funding	Grant Income and Funding Shares	GrantLink views and reporting classifications for receipts, match, cost share, in-kind share, and related requirements
Prepare outputs	Chats > New Chat, grant Reports, and Claims	Draft reports, saved report records, and claim preparation
Resolve work	Todos and Activity	Queued follow-up and GrantLink history

The sidebar also includes Dashboard, Funders, and Settings. Releases appears only when restriction-release or restricted-funds functionality is available. Agency-plan organizations have a different sidebar.

Add and Organize a Grant

Open Grants and select Add Grant. The page is a manual grant form with an optional document-assisted path:

Enter the details directly; or
Use Browse, or drop PDF award letters, RFPs, or agreements anywhere on the page, to auto-fill fields.

Document extraction creates suggestions, not authoritative award data. Review every field before creating the grant. If extraction fails, continue manually.

After the details are saved, the flow offers a QuickBooks-linking step. You can link existing QuickBooks Online records or skip linking and keep the grant app-only.

For full field guidance, see Creating and Managing Grants.

Understand QuickBooks Links

On a grant's Details tab, open QuickBooks links and configure the existing QuickBooks Online records used for:

Expenses
Money received

The purposes may use different records, and a grant may use more than one compatible record. GrantLink uses these links to match synced activity and drive reporting workflows.

Product boundary: Adding, removing, or changing a grant's QuickBooks links changes GrantLink matching only. It does not create, edit, retag, or relink anything in QuickBooks Online.

An empty link set is valid for an app-only grant, but QuickBooks Online transactions will not automatically match it. If activity is missing or incorrectly coded at the source, correct it in QuickBooks Online and sync again.

Use the Grant Workspace

Current grant tabs are:

Tab	Primary use
Overview	Position, progress, and exceptions at a glance
Details	Award metadata, documents, reporting setup, and QuickBooks links
Budget	Approved budget structure and budget-versus-actual context
Income	Synced and tracked grant receipts
Allocations	Expenses assigned to the grant and their budget categories
Releases	Restriction-release records; shown only when available for the grant and organization
Indirect Costs	Indirect-cost configuration and calculations
Funding Shares	Match, cost share, in-kind, program income, and related requirements
Reports	Reports associated with the grant
Activity	Grant history and changes

QuickBooks Permission Status

Settings > Permissions opens the QuickBooks Permissions page, which currently displays these configuration choices:

Read-only reporting
Selected writebacks
Full writeback / automation

Supported grant entity and linked transaction tracking changes can write to QuickBooks only through a separate organization Admin Preview → Apply workflow when the relevant permission, QuickBooks capability, provider-account identity, and organization rollout checks pass. Legacy journal-entry, claim, custom-field, and other transaction writers remain blocked. Importing synced records, linking existing QuickBooks entities, and making GrantLink-only reporting assignments do not mutate QuickBooks.

If no policy has been saved, the effective backend policy defaults to read-only, even though the page may display a legacy-policy notice. For a clear organizational record, an admin should save the intended mode. Do not rely on the selected or full option alone as evidence that a QuickBooks write occurred; review the operation receipt and verify material accounting changes in QuickBooks itself.

Verify Your Setup

Before relying on a grant report:

Confirm the company shown in Settings > Sync is the intended QuickBooks Online company and the latest sync succeeded.
Open the grant's Details > QuickBooks links and verify both Expenses and Money received, or confirm that the grant is intentionally app-only.
Compare the grant dates, award amount, funder, and Budget with approved source documents.
Trace a sample item from Ledger to its grant Allocations record and QuickBooks Online source.
Review Todos and allocation exceptions rather than assuming every synced transaction matched.
Reconcile Income, spending, and report scope to the accounting records before submission.

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