An allocation connects an eligible QuickBooks expense, or one eligible line of it, to a grant, or records committed spending before the QuickBooks transaction exists. A QuickBooks-backed allocation does not create an expense; QuickBooks remains the accounting source for its date, amount, vendor, and account. An eligible reviewed writeback can separately apply the grant's linked Class, Customer, or Project to the source transaction.

GrantLink creates direct, automatic, rule-based, split, and committed allocations in an Approved state. There is no pending-allocation inbox. QuickBooks-backed allocations affect Actual spending immediately; unmatched manual commitments appear separately as Committed until they are attached to QuickBooks.

Before You Start

For a QuickBooks-backed allocation, confirm that:

QuickBooks is connected and the transaction has synced.
The source is an operating expense supported by the Ledger. Income and cash-movement transactions use other workflows.
The target grant is Active or in Closeout, and the expense date falls within the grant period and any configured no-expense-before or no-expense-after limits.
The source has not already been claimed by another active allocation or as a restriction release.
Any budget line you intend to use belongs to the selected grant.

For every allocation, your Clerk organization role must not be Viewer, and any selected budget line must belong to the target grant. Viewers can inspect records but cannot run mutations.

Deleted, dismissed, zero-dollar, and GrantLink-created recovery transactions cannot be manually allocated. For a journal entry or a transaction containing both expense and non-expense lines, select a nonzero operating-expense line; the editor does not allocate the whole mixed transaction.

Current status-picker mismatch: The manual Classify picker currently lists Active and Awarded grants, while the save contract accepts Active and Closeout grants. In this dialog, use an Active grant. An Awarded grant will be rejected at save, and a Closeout grant may not be selectable even though the backend considers it allocatable.

Record Committed Spending Before QuickBooks

Use a committed allocation when the grant should reflect an incurred or committed cost before its source transaction has reached QuickBooks.

Select Add Allocation in the application header, then choose Commitment.
Choose an Active grant and, optionally, one of its budget lines.
Enter the accounting date and a nonzero amount.
Add the payee, document number, and memo when available. A document number is required for automatic matching.
Select Add committed allocation.

The allocation is approved and appears in the grant's Committed amount immediately. It remains GrantLink-only, does not create or change a QuickBooks transaction, and does not increase Actual or reduce budget variance while unmatched. If one synced transaction or line uniquely matches the date, amount, document number, and compatible payee information, GrantLink attaches it automatically and moves the amount from Committed to Actual without counting the expense twice. Ambiguous, conflicting, or near matches remain available for review.

To reconcile an unmatched commitment, open it from the grant's Allocations tab, review Commitment details, and select Attach QuickBooks transaction. The picker shows unallocated transaction or line candidates within 90 days, ordered by date and amount proximity. Confirm the exact source before attaching it; a scope allocated to another grant cannot be attached.

You can edit or delete a manual commitment while it is unmatched or needs review. After attachment, the original commitment cannot be restored or edited, but you can still change the resulting allocation's budget line or remove the allocation through the ordinary correction workflow. If a suggested match should remain separate, choose Keep as GrantLink-only.

Let QuickBooks Links Handle Routine Expenses

Open the grant and manage its QuickBooks links.
Under expense tracking, link the Customer, Project, Location, or Class used on that grant's costs.
Sync QuickBooks.
Open the grant's Allocations tab and verify the results.

Automatic matching requires one unambiguous eligible grant. It does not override an existing allocation, force an out-of-period expense onto a grant, or guess when tracking signals conflict. Active allocation rules can also classify eligible transactions; an organization can keep up to 500 rules active. Test a rule's simulation before relying on it.

Review Ledger States

Open Ledger and use the compact views:

View	Meaning
Unallocated	No active allocation covers the eligible expense scope
Allocated	One or more active allocations cover the transaction
Split	More than one allocation exists, or a reporting split intentionally leaves part outside GrantLink reporting
Outside scope	The transaction is not currently being presented for grant allocation, including dismissed items

Select a row to inspect the source lines and QuickBooks dimensions. If the projection is still building or failed, wait for or retry the Ledger rebuild before treating the list as complete.

Assign One Transaction to One Grant

In Ledger > Unallocated, open the row action and select Classify.
If the transaction has multiple lines, select the eligible expense line.
Choose the grant.
Optionally choose a budget line and add a memo or business rationale.
Select Classify.

The allocation is effective immediately in GrantLink and appears in the grant's Allocations tab. A missing budget line does not make the allocation incomplete: it remains grant spending and appears as Uncategorized until categorized.

Current QuickBooks boundary: In Read-only reporting, classification changes GrantLink only. In an eligible selected- or full-writeback organization, saving a single-grant allocation can open a separate review of the exact Class, Customer, or Project change from the grant's explicit writeback destination. Choose Apply to queue that reviewed tracking update. An Approved allocation by itself is not evidence that QuickBooks changed, and the allocation-journal-entry writer remains blocked.

Split a Shared Expense

Use Split when one source scope belongs to several grants or partly remains outside grant reporting. A single split accepts exact amounts or percentages and optional budget lines per target. It always leaves QuickBooks unchanged.

See Splitting a QuickBooks Transaction Across Multiple Grants for the complete line-selection, rounding, remainder, edit, and removal workflow.

Use Bulk Actions Carefully

Select eligible Ledger rows to expose the bulk action bar:

Grant assigns all selected unallocated rows to one grant and can set one budget line.
Split applies the same set of grant percentages to every selected transaction. Percentages must total 100%; bulk split does not support per-transaction amounts, source-line choices, budget lines, or an outside-reporting remainder.
Budget line updates eligible existing single-grant allocations.

In read-only mode, bulk classify validates each transaction independently: valid rows can save while invalid rows remain for correction. In a write-enabled mode, the bulk Grant action first shows eligible lines, their QuickBooks destinations, exact amounts, and blocked rows. Approval saves and queues only eligible rows; blocked rows remain unchanged. A lost acceptance response is shown as unconfirmed and can be retried without duplicating an accepted request. Read-only bulk split can also partially succeed; its legacy writer remains blocked in selected and full modes. Review the reported counts rather than assuming the selection was one all-or-nothing batch.

Use the single-transaction editor when source lines, target percentages, exact amounts, budget lines, or outside-reporting remainders differ.

Correct or Remove an Allocation

For a reporting split, use Edit reporting split to replace the current treatment and preserve its lifecycle history. For a budget-only correction, update the budget line from Ledger or the grant's Allocations tab.

To remove active allocations from a Ledger row:

Select Remove or Remove all.
Enter the requested reason.
Review the result before retrying.

Removing several allocations is sequential: earlier removals remain effective if a later one fails. GrantLink-only and Project-based allocations are reversed locally. A non-Project allocation with a posted or active journal entry cannot be directly removed, although current GrantLink allocation posting is blocked. Correct any actual QuickBooks coding in QuickBooks.

Verify the Result

Reopen the Ledger row and confirm its active targets and assigned amount.
Open each grant's Allocations tab and confirm the amount and budget line.
Open allocation details to review the source, method, creator, status, rationale, and lifecycle history.
For an accepted QuickBooks update, inspect its status in the Ledger row or Settings > Background jobs. Use Check status for an uncertain outcome; it checks the provider without resending the write.
If your role allows it, open Settings > Activity & audit log for organization-level creation, queue, completion, edit, removal, and error events.
Reconcile GrantLink's effective allocations and any reviewed tracking change to the QuickBooks source and your supporting allocation method.

For the current review and approval boundary, see Reviewing and Correcting Grant Allocations.