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Grants

Creating and Managing Grants

Add grants manually or from uploaded award documents, connect their QuickBooks records, and edit, close, or archive them.

Create one GrantLink grant for each award or opportunity you manage. The grant holds the award details and connects the award to its budget, receipts, allocations, QuickBooks records, documents, reports, and activity history.

Accounting boundary: Creating or editing a grant doesn't create an award, receipt, expense, or journal entry in QuickBooks. A QuickBooks link tells GrantLink which existing QuickBooks records belong to the grant. Creating or changing a QuickBooks Class, Customer, or Project from GrantLink is a separate step, where an Admin must preview the change and then apply it. Your organization's QuickBooks permissions must also allow the change.

Before you start

Confirm that:

  • You're in the correct organization and have the Member or Admin role. Viewers don't see Add Grant.
  • You know the grant period. Period Start and Period End are required, and Period End can't be before Period Start.
  • If you'll link an existing QuickBooks record, QuickBooks is connected and the record has synced. You can create a grant without linking QuickBooks.
  • Your plan has room for another active grant if you choose the Active status. GrantLink counts grants with the Active status that aren't archived.

Create a grant manually

  1. Open Grants and select Add Grant.
  2. Under Grant Details, enter the Grant Name (required, up to 100 characters) and an optional Description (up to 500 characters). Then choose the Grant Type, which is the donor restriction type, and the Status.
  3. Under Reference Numbers, enter the optional Grant Number and Internal Code.
  4. Under Grant Period, set Period Start and Period End.
  5. Under Financial Details, enter the optional Award Amount, Match Required, Match Ratio, Indirect Cost Rate (%), and Indirect Cost Cap. An award amount must be greater than zero, and the indirect cost rate must be from 0 to 100.
  6. Optionally, choose a Reporting Cadence:
    • Monthly, Quarterly, Semiannual, or Annual creates periodic reporting cycles.
    • For Quarterly, choose a Quarter Scheme.
    • Enter Days Until Due, which is the number of days after each period ends that the report is due.
    • Final Only and Custom don't create reporting cycles. See Tracking Grant Milestones and Deadlines.
  7. In the side panel, choose a Funder and an Initiative. You can also create a funder or an Initiative from those pickers.
  8. Select Create grant. If the status is Awarded or Active, the button is Create grant & set up QuickBooks.

GrantLink then opens the new grant. If you chose Awarded or Active, GrantLink opens Details with QuickBooks tracking ready to set up.

Fill the form from award documents

On Add Grant, drop PDFs anywhere on the page, or select Browse. You can add up to five PDFs, up to 20 MB each and 25 MB in total.

  1. Add award letters, requests for proposals, or agreements in PDF format.
  2. Wait while GrantLink reads the files.
  3. GrantLink fills the fields that you haven't edited. For a field you already edited, GrantLink offers a suggestion that you can apply.
  4. Check every filled field against the source documents, and correct any mistakes.
  5. Select Create grant.

GrantLink attaches the PDFs to the new grant. If GrantLink can't read the files, you can still enter the details by hand.

Set up QuickBooks links in the QuickBooks tracking section of the grant's Details tab. Select Set up, or Manage if the grant already has links.

  1. Choose the Expenses tab or the Money received tab.
  2. Under Include another record, choose a QuickBooks record, and select Include.
  3. For a Project with dates, review Use the QuickBooks Project dates. It's selected by default. If you keep it, GrantLink uses the Project's dates for the grant period and adds existing Project activity in that period.
  4. Review the records on each tab. Costs on the expense records count toward the grant, and income on the revenue records counts as grant income.

Including a record changes matching in GrantLink only, and QuickBooks isn't changed. For expenses, you can link Classes, or you can link Customer, Location, or Project records, but you can't mix Classes with the other types. You can link a Class only when the grant is Awarded, Active, Closeout, or Closed.

You don't have to link QuickBooks. A grant without links works in GrantLink, but GrantLink won't match synced activity to it automatically.

Check the new grant

  1. On Overview, confirm the grant period and award amount.
  2. On Details, confirm the funder, the documents, the Initiatives, and the QuickBooks links.
  3. Under Reporting > Setup, confirm the reporting settings.
  4. If you linked QuickBooks records, open Transactions > Allocations and Transactions > Invoices & receipts after the sync finishes. Check dates and amounts rather than assuming that every earlier transaction belongs to the grant.
  5. Open Budget and add the approved budget before you rely on budget comparisons. See Setting Up Grant Budgets.

When the Grants list can't show financial totals

The Grants list keeps grant details available while its financial summary refreshes. While a refresh is pending, it hides spending and funding amounts instead of showing old totals.

  • Updating financials. Grant details remain available. Wait for the refresh to finish. You can still open a grant.
  • Financial totals are unavailable. Grant details remain available. Select Retry financial totals. If the retry fails, the page shows Financial totals could not be refreshed. Try again.

An updating or unavailable total doesn't mean zero spending, and it doesn't mean that an allocation was removed. Wait for current totals before you use the list for a financial decision. The message applies only to the Grants list, so other reports and budget views can refresh at different times.

Edit an existing grant

Grant settings are spread across these places in the grant:

  • Details holds the name, description, numbers, type, status, funder, award amount, and grant period.
  • Reporting > Setup holds the Reporting Schedule.
  • Transactions > Funding shares holds Match Required and Match Ratio.
  • Budget > Indirect costs holds the indirect cost rate and cap.

To edit a grant:

  1. Open Grants and select the grant.
  2. Open the section that holds the setting.
  3. Change the setting.
  4. Select Save changes in the bar at the bottom of the page.

The Status field offers every status, and it doesn't check whether the change follows the usual order. Change the status on purpose, and check Activity afterward. See Grant Status Lifecycle for the usual order and its checks.

When you change the cadence, dates, or due days, GrantLink rebuilds the upcoming reporting cycles that nobody has worked on. It keeps custom cycles and cycles that have work or a submission. Check the new schedule against the award terms. GrantLink has no editor for custom cycles, and it has no field for a final report due date.

Close or archive a grant

The Closed status and the Close / archive action are different:

  • Use the Closed status when the grant's work and required reports are complete.
  • Close / archive is in the row menu on the Grants list. It sets the status to Closed, removes the grant from the list, archives its QuickBooks links, and releases its allocations so that the transactions can be assigned to other grants.

Before you archive a grant, reconcile its allocations, income, reports, and supporting records. GrantLink blocks the archive when it can't release the grant's allocations.

For a map of the grant's sections, see Current Grant Detail Navigation. To add existing grants from QuickBooks records, see Adding Existing Grants and Budgets.

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