The Ledger Workflow

Open Ledger at /ledger to review synced QuickBooks transactions and make GrantLink reporting decisions. Ledger does not replace the general ledger: QuickBooks remains authoritative for the transaction, date, vendor, account, amount, and accounting dimensions.

Accounting boundary: Single-transaction reporting splits and read-only assignments stay in GrantLink. In an eligible selected- or full-writeback organization, a single-grant assignment can separately apply the grant's linked Class, Customer, or Project after an exact Preview → Apply review. The allocation-journal-entry, bulk-split, and other legacy transaction writers remain blocked. Verify the resulting accounting dimensions in QuickBooks.

Before You Start

• Connect and sync QuickBooks.
• Confirm the target grant and any budget lines already exist.
• Use supporting evidence appropriate to the allocation method.
• Ensure your plan has allocation capacity. When the requested allocation count exceeds the plan allowance, GrantLink opens the upgrade-required flow instead of silently saving part of the request.
• Viewers should treat Ledger as inspection-only. The current route does not consistently hide mutation controls by Viewer role, so a visible action is not authorization. Do not rely on control visibility as a permission check.

Choose a Ledger View

Ledger provides six compact views:

The Ledger uses a server-backed projection. If it is missing or failed, GrantLink starts a rebuild. Do not treat a rebuilding or failed list as a complete accounting population.

Select a row to open its responsive details inspector. Review the source transaction, lines, account, QuickBooks Customer, Project, Class, Location, and linked records before acting.

Filter and Sort the Population

Use filters for:

• Transaction date
• Transaction type
• Vendor
• Customer
• Project
• Class or combined Dimension
• Location
• Amount range
• Allocation status
• Budget status

Sort by Newest first, Oldest first, Vendor A–Z, or Highest amount. Filters, summaries, row selection, and sorting use the server result set. Clear filters if an expected transaction is absent, then confirm sync and projection status.

Understand Source Scope and Eligibility

Ledger classifies source activity before offering allocation actions. Operating-expense lines are grant-expense candidates; income and cash movements belong in their corresponding views. Deleted, dismissed, unsupported, GrantLink recovery, and sources with no nonzero eligible expense scope are not manually allocatable.

A transaction may contain one or several scopes:

• For a simple eligible expense, GrantLink can use the transaction scope.
• For a multi-line or mixed transaction, choose the specific nonzero operating-expense line. The split dialog lists eligible lines and their source amount, currency, account or item, dimensions, and posting type.
• GrantLink does not allocate income or a non-expense line merely because the transaction also contains an expense.
• A source already owned by an active allocation or restriction-release treatment cannot be claimed again as an overlapping decision.

An eligible grant must be active or in closeout under the save contract, and the transaction date must satisfy the grant's period and expense limits. A selected budget line must belong to that grant.

Current picker mismatch: Some manual classification choices list Active and Awarded grants while the save contract accepts Active and Closeout. Use an Active grant in that picker. An Awarded grant can fail at save, and a Closeout grant may be valid in the backend but absent from the picker.

Reconcile Journal Entries and Payments

A balanced journal entry can have a $0.00 document total while still containing real expense, payroll, correction, or reclassification postings. Ledger keeps a journal entry visible when it has any nonzero accounting line, including when Settings > Ledger display > Hide journal entries without activity is enabled. That setting hides only entries with no nonzero posting lines.

Open a journal entry to review Journal reconciliation:

• Expense-account debits increase Net expense and expense-account credits reduce it.
• Other debit and credit postings remain visible but are excluded from Net expense.
• Journal difference should be zero when the synced posting lines balance.
• Remaining to allocate is the eligible, unassigned grant-expense scope. It can differ from both the document total and Net expense.
• If account classification, posting direction, source completeness, currency precision, or balance cannot be verified, GrantLink withholds or qualifies the reconciliation instead of presenting it as exact.

Bill payments, credit-card payments, and transfers appear by their specific recorded type. A bill payment settles the linked Bill and is not a second expense; allocate the underlying Bill. A recorded payment is not proof of bank clearance, and a credit-card payment does not necessarily reduce bank cash immediately.

Resolve Missing Allocation Sources

If a previously approved or posted allocation points to a QuickBooks line that is absent, belongs to a deleted transaction, or cannot be checked against a complete source snapshot, the grant overview shows Source linkage requires review. GrantLink excludes the unsupported historical allocation from current recorded spend; that exclusion is not evidence that spending fell and does not create an accounting reversal.

1. Choose Sync and verify source and confirm that the latest QuickBooks source snapshot is complete.
2. If the original line returns, verify that the allocation and recorded spend recover without creating a duplicate treatment.
3. If the line is confirmed missing or the transaction deleted, use Review removal of old treatment when offered. Review every grant in a split, enter the required reason, and submit only if the source has not changed since review.
4. Review any replacement source line separately in Ledger. Removing the old local treatment neither selects a replacement nor changes QuickBooks.

An incomplete or unverified source snapshot does not offer removal because omission is not proof that the line was deleted. Stored legacy allocations without a reviewable local treatment remain disclosed for investigation but cannot be removed from the grant overview.

Assign One Expense to One Grant

From Unallocated:

1. Use the row action Classify, or choose a grant in the Grant column.
2. In the dialog, select the eligible source line when required.
3. Choose the grant.
4. Optionally select one of that grant's budget lines and add supporting context.
5. Save and verify the row moves to the appropriate state.

In Read-only reporting, the inline assignment uses the local reporting workflow and confirms QuickBooks was not changed. It affects GrantLink allocation totals, grant reporting, dashboards, and exports only.

In an eligible selected or full mode, save the GrantLink allocation, then review the exact eligible lines and before/after Class, Customer, or Project values. The grant must have an explicit writeback destination. Applying the review queues the QuickBooks update; canceling it leaves the saved GrantLink allocation in place without queuing that update.

Split an Expense and Handle the Remainder

Use Split when one eligible source belongs to several grants or only partly belongs in grant reporting:

1. Select the exact source line if more than one is eligible.
2. Add grant targets.
3. Optionally select a budget line for each target.
4. Enter all targets by Amount or all by Percent.
5. If the targets do not consume the source exactly, select Leave the remaining amount outside GrantLink reporting.
6. Review Assigned / source, add a memo if useful, and provide a business rationale when replacing an established decision.
7. Save the reporting split.

Targets cannot be zero, exceed the source, repeat the same grant and budget-line combination, use an ineligible grant, or leave an unacknowledged remainder. Amounts are currency-precision exact; percentages support precise calculation and reconcile rounding to the final target or acknowledged remainder.

The single split always changes GrantLink reporting only. See Splitting a QuickBooks Transaction Across Multiple Grants for exact rounding and editing examples.

Assign and Correct Budget Lines

The grant assignment and budget line are separate:

• A grant share with no budget line is valid grant spending and appears as Uncategorized.
• The inline Budget line control is available after assignment and resolves options only when the transaction has one unambiguous grant.
• Selecting a budget line changes GrantLink budget-versus-actual reporting. Clearing it returns the allocation to Uncategorized.
• Budget lines must belong to the assigned grant. Open the grant's Budget area if the required line does not exist.

Budget-line editing is local reporting metadata. In read-only mode the UI states that QuickBooks remains unchanged. The current custom-field writer is globally blocked in every mode.

Resolve Exceptions Instead of Forcing Them

Common reasons a row cannot be assigned include:

• The source is income, cash movement, zero-value, deleted, dismissed, or otherwise not an operating expense.
• No eligible expense line exists, or a mixed transaction requires an explicit line.
• The grant is outside its status or expense-date window.
• The scope already has an active allocation or restriction-release owner.
• The budget line belongs to another grant.
• Amounts exceed the source, a target rounds to zero, or a remainder is not acknowledged.
• Grant signals are ambiguous, or the synced source has drifted since the reporting decision.
• Organization classification policy disables the action, or the Viewer boundary rejects mutation.
• A QuickBooks write path reaches the global control-plane block.

Correct the source in QuickBooks when the accounting data is wrong. Correct only the GrantLink treatment when the source is right but grant reporting is wrong. Never create an offsetting allocation to conceal an incorrect active one.

Use Bulk Actions and Review Partial Failure

Select eligible rows to expose the action bar:

• Grant classifies selected unallocated expenses to one grant and may set one budget line.
• Split applies the same grant percentages to every selected transaction. Bulk split requires 100%, uses no per-transaction amounts or line choices, sets no budget lines, and supports no outside-reporting remainder.
• Budget line updates eligible existing single-grant allocations.
• Ask GrantLink adds a bounded selection to assistant context; it does not alter accounting data.

In read-only mode, bulk classify validates each transaction independently and can save valid rows while retaining failures. In a write-enabled mode, bulk Grant first presents each eligible line, exact allocation amount, QuickBooks destination, and blocked reason. Approval atomically admits each eligible transaction's allocation and reviewed update; blocked rows remain unchanged, while other rows can still be accepted. Retry only requests marked Receipt unconfirmed—their request identity prevents duplicate admission. Read-only bulk split can partially succeed; in selected and full modes its legacy writer remains blocked. Always review the result counts rather than blindly repeating the original selection.

Use a single-row workflow when source lines, grants, percentages, exact amounts, budget lines, or remainder treatment differ.

Edit or Remove a Reporting Decision

For a saved reporting split, open Split, choose Edit reporting split, replace the targets, and enter the required reason. GrantLink supersedes the established treatment and retains lifecycle history; QuickBooks remains unchanged.

For one-grant correction, remove the incorrect allocation and then create the correct assignment. For budget-only correction, edit or clear the budget line.

To remove allocations:

1. Choose Remove or Remove all.
2. Enter the requested reason. Canceling or submitting a blank reason leaves the decision unchanged.
3. Reopen the row and verify the resulting state.

Multiple removals run sequentially. If a later removal fails, earlier removals stay effective and GrantLink reports the partial result. Local reporting and Project-based allocations reverse locally. An allocation tied to a posted or active legacy journal entry cannot be directly removed; correct actual QuickBooks entries through the accounting process.

Verify Local and QuickBooks Effects

After every action:

1. Reopen the Ledger inspector and confirm the source scope, active targets, assigned amount, and remainder.
2. Open each grant's Allocations tab and verify amount and budget line.
3. Review allocation lifecycle and, when authorized, Settings > Activity & audit log.
4. For accepted tracking updates, review the Ledger status or Settings > Background jobs. Check status observes an uncertain provider outcome without resending the write.
5. Reconcile the effective GrantLink treatment to the QuickBooks source and supporting evidence.
6. Inspect QuickBooks separately before asserting that accounting coding changed.

For the broader permission boundary, see QuickBooks Permissions and Current Writeback Availability. For review controls, see Reviewing and Correcting Grant Allocations.