GrantLink doesn't have a multi-donor award record. A grant has at most one funder, and a manual receipt has no donor field. So GrantLink can't keep donor-level ledgers, calculate each donor's balance, assign expenses to individual donors, or produce donor acknowledgment lists.

You can still use one GrantLink grant to report on a restricted purpose that several donors support. In that setup, GrantLink tracks the combined award, recognized income, manual receipt references, expenses, budget, and releases for the grant as a whole. Your donor or fundraising system stays the official record for each donor's legal name, gift restrictions, pledge schedule, tax status, address, and acknowledgments.

Decide whether one grant fits

Use one combined grant only when the gifts share all of these:

Purpose and restriction treatment
Reporting period and program scope
Budget and expense allocation method
Policy for releasing the restriction
Internal reporting owner

Create separate GrantLink grants when donors have different restrictions, periods, budgets, reporting obligations, or release rules. Don't combine awards only to work around limits on QuickBooks Projects or Customers.

Create the combined grant

Create one grant, and name it for the shared purpose rather than for one donor.
Enter the combined award amount only if your organization controls and documents that total.
Choose the correct Grant Type and grant period.
Add the shared budget and indirect cost terms.
Select a funder only if one organization is the main funder for GrantLink reporting. Otherwise, leave donor-level detail to the donor system.

GrantLink doesn't need a journal entry to produce combined grant reporting. Record any accounting entries that your policy requires in QuickBooks.

Set up QuickBooks income tracking

A grant can have several QuickBooks revenue records. Use them to recognize QuickBooks income lines that are coded to Customer, Location, or Project values that all belong to this grant.

Open the grant's Details tab, and select Manage or Set up in the QuickBooks tracking section.
On the Money received tab, include each QuickBooks record that you use for this purpose.
Sync QuickBooks.
Open Transactions > Invoices & receipts, select the QuickBooks view under Receipts, and trace each row to its source line.

A revenue record identifies the grant, not the donor. When a QuickBooks income line matches only the funder's Customer, GrantLink treats the match as a suggestion. If the same QuickBooks record is linked to several grants, GrantLink can't tell which grant the income belongs to.

Record receipts outside QuickBooks

For a gift received outside QuickBooks:

Open Transactions > Invoices & receipts and select Add receipt.
Enter the Amount and Received Date, and choose the Source.
In Reference, enter a donor system or payment reference that contains no sensitive data.
Add Notes only when they help reconciliation.
Select Save Receipt.

Reference and Notes are free text, not a donor record. They don't check for duplicate donors, group several payments under one donor, track acknowledgments, or create entries in QuickBooks.

Don't enter a manual receipt for a gift that already appears as recognized QuickBooks income.

Assign expenses and releases to the grant

Set up the grant's expense records in QuickBooks tracking.
Sync, and review the automatic allocations.
Resolve unmatched or shared expenses in Ledger.
Assign expenses to lines in the combined grant budget.
For donor-restricted activity, record and support releases under the combined grant's restriction policy.

Expenses and releases belong to the GrantLink grant, not to individual donors. GrantLink doesn't record which donor paid for an expense or a release. If you need donor-level detail, track and reconcile it outside GrantLink.

What changes QuickBooks

GrantLink reads recognized income and expenses from QuickBooks. Manual receipts, allocation splits, and releases are GrantLink reporting records. GrantLink has turned off its older QuickBooks writes for allocation journal entries, allocation tracking values, and indirect cost journal entries, even where related permission settings appear.

Correct QuickBooks coding in QuickBooks and sync. Don't create manual GrantLink records to stand in for a QuickBooks correction.

Special cases

Matching gifts

Record the original donor's gift and the employer's matching gift as separate gifts in the donor system. Both can count toward one combined GrantLink grant, but GrantLink doesn't record the link between them.

Pledges

GrantLink tracks recognized QuickBooks income and manual receipts, not pledge schedules. Open receivable on Invoices & receipts shows current synced QuickBooks invoice balances, so don't read it as a donor's unpaid pledge. Keep promises, installments, and acknowledgment history in the donor and accounting systems.

In-kind gifts

A manual receipt with the Other source can hold a reference, but it doesn't create the in-kind revenue and the asset or expense entry in QuickBooks. It also doesn't set a value for the gift. Record and approve those entries through your accounting process.

Reconcile the combined grant

Reconcile the combined award amount to the commitments in the donor system.
Reconcile each recognized QuickBooks line to its accounting source.
Confirm that each manual receipt came in outside QuickBooks and has a donor system reference.
Reconcile the GrantLink total to QuickBooks plus valid manual receipts.
Reconcile each donor's total separately in the donor system.
Review the grant's expenses, budget, and releases without assigning them to donors.
Keep acknowledgment records outside GrantLink.

See Understanding Fund Receipts and Reviewing and Reconciling Grant Income for how GrantLink recognizes income and handles manual receipts.