Allocating Transactions to Grants

An allocation connects an eligible QuickBooks expense, or one eligible line of it, to a grant for GrantLink reporting. It does not create an expense. The QuickBooks transaction remains the accounting source for its date, amount, vendor, account, and tracking values.

GrantLink creates direct, automatic, rule-based, and split allocations in an Approved state. There is no pending-allocation inbox or required second approval before an allocation affects grant spending.

Before You Start

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.
• Your Clerk organization role is not Viewer. 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.

Let QuickBooks Links Handle Routine Expenses

1. Open the grant and manage its QuickBooks links.
2. Under expense tracking, link the Customer, Project, Location, or Class used on that grant's costs.
3. Sync QuickBooks.
4. 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; 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

1. In Ledger > Unallocated, open the row action and select Classify.
2. If the transaction has multiple lines, select the eligible expense line.
3. Choose the grant.
4. Optionally choose a budget line and add a memo or business rationale.
5. 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: Treat Ledger classification as a GrantLink reporting decision. The current backend blocks the legacy QuickBooks transaction-tag and allocation-journal-entry writers, even if a writeback control is visible in Settings > Permissions. To change the books, update QuickBooks and sync again. Do not assume an Approved allocation was posted to QuickBooks.

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.

Bulk classify and bulk split prevalidate each transaction. Valid transactions can succeed while invalid ones fail; the dialog keeps failed rows so you can correct the cause and retry only those rows. Review the reported success and failure counts before closing it. These actions are not 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:

1. Select Remove or Remove all.
2. Enter the requested reason.
3. 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

1. Reopen the Ledger row and confirm its active targets and assigned amount.
2. Open each grant's Allocations tab and confirm the amount and budget line.
3. Open allocation details to review the source, method, creator, status, rationale, and lifecycle history.
4. If your role allows it, open Settings > Activity & audit log for organization-level creation, edit, removal, and error events.
5. Reconcile GrantLink's effective allocations to the QuickBooks source and your supporting allocation method.

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