Creating and Managing Grants

Create one GrantLink record for each award or opportunity you need to manage. The record holds grant metadata and connects the award to its budget, income, expense allocations, QuickBooks context, documents, reports, and activity history.

Accounting boundary: Creating or editing a grant does not create an award, receipt, expense, or accounting entry in QuickBooks. A QuickBooks link identifies which existing QuickBooks tracking records belong to the grant. All QuickBooks company-data writers are currently blocked globally, regardless of the organization permission setting.

Before You Start

Confirm that:

• You are in the correct organization and have a role that can create and edit records. Viewer accounts do not see Add Grant.
• You know the grant period. Period End cannot be before Period Start.
• If you will link an existing QuickBooks record, QuickBooks is connected, the record has synced, and it is not already linked to another current grant. You can create an app-only grant without completing QuickBooks mapping.
• Your plan has capacity for another active grant if you select Active.

Create a Grant Manually

1. Open Grants and select Add Grant.
2. Under Grant Details, enter:
   • Grant Name (required, up to 100 characters)
   • Description (optional, up to 500 characters)
   • Grant Type (required donor-restriction classification)
   • Status (required lifecycle state)
3. Enter the optional Grant Number and Internal Code.
4. Set Period Start and Period End.
5. Enter the optional financial terms: Award Amount, Match Required, Match Ratio, Indirect Cost Rate (%), and Indirect Cost Cap. An entered award amount must be greater than zero; the indirect rate must be from 0% through 100%.
6. Configure the optional Reporting Cadence:
   • Monthly, quarterly, semiannual, or annual
   • Quarter Scheme for quarterly grants
   • Days Until Due, meaning days after each reporting period ends
   • Final Only or Custom when those labels match the award; see the deadline limitations below
7. Select an existing Funder and Initiative, or create either from the inline picker when needed.
8. Select Save & continue to linking.

GrantLink creates the record before opening the linking step. If you leave the linking step, the grant already exists.

Auto-Fill the Form from Award Documents

On Add Grant, drop PDFs anywhere on the page or select Browse. The document workflow accepts up to five PDFs, up to 20 MB each and 25 MB combined.

1. Add award letters, RFPs, or agreements in PDF format.
2. Wait while the form is temporarily locked and GrantLink reads the files.
3. Review every populated field against the source documents. Extraction fills fields you have not already edited; it is not approval of the award terms.
4. Correct omissions or extraction errors manually.
5. Select Save & continue to linking.

The uploaded PDFs are attached to the new grant. If analysis fails, the page keeps manual entry available. Empty files, non-PDF files, too many files, or files over the size limits are rejected.

Link QuickBooks Records—or Keep the Grant App-Only

The creation step adds one primary QuickBooks tracking choice. Depending on the organization's mapping, you can link:

• one or more Classes, or
• one Customer, sub-customer/job, Project, or Location.

1. Select Add QuickBooks link.
2. Filter or search the available records and select only records that genuinely belong to the grant. A non-Class selection replaces any other selection in this creation step.
3. For a Project with dates, review Use the QuickBooks Project dates. It is selected by default and changes the grant period used for backfill if you leave it selected.
4. Select Link · [selected count] to save and begin matching eligible synced activity, or select Skip for now. If no connection or allowed mapping exists, select Continue — app-only.

Creation links track both expenses and money received by default. Afterward, open Details > QuickBooks links to review or configure those purposes separately. A link controls matching context; it does not by itself authorize QuickBooks changes.

Verify the New Grant

1. On Overview, confirm the grant period and award amount.
2. On Details, confirm the funder, initiative, reporting settings, documents, and QuickBooks links.
3. If you linked QuickBooks records, open Allocations and Income after sync/backfill completes. Verify dates and amounts rather than assuming every historical transaction is eligible.
4. Open Budget and add the approved budget before relying on budget-versus-actual or pace results.

Edit an Existing Grant

1. Open Grants, select the grant, and open Details.
2. Change the owned metadata or reporting settings.
3. Select Save changes in the action bar.

The form also exposes every lifecycle status. This direct status edit does not consistently run the confirmation-rich lifecycle operations used elsewhere in the code. Change status deliberately and review Activity afterward; see Grant Status Lifecycle for the canonical sequence and known limitation.

Changing reporting cadence, dates, or due-day settings regenerates untouched periodic reporting cycles while preserving explicitly dated custom cycles and cycles with work or submission history. Review the resulting schedule against the award terms. Custom currently has no visible custom-cycle editor, and the form does not expose a final-report date control for Final Only.

Close or Archive a Grant

Closed status and Close / archive are not interchangeable:

• Use Closed when the grant completed its lifecycle and required reporting is complete.
• From the Grants list, the row action Close / archive sets the grant to closed, removes it from the normal list, archives its QuickBooks links, and schedules release of its allocations so transactions can be reassigned. It is not merely a display filter.

Before archiving, reconcile allocations, income, reports, and supporting records. GrantLink blocks archive when allocation-release rules cannot be satisfied.

For a tab-by-tab map, see Current Grant Detail Navigation. For adding existing grants from QuickBooks entities one at a time, see Adding Existing Grants and Budgets.