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: The single-transaction reporting split always stays in GrantLink. Read-only assignments and splits also stay local. Although selected or full policy settings can make classification controls appear write-enabled, the current backend globally blocks QuickBooks company-data writers. Verify and make any required accounting change in QuickBooks, then sync.

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:

View	What it contains
Unallocated	Eligible expense scope that still needs a grant reporting decision
Allocated	Transactions with an active allocation
Split	Multiple grant targets, or a target plus an intentional remainder outside reporting
Income	Income activity; not an expense-allocation queue
Cash movements	Transfers and similar balance-sheet movement; not grant expense
Not grant-eligible	Transactions outside the grant-expense workflow, including excluded or dismissed activity

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, zero-value, unsupported, or GrantLink recovery activity is 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.

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 selected or full mode, the route may direct classification toward legacy transaction-tag or journal-entry behavior. Those QuickBooks writers are currently blocked globally. A configured permission is not an operational write; make necessary coding changes in QuickBooks.

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, the Viewer boundary rejects mutation, or the plan allocation limit is reached.
• 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.

Bulk classify and split validate each transaction independently. Successful rows remain saved when other rows fail, and failed rows remain for correction and retry. Review success and failure counts; the batch is not atomic. Likewise, bulk class-visibility and some sequential operations can partially succeed—never blindly repeat the entire 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. Reconcile the effective GrantLink treatment to the QuickBooks source and supporting evidence.
5. Inspect QuickBooks separately before asserting that accounting coding changed.

Action	GrantLink effect	QuickBooks effect today
Sync or inspect	Refreshes or displays source data	Read only
Read-only grant assignment	Creates local reporting allocation	None
Single reporting split, edit, or removal	Creates, supersedes, or reverses local reporting treatment	None
Budget-line assignment	Changes GrantLink categorization and reporting	None
Selected/full transaction tags, custom fields, invoices, or journal entries	Policy intent may be saved; attempted writer fails closed	None through GrantLink
Accounting correction made directly in QuickBooks	Appears after sync	Changes QuickBooks at its source

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