Tracking Grant Milestones and Deadlines

GrantLink tracks funder-report deadlines through reporting cycles. It does not currently provide a user-facing grant milestone record for arbitrary deliverables, compliance dates, owners, checklists, or completion states.

Use GrantLink for generated report periods and due dates. Use your organization's calendar or project-management system for every other milestone.

Types of Deadlines

Obligation	Current GrantLink support
Monthly, quarterly, semiannual, or annual report due dates	Generated reporting cycles
Final report due date	Backend supports it, but the current grant form does not expose the date field
Custom reporting cycle	Backend supports it, but there is no visible custom-cycle editor
Deliverable, outcome, event, audit, certification, approval request, or internal checkpoint	No grant milestone CRUD workflow; track externally

Before You Configure Reporting Deadlines

• Confirm the grant's Period Start and Period End against the award.
• Identify whether due dates are measured in days after each period, fixed calendar dates, or another funder rule.
• Use a non-viewer role to edit grant metadata.
• Keep the source award or reporting instructions with your compliance records.

Configure Generated Reporting Cycles

1. Open Grants, select the grant, and open Details.
2. Under Reporting Schedule, select Reporting Cadence:
   • Monthly
   • Quarterly
   • Semiannual
   • Annual
3. For quarterly reporting, select Quarter Scheme: calendar, fiscal year, or grant period quarters.
4. Enter Days Until Due. If left blank, cycle generation uses 30 days after each period end.
5. Select Save changes.

On initial grant creation, configured periodic cadences schedule reporting-cycle generation. Activation can also generate cycles if none exist. Verify the resulting dashboard records; editing cadence or dates later does not guarantee existing cycles were regenerated.

Quarter-scheme limitation: The current cycle generator stores the quarter-scheme setting but builds periodic windows from the grant start date. Do not assume calendar or fiscal-quarter alignment without checking the actual generated periods.

Verify Deadlines on the Dashboard

1. Open Dashboard.
2. Find Reporting.
3. Review counts for overdue, due soon, and in progress.
4. Review up to the next five report rows. The section shows no upcoming rows when no reports are due in the next 30 days.
5. Select a report row to open the associated grant/report workflow.

Only open report cycles for Active or Closeout grants are surfaced in the main finance dashboard. Dismissing an overdue notice hides that notice; it does not submit the report or change the funder's deadline.

You can also ask GrantLink for upcoming deadlines or export a reporting calendar through supported AI tools. Those tools read reporting cycles; they do not create arbitrary milestones.

Adding Custom Milestones

For one-off deliverables, outcomes, events, compliance dates, and internal checkpoints:

1. Record the requirement in your team's calendar or project-management system
2. Assign an owner and internal due date there
3. Keep relevant context or supporting documents with the grant where useful

Notifications

Notification settings are per user and per current organization:

1. Open Settings > Notifications
2. Turn on Enable notifications.
3. Under Topics, enable Reporting deadlines.
4. Under Delivery channels, enable Email. Email goes to your verified primary account email; SMS is marked Coming soon.
5. Optionally enable Daily digest for this organization, which sends at most one AI-reviewed digest per day.
6. Select Save preferences.

GrantLink's deadline scout checks calendar-day offsets 14, 7, 3, 1, and 0 days before a due date. Notification delivery is advisory and can be suppressed if review cannot be completed. Continue reviewing the dashboard and do not rely on email as the only compliance control.

Completing External Milestones

When you've met a deadline:

1. Submit the deliverable through the funder's required channel.
2. For a GrantLink report, keep the report associated with the correct reporting cycle when that workflow is available; report creation can move a cycle to in progress and publishing can update its reporting state.
3. Mark non-report milestones complete in your external system.
4. Retain confirmation numbers, receipts, sent files, and funder responses under your document-retention policy.

There is no current grant UI for manually marking arbitrary milestones complete. Reporting-cycle status mutations exist in the backend, but there is no complete cycle-management screen in the grant workspace.

Best Practices

1. Verify generated periods and dates against the award instead of trusting cadence alone.
2. Set internal drafting and review dates earlier in your external system.
3. Assign an owner and backup outside GrantLink for each obligation.
4. Review Dashboard > Reporting at least weekly and after any grant-date change.
5. Keep proof of submission; a dismissed alert or published draft is not, by itself, proof the funder accepted a report.

For report drafting, see Generating Funder Reports. For broader schedule behavior, see Reporting Cycles and Deadline Workflow.