Working with Your Accountant

GrantLink provides organization-scoped grant records, QuickBooks-backed activity, allocations, budgets, income, release schedules, exports, reports, and an activity log. Your accountant remains responsible for accounting policy, period close, source entries in QuickBooks, and financial-statement conclusions.

Before You Start

Agree on:

• The accountant's role: external reviewer, operational collaborator, or organization administrator.
• Whether the accountant needs direct GrantLink access or will receive reviewed exports.
• The reporting cutoff, fiscal year, close cadence, and reconciliation owner.
• Who may change allocations, budget mappings, releases, and QuickBooks write permissions.
• How restricted-fund releases and indirect-cost recovery are recorded in QuickBooks.

Choose a Collaboration Model

Invite the accountant into your organization

Use this for direct work in one organization:

1. Open the organization switcher.
2. Open Clerk organization management.
3. Invite the accountant with the least-privileged current role that fits the work:
   • Viewer for read-only review
   • Member for ordinary GrantLink writes and chat
   • Admin for organization-wide administrative controls
4. After acceptance, ask the accountant to select your organization in the switcher.

GrantLink has no accountant-specific or grant-specific role. A Member is not read-only; a Viewer cannot use chat, Settings, new-record, or import workflows.

Use accounting-firm coverage

Agency plans can link a firm's organization to a client organization:

1. The firm's admin opens Clients or Settings > Firm clients and selects Create invite.
2. The firm securely sends the generated firm_… code to a client admin.
3. The client admin opens Settings > Accounting firm, pastes the code under Accept a firm invite, and selects Accept invite.

The code expires after 30 days. Acceptance fails if it is expired or already used, the client already has active firm coverage, the firm no longer has an agency plan, or the firm's client slots are full. Either organization's admin can remove active coverage; this ends plan coverage and frees the slot without deleting the client organization or its data.

Access boundary: Firm coverage supplies the agency relationship and plan coverage. It does not itself add firm staff as members of the client's Clerk organization. The agency dashboard only allows a staff member to switch into a client organization when that person is also a Clerk member of the client organization.

Share reviewed files only

If direct access is unnecessary, generate a scoped Excel, CSV, or PDF and transmit it under your organization's secure-file policy. Downloaded files are snapshots and cannot be revoked or updated by GrantLink after delivery.

Current Review Surfaces

Use these surfaces with the accountant:

Review need	GrantLink surface
Source transactions and allocation status	Ledger
Effective grant allocations and budget categories	Allocations and grant Allocations
Budget, actual, variance, uncategorized, and outside-schedule costs	Grant Budget and Grants > Budget vs Actual
Recognized QuickBooks income and manual receipt records outside QuickBooks Online	Grant Income
Restriction releases, reversals, and expense evidence	Releases and grant Releases
QuickBooks connection, sync, verification, mapping, and write policy	Settings
Who changed GrantLink records and when	Settings > Activity log
Period schedules for offline review	Chat exports and direct Excel exports

Period-End Workflow

1. Sync and verify the source. Review Settings > Sync and Settings > Verification. Correct source-controlled errors in QuickBooks, then sync again.
2. Review allocation completeness. Clear genuinely unallocated expenses and investigate uncategorized, undated, or outside-schedule amounts.
3. Review budgets and indirect costs. Confirm budget lines and any calculated, approved, and posted indirect-cost runs. GrantLink does not make the accounting-policy choice for recovery treatment.
4. Review grant income. Reconcile recognized, grant-linked QuickBooks income and manual receipt records outside QuickBooks Online. A GrantLink receipt record does not by itself establish GAAP revenue recognition or cash receipt timing.
5. Review restriction releases. Use the release register and linked evidence, but apply the grant terms, available restricted balance, and accounting policy. Spending does not automatically equal the amount to release.
6. Prepare or correct QuickBooks entries. The accountant records source entries under the organization's controls. A manual GrantLink release does not post a journal entry to QuickBooks.
7. Export and reconcile. Use Grants > Budget vs Actual > Excel, the Releases > Export workbook, or a scoped chat export. Reconcile the file to GrantLink and the general ledger as applicable.
8. Retain review evidence. Save the cutoff, reconciliation, approver, and explanation for material differences.

Restriction Release Boundary

GrantLink separates the release schedule from the accounting source:

• A manual GrantLink release records the schedule and supporting context only; it does not post to QuickBooks.
• A QuickBooks-sourced release remains controlled by the QuickBooks entry. Correct ambiguous or wrong source coding in QuickBooks and resync.
• Linked expense evidence explains a release but does not create another expense or change the allocation.
• Reversing a release in GrantLink preserves its history; it does not create a reversing QuickBooks entry.

For detailed actions, see Understanding and Using Restriction Releases in GrantLink.

Indirect Cost Boundary

GrantLink can calculate indirect costs and, when the organization explicitly permits and configures supported writeback, an authorized user can post them. Coordinate:

• The approved base and rate
• Exclusions and caps
• Posting period and account mappings
• Whether recovery is presented as revenue or a contra-expense
• Whether a claim invoice also includes indirect costs

Do not recognize the same recovery twice through both an indirect-cost journal entry and a claim invoice.

Permissions and Security

• Settings > Permissions is admin-only and changes the QuickBooks write policy for every organization member.
• Viewer access is enforced server-side as read-only.
• Member access allows ordinary operational writes; do not use it for a reviewer who must not change data.
• Organization records are tenant-scoped, but exported files leave that access boundary.
• Published reports are shareable links, not accountant logins. Use password protection when available and verify the deployed link before sharing.
• Activity history supports review but does not replace segregation of duties or QuickBooks audit controls.

Edge Cases

• Removing firm coverage does not remove a person's Clerk membership; revoke that separately if access should end.
• Removing Clerk membership does not end agency billing coverage; remove coverage separately when appropriate.
• If the accountant belongs to several clients, they must select the correct active organization before reviewing or changing records.
• Changes after an export do not update the downloaded file. Generate a fresh period-end package.
• GrantLink calculations and evidence do not determine GAAP treatment. Escalate unusual grant terms, conditions, donor modifications, and revenue-recognition questions to the responsible accounting professional.