Key insights
- As grant funders increase their requirements, you can make your grant reporting easier with the right team, clear processes, and industry-tailored tracking tools.
- Grant reporting works well when you have the right people in place. Technical skills are important, including understanding how grant dollars flow and what funders expect.
- Tracking grants doesn’t have to be a headache. By choosing technology fitting your nonprofit’s needs, and automating data collection where you can, you can save time, ease burdens, and increase efficiencies.
Get industry-tailored tracking tools to improve grant reporting.
Grant reporting is more than just a compliance requirement for nonprofits — it can help sustain funding, build trust with stakeholders, and demonstrate your impact.
Between funder requirements, tight deadlines, and coordinating data across departments, grant reporting can be quite complex. And the stakes are high, because incomplete or inaccurate reports can jeopardize future funding.
Learn how you can make your grant reporting easier with the right team, clear processes, and industry-tailored tracking tools.
What is required in grant reporting?
Many grant funders are increasing their reporting requirements, so nonprofits would benefit from reviewing them early during the pre-award and grant setup stages.
Some common information requirements among various grantors include:
- Financial report on fund use
- Progress reports
- Project activities
- Narrative describing the impact and milestones
Nonprofits would benefit from implementing internal processes to help monitor grants. This could include budget versus actual reports on cash flow projections on fund use.
How should nonprofits gather information for grant reporting?
Team construction is vitally important in grant reporting, and technical skills are especially relevant. Staff tasked with recording and monitoring awards must understand revenue recognition for contribution revenues and the funding environment in which they are operating. Not all dollars carry the same connotations, and some, such as federal dollars, have much more rigorous compliance requirements.
Grant reporting teams commonly include:
- Finance team members — If the required information is financial, involving finance on the front end is key. They can help determine the information is being tracked correctly within the system and create any required financials reports.
- Compliance managers — Nonprofits with a significant volume of governmental grants and contracts could consider a compliance manager to oversee monitoring. This person also maintains and distributes timelines with the grant due dates to the full team.
- Program managers — If project activities or information on impact and milestones are needed, getting program managers involved can make this portion much easier since they are in the day-to-day process of running the program.
How to set up grant reporting processes
Grant reporting processes can diverge quite a bit in the monitoring phase, particularly if awards are conditional, which vary by grant and program.
For purposes of simplicity and staying focused on finance, below are considerations for monitoring restricted dollars and reimbursable grants. Typically, time and expense are key elements of tracking and monitoring.
Processes to consider include:
- Connecting development and finance reporting — What is the process for recording the awards in both the development and finance systems, and how do they align? Is information keyed independently into each, or is there an import/export process? How often is data reconciled between the two systems? What is the communication between the two departments?
- Staff education — How are program staff educated, so they understand the grants, overall budgets, and allowable expenses?
- Time tracking — What is the process and cadence for tracking of time, to allow for allocation to grant and program activities? How is this data translated to an allocation of salaries and benefits on the finance side?
- Purchase tracking — What is the process for submission of purchase requests and AP invoices that allow proper coding to the grant programs?
- Keeping staff informed — Is there timely and accurate reporting back to program staff on budget-to-actuals per grant to monitor programs effectively?
How to set up grant reporting systems
Designing tools and technologies is critical for easing the burden of grant tracking and monitoring. The more your nonprofit can automate data collection, the more efficient the process.
Recommendations include:
- Design your financial management system to separately track grants, programs, and restrictions. With proper set-up, the system should be able to track net asset restrictions and report on budget-to-actual for both grant and program.
- Develop a coding system that groups grants by fund type, such as governmental, foundation, corporate, etc.
- Design a user-friendly time tracking system that pulls grant and program coding from the general ledger and integrates into the payroll system, so salaries and benefits are allocated by program and grant according to time spent.
- An integrated user-friendly spend management solution allows non-financial staff to code to programs and grants. Built-in spend controls showing requests against budget line items is ideal.
Grant reporting management tools to consider
If creating your own custom grant management system sounds daunting, there are existing tools to handle nonprofit grant tracking, reporting, and management.
Sage Intacct
Sage Intacct has a comprehensive grant tracking and billing module that:
- Centralizes all grant documents
- Creates automated budget-to-actuals reports
- Automatically links accounting entries with grants
- Flags reimbursable costs at entry to reduce billing errors
- Integrates timekeeping data to easily tie employee efforts per grant to timesheets
- Consolidates grant task tracking, providing visibility into what needs to be done and when
Sage Intacct’s main accounting software is also incredibly helpful for nonprofits, providing core financials, real-time visibility, custom reporting, and scalability.
Ready to simplify your grant reporting? Get actionable strategies for better reporting and automation. View our webinar.
CLA’s grant management software
Recognizing the many challenges in grant reporting, CLA created grant management software. The software:
- Sets up and tracks budgets
- Generates grant reports
- Manages grants received
- Sends automated reminders
Tips for submitting grant reports
Once all the grant data has been compiled, the information needs to be submitted to the appropriate places or individuals. Here are a few things to keep in mind during this phase:
- Each funder may have its own templates or format
- Set up reminders for various due dates (internal and external)
- Have reports reviewed by a knowledgeable individual who knows and understands the grant
- Documentation of report submission and the support should be retained for the organization’s records
How CLA can help with grant reporting
CLA’s grant compliance team has significant experience helping nonprofits secure, retain, and effectively manage grants. In addition to working with industry-specialized advisors, using grant tracking software can greatly improve tracking, reporting, and compliance.
Interested in seeing how Sage Intacct could make your grant reporting easier, more accurate, and more beneficial? Connect with our team to explore your options.