You’ve been grant purchasing for a while now, however are you ready for what’s subsequent when you begin to obtain them? Many grants include vital—and detailed—compliance necessities. To fulfill these necessities, you’ll want to have the ability to efficiently observe and handle your grants and successfully report on the way you allotted these funds.
If you’re a grant-funded group, it is going to be essential to handle spending restrictions and meet reporting necessities. You’ll want to assume forward about having the ability to simply seize grant info, arrange duties and deadlines, after which run correct reviews at any time.
Fund accounting programs with grant administration will help you from starting to finish in case you are a grant-funded group—or wish to be. Listed below are three ways in which your fund accounting system can help your grant administration wants.
1. Monitoring: Reduce Out the Spreadsheets!
The extra guide knowledge entry you do, the extra errors can creep into your accounting system. So how will you reduce these errors and create knowledge entry insurance policies in your customers? Should you guessed not counting on Excel spreadsheets to handle your grants, you’re right!
With a fund accounting software program system designed for nonprofits, you possibly can absolutely observe all of your grants, particularly restricted grants, in a single place.
It’s important to trace your grant restrictions correctly as a result of they’re decided by the funder. Should you can’t present that you just spent the cash as requested, you most likely don’t have a shot at extra grants from this funder—or they might withhold a closing cost relying on the place you’re within the grant cycle.
If you’re managing your grants in Excel, how will you assure your spreadsheet has been up to date and the restrictions have been adopted precisely? Are you able to say with confidence you understand the place your grant spreadsheets are being saved and who has entry to them? What if a donor or stakeholder desires fast info on a grant?
Managing your grants inside your fund accounting system will mean you can price range by grant, report on price range vs actuals, and evaluate grant exercise, so you possibly can shortly and simply reply these questions.
2. Suppose Forward with Reporting Capabilities
How are you presently reporting in your grants? Or, in case you are simply now beginning your journey to grant funding, how do you intend to report on the way you used the grant funds?
Regardless of your mission, grant reporting will assist drive success by guaranteeing compliance and precisely reporting on these awards. Fund accounting software program can mean you can precisely curate grant reviews to trace restrictions, set budgets, and audit grant awards. These capabilities are essential for holding financials updated and adhering to compliance necessities.
Think about you had reviews constructed to indicate you a snapshot of your grant awards at any second? Higher but, these reviews have been arrange on a schedule to run robotically. You possibly can even format the reviews to satisfy the funder’s particular necessities, so that you aren’t reformatting them for every replace.
There are limitless prospects as you scale your grant awards. You possibly can view previous grant data and exercise, report on grant price range vs actuals or construct grant particular reviews to indicate stakeholders or the neighborhood the place these awards have made essentially the most impression.
3. Perceive Your Oblique Prices
Monitoring and allocating your oblique prices is without doubt one of the most tedious points of grant functions and reporting. Some grants could include a number of stipulations about what working prices they are going to fund—and the way a lot. Having a fund accounting answer constructed for nonprofits will mean you can doc these grant spending guidelines that can assist you later calculate reimbursements.
Manually coming into grant info on spreadsheets can solely go to this point. That is the place monitoring oblique prices straight on a grant file will assure you’re precisely calculating reimbursements and staying on prime of billing. Oblique prices are usually not all the time readily recognized with a grant, so having the ability to observe them inside detailed grant data will enable you and your staff to be extra environment friendly than a spreadsheet. Spreadsheets open your knowledge to the chance for human error with monitoring and calculations. Monitoring your oblique prices in a fund accounting system could make what could be a tedious and irritating course of extra streamlined and simpler to audit.
Able to deal with the duties of grants?
It’s straightforward to push grant functions to the again burner whenever you aren’t assured about assembly the necessities post-award. Managing them could be a daunting process. However let your fund accounting system make the method of managing grants simpler. It’s essential to put money into an answer that can help your mission absolutely and mean you can observe and handle grant awards simply and precisely.
One of the simplest ways to drive success in direction of your mission is to have the ability to observe your funding—together with grant awards, report on them precisely, and handle the advanced conditions that come your approach. A spreadsheet can solely get your group to this point and hinders your capacity to simply accept extra advanced present awards. You want an answer that can help restricted grants, advanced reimbursement with oblique prices, and drive a profitable audit.
To study extra about how a fund accounting system like Blackbaud Monetary Edge NXT can prevent time and headache when managing your grants, take a look at this on-demand webinar, “Monetary Edge NXT: Highlight Collection: Common Ledger Initiatives and Grants.”
