Tracking grant applications and reporting back to funders
Your own list of who gives money, what you asked them for, and what you promised in return.
In The Charity Office: Grants → Funders → New funding scheme
Your list, not a directory
Funders is the charity's own list of who gives money to charities like yours. There is no national directory behind it. Start with the ones a trustee already knows about - five funders you understand beat five hundred you do not.
"Who they will and will not fund" is the most valuable box on that screen. Write down what would have got you turned down, and it saves the next person writing the whole application.
When a scheme closes, turn off "Still worth applying to" rather than deleting it. The applications you made still point at it.
Record the ones you decided against
Applications has a status of "Considering it" for a reason. Half the value of the list is being able to see, a year later, what the charity decided not to apply for and why.
"What you told them you would do" is worth keeping in full. It is what the final report has to be written against, and by then nobody remembers.
Four different numbers
Asked for, Awarded, Received so far and Spent so far are four separate figures, all typed by hand. Keeping them apart is what lets you answer a funder who asks where their money got to.
Still to come in is Awarded less Received - usually an instalment waiting on a claim form. Still to spend is Received less Spent.
Getting the money into the accounts
There is no button that turns an award into an income record, and this is worth knowing. When the money arrives, record it yourself under Money → Income, dated by the day it reached the bank.
The link between the two is the wording. Put the same fund name on the application and on the income record's "Which fund" box - and on the spending it pays for - and the three find each other.
Reporting due
Take every date off the offer letter the day it arrives and put each one in under Grants → Reporting due. None of them will be remembered later, and nothing is created automatically when a grant is awarded.
Only items still marked "Still to do" can go overdue. The warning window here is thirty days, shorter than the sixty used on compliance and insurance.
Missing a report is the commonest reason a funder refuses the next application.
Worth knowing. Marking a report as sent does not fill in the "Sent on" date - that is a separate field, and it is the one a funder will ask you to quote.
More guides
See your own year, in full, in an afternoon
Start free, put in what is in the bank and this year's figures, and look at the forecast before you decide anything.