Grants Paid Report for Nonprofits

What is a Grants Paid Report?

Grant reports are considered important grant management tools and are often used by financial- , program- and grant managers to plan initiatives and manage grants and program funding. Some of the key functionality in this type of report is that it displays actual grant amounts paid out versus budget, both for the current month and year to date. The variance columns uses exception highlighting to help users find significant deviations from planned payments. The grant payments are grouped by initiative and program as can be seen in the rows. The charts at the bottom helps users focus on the relative size of the various metrics. You find an example of this type of report below.

Purpose of Grants Paid Reports

Nonprofit organizations use Grants Paid Reports to manage and analyze actual grant payments versus budgeted amounts. When used as part of good business practices in a Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) department, an organization can improve its grants management and initiative analysis capabilities as well as reduce the chances that over- or underspending occurs.

Grants Paid Report Example

Here is an example of a Grants Paid report with actual spend versus budget.

Example of Grants Paid Report for Nonprofits

Example of Grants Paid Report for Nonprofits

You can find hundreds of additional examples here

Who Uses This Type of Report?

The typical users of this type of report are: Finance teams, grants- and program managers.

Other Reports Often Used in Conjunction with Grants Paid Reports

Progressive Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) Departments sometimes use several different Grants Paid Reports, along with financial statements, budget models, grants dashboards and other management and control tools.

Where Does the Data for Analysis Originate From?

The Actual (historical transactions) data typically comes from enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems like: Microsoft Dynamics 365 (D365) Finance, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (D365 BC), Microsoft Dynamics AX, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, Microsoft Dynamics GP, Microsoft Dynamics SL, Sage Intacct, Sage 100, Sage 300, Sage 500, Sage X3, SAP Business One, SAP ByDesign, Acumatica, Netsuite and others.

In analyses where budgets or forecasts are used, the planning data most often originates from in-house Excel spreadsheet models or from professional corporate performance management (CPM/EPM) solutions.

What Tools are Typically used for Reporting, Planning and Dashboards?

Examples of business software used with the data and ERPs mentioned above are:

  • Native ERP report writers and query tools
  • Spreadsheets (for example Microsoft Excel)
  • Corporate Performance Management (CPM) tools (for example Solver)
  • Dashboards (for example Microsoft Power BI and Tableau)

Corporate Performance Management (CPM) Cloud Solutions and More Examples

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