Grant Funds Tracking Template

Excerpt: A grant funds tracking template helps organizations to monitor budgets, track funds and manage multiple grants. It provides an intuitive user interface with auto-calculated balances, spending summaries and demographic insights.

NGOs, NPOs, and social service agencies deal with a constant flow of grants. Each one of these grants has its own budget, set of clients and reporting requirements. Keeping track of where the money is coming from, who has received it, and how much is left should be a straightforward task. However, when you’re juggling multiple grants, things may get complicated.

You may have tried to manage all of this in basic spreadsheets that aren’t built for this job. Well, lucky you – this free grant tracking template gives you one organized place to manage everything. With our easy-to-use tracker, you can:

• See the total grant budget with spending and balances
• Track which client has received how much and their total amount
• View the budget of a grant type and its balances
• Explore the demographic info of clients

Plus, you can use this comprehensive template to keep track of pending payments as well as get a quick snapshot to present to your donors or grant providers. The best feature is that you just have to fill in the basic details like client and grant information. The rest is handled by the template itself. With that said, let’s see what this grant tracker packs and how to efficiently use it:

How to Set Up and Use the Grant Fund Tracking Template?

This grant funds tracking template consists of 4 sheets, including Config, Grant Details, Client Details, and Grant Tracker. While using the template, you have to follow a specific sequence because each sheet feeds into the next. Most data is entered once and automatically referenced everywhere else, so following this order saves you from fixing errors later.

Start with the config sheet

This is where the template stores values for the dropdown menus that appear throughout the Grant Tracker sheet. By default, it includes 3 lists:

• Payment Method: Credit Card, Check, Voucher
• Status: Completed, Pending, Canceled
• Assistance Type: Rental Assistance, Security Deposits, Hotels/Emergency Lodging, Medical Expenses, Transportation, Food Assistance, Camp Ladore Fees, Other Emergency Needs

Review these lists and add or remove entries to match your operational procedures. To add an option, click the next empty cell at the bottom of the relevant list and type it in. That’s it. The dropdown on the Grant Tracker updates immediately.

Add your grant information in the grant details sheet

Go to the Grant Details sheet. This sheet is the master record of all grants you manage. Enter the official name and total budget allocation for each active grant in columns C and D. This information will be used as a base to calculate the funds and sum up the remaining funds.

The Grant Details sheet contains the following columns:

• No.: A serial number to organize the list of grants.
• Grant Type: The name or title of the grant program.
• Funds: The total initial monetary allocation.
• Spent: Automatically sums completed payments from the grant tracker for that specific grant.
• Remaining Balance: This column contains information about funds that are left after spending for that specific grant.
• Household Served: It counts the unique clients associated with completed transactions.

In the Grant Details sheet, you will manually add the grant types and the total funds allocated for the respective grant. The spent, remaining balance, and households served columns are automatically populated by the template.

Add your clients’ info in the client details sheet

Next, open the Client Details sheet. Input the following details for every approved beneficiary:

• Name
• Contact number
• Email
• Address
• Gender of head of household
• No. of adults (choose from a dropdown of 1–8)
• No. of children (select from a dropdown of 0–10)

Leave the household size and assistance received columns blank. The household size column adds the number of adults and children together. The assistance received column pulls data from the Grant Tracker sheet and sums every completed payment made to that client across all grants.

Log transactions in the grant tracker sheet

Now comes the main Grant Tracker sheet. Once you have set up all 3 sheets and are done with the basics, select the following columns from the dropdown menus:

• Grant Type: It pulls from the Grant Details sheet
• Client Name: This drop-down gets the information from the Client Details sheet
• Assistance Type, Payment Method, Status: These columns pull the information from the Config sheet

Next, enter the exact numerical dollar amount that is received by each client for a specific grant. Input the payment method, status, and date paid. The last demographic section populates automatically from the Client Details based on the client you selected, using the name of the recipient as the lookup key.

Monitor Your grant data

You can monitor your daily grant tracking in multiple ways, as mentioned below:

Explore the dashboard for overall information

The dashboard is at the top of the Grant Tracker sheet. It updates automatically every time you add or change a transaction in the log below. You can see how much you have spent from the total budget as well as each type of grant. It has 2 parts:

1. Summary table

The summary box on the left shows 3 figures:

• Total Balance: It is the combined budget across all grants you’ve entered in Grant Details. This number only changes if you update a grant’s allocated amount.
• Total Spend: This figure is the sum of every transaction marked Completed in the log, across all grants. Pending and canceled rows don’t factor in.
• Total Remaining Balance: This number is the difference between Total Balance and Total Spend. This is your real-time available budget across the whole program.

2. Check individual grant tables in dashboard

The grant cards sit to the right of the summary box. There are 3 individual grant cards, one card per grant. Each card shows:

• The grant name, pulled from Grant Details
• Remaining funds for that specific grant (its individual budget minus its completed transactions)
• Households served under that grant

Track the grant details sheet for individual grant progress

Once you have marked the status as complete in the tracker sheet, the Grant Details sheet shows the budget for individual grants plus the number of unique households that received the specific grant.

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View client details sheet for the total grant received by each client

In the Client Details sheet, you can check the total grant received by each client in the assistance received column.

What Do You Need to Enter Manually?

We have listed the sheets that you need to fill manually to work with this grant funds tracking template for a quick look:

• Client’s basic details in the Client Details sheet
• Grant type and total budget in the Grant Details sheet
• Config sheet, if you want to add your own preferences

The above three sheets are non-negotiables to work with this template. Once these values are set up, you will input the specific amount of the grant along with the receiver’s name in Sheet 1, plus the status and the receiving date. The tracker will automatically populate the remaining sheets with accurate calculations.

Columns You Can’t Edit

In the grant funds tracking template, there are some columns that calculate their values automatically by reading from other sheets. Typing into these cells directly will overwrite the formula. Therefore, we have locked and made these columns formula-protected to avoid any editing in them. However, if you are an Excel expert, you can edit them as per your preferences. A password might be needed to unlock these edits.

Available Formats for Grant Funds Tracking Template

Our grant funds tracking template is available in 2 formats: Excel (.xlsx) and Google Sheets. We recommend downloading an option that works best for you.

The Excel version is better if you prefer working offline or prefer to store the progress locally. You can use it with Microsoft Excel 2016 and later, including Microsoft 365. The best thing is that the file uses the .xlsx format. Therefore, you can use it with LibreOffice Calc and WPS Office if you don’t use Excel.

For online sharing or if multiple people are working on the same tracker, choose Google Sheets. You can access this template version from any device or system and it will work seamlessly across all of your integrations. You definitely need a free Google account to use the online version of this tracker.

What are the Use Cases of This Grant Funds Tracking Template?

Some of the best use cases of the template are mentioned below:

• Emergency funds distribution
• Faith-based benevolence programs management
• Utility services for social service offices
• Veteran services organization fundings
• Small NPOs that have outgrown a basic spreadsheet
• Grant administration preparation for a founder site visit

Apart from that, you can use this free grant fund tracker to monitor charity and donation work. If your organization also handles congregation finances, our church budget template can complement it.

Related Templates Worth Exploring

Interested in exploring more templates? We have some more options that might interest you:

• Increase your chances of securing a grant by downloading our free grant proposal template, or pair it with a budget proposal template to justify your funding request with itemized costs. Available in Word, Google Docs and ODT formats.
• Use a budget implementation plan template to track allocated versus actual spending for a project.
• A financial projection template can help forecast future funding needs alongside your current grant data.
• If you have to manage the budget for your NGO or NPO, we have a comprehensive and free budget template for non-profits. Easy to use for multiple categories.

Frequently Asked Questions