Guide
How NGOs track grant budgets across multiple projects
When one team runs several grants at once, spend visibility is the first thing to break. Here is a practical way to keep budget, commitment and actual spend connected to each grant — in time to act on it.
Why grant budgets drift out of view
Most humanitarian organisations run more than one grant at a time, each with its own budget lines, reporting periods and eligibility rules. The budget usually lives in finance, while delivery lives with the program teams — so overspend and underspend only surface at closeout, when it is too late to do anything about either.
The fix is not a bigger spreadsheet. It is keeping three numbers connected against every grant, continuously: the approved budget, the committed amount, and the actual spend.
Track budget, commitment and actual together
Budget vs actual alone is misleading, because it ignores money you have already committed but not yet paid. A grant can look under budget while being fully committed.
- Budget — the approved amount per line, per grant.
- Commitment — approved requests, purchase orders and signed contracts not yet invoiced.
- Actual — posted expenditure, including payroll and shared costs allocated to the grant.
- Available = Budget − Commitment − Actual — the number that should drive decisions.
Allocate shared and staff costs by rule, not by memory
Staff time, office costs and assets are often split across several grants. If that split is done manually at report time, it is slow and hard to defend in an audit. Define allocation rules once — by percentage, by activity, or by timesheet — and apply them consistently as costs are posted.
Watch burn rate against the reporting calendar
Burn rate is only useful next to the grant's timeline. A grant that is 70% spent at the midpoint is on track; the same figure with one month left is a problem. Review spend against the remaining period so you can request a no-cost extension or a budget revision while there is still time.
Make donor reports a by-product, not a project
If delivery, procurement and finance records are already linked to the grant that funded them, the financial report is largely assembled for you — with the supporting evidence attached.