Grant Compliance & Funder Reporting Tracker
A working artifact for the teams whose funder reporting is audit-facing: government and pass-through awards, restricted funds, institutional grants where a reviewer reads the file the way an auditor would. A relational workbook with a live dashboard and guardrails, plus a local script that turns the logs into a finished funder, board, and audit-evidence pack. Free browser demo below; the kit itself is a one-time download in three tiers.
Grants rarely come apart at the application. They come apart at the report and the reconciliation, when a funder asks where their restricted dollars went and the answer lives across four spreadsheets and someone's memory.
Most small teams track grants on a flat list that holds the award but not the spend, or the spend but not the deliverables. When the report falls due, when the auditor lands, when a grant quietly reaches its end date with money unspent, that list cannot answer the question being asked. The work becomes an excavation rather than a query.
This kit demonstrates the architecture that makes it a query. Every expense and every report ties back to a specific award. The dashboard aggregates as you log. The guardrails fire when a report is late, when a grant is burning ahead of plan, when one is ending with funds still on the table. The companion script turns all of it into the documents a funder, a board, and an auditor each want, and discloses every place AI touched the record.
Click through the tracker preview.
Below is the live tracker, populated with a sample portfolio of eight grants from foundations, a corporate funder, a donor-advised fund, and a federal pass-through. Move between the dashboard, the grant register, what the report run produces, and the line on where AI belongs.
- $340,000Restricted
- $50,000Unrestricted
Who it's for
- Organisations holding government or pass-through awards, where the reporting is audit-facing and the documentation trail has to survive a reviewer who does this for a living.
- Grantees of DFIs, impact funds, and large institutional funders, who report on restricted money against terms that read like a lender's, not a thank-you note.
- Finance leads carrying restricted funds across several funders at once, where a missed report or an unspent balance has a real, countable cost.
- Grants consultants, fiscal sponsors, and bookkeepers running many funders' reports for many clients, who need a rigorous, reusable template rather than another login.
Built around the standards your funder and your auditor read to
Every field carries its hook. Restriction maps to net-asset classification under GAAP. Budget categories and the documentation flag map to the cost principles in 2 CFR 200. The report log maps to the performance and financial reporting cadence. The portfolio totals feed the line items an IRS 990 and a year-end audit both reach for.
Where it earns its keep. For federal awards that cross the Single Audit threshold, the audit-facing build configures the schedule of expenditures, the cost-principle mapping, and the per-award evidence pack to the grant. The self-serve workbook covers the restricted-funds tracking and reporting cadence that bite every grantee carrying donor restrictions; the full Single-Audit configuration is the custom tier, not a checkbox.
The demo is free. The kit is a one-time download.
The preview above stays free. The kit itself is a downloadable package: the workbook, the report generator, the sample outputs, and the documents below. One purchase, no monthly bill, and the files are yours on your own machine.
The working kit.
- The relational workbook: grant register, expense log, report log, dashboard, guardrails, and the compliance crosswalk
- The report generator: funder report, board summary, audit-evidence pack, budget-vs-actual, and restricted-funds schedule on a double-click
- A sample portfolio and a full set of example outputs
- Runs offline. AI is optional, and disclosed wherever it is used
Core, plus the handbook and templates.
- Everything in Core
- The Steward Handbook: deploying, tuning the guardrails, and working the crosswalk
- Board-update and funder cover-letter templates
Plus the federal readiness pack.
- Everything in Plus
- The federal / Single-Audit readiness pack: a 2 CFR 200 crosswalk, a SEFA schedule template, and an audit-prep checklist
- Twelve months of updates
Need it configured to your funders, your report templates, and the standard your reviewers enforce? That is a custom build, scoped and priced after the portfolio is understood. Talk about a custom build →
The questions worth asking first
I run on a Mac and Google Workspace. Can I use this?
The workbook opens in Google Sheets, where the dashboard and guardrail formulas work. The one-click report generator is a local script, so the finished-report-pack feature is strongest on a machine where you can run it. A Sheets-native version is on the table; if that is your stack, say so when you request access and it shapes what ships.
GrantHub shut down and Grantseeker is free. Why this?
If all you need is a pipeline and deadline alerts, a free tracker is the right call and you should take it. Steward is for the part those tools leave to you: turning the logged data into the funder report, the budget-vs-actual, and the audit evidence pack without losing the weekend. Different job, further down the line.
Do I need an API key or any AI setup?
No. The whole kit runs offline. AI only drafts narrative slots if you choose to wire in a key, and every document states whether it did. The dashboard and the guardrails are pure spreadsheet.
What about federal grants and Single Audit?
The core crosswalk maps to GAAP donor-restriction classification, 2 CFR 200, and IRS 990, which covers most foundation and mixed portfolios. Federal awards that trigger a Single Audit need the dedicated Federal pack, configured to the award. That is a custom build, not the self-serve kit.
Where does my data live?
On your machine. Nothing is uploaded. For organisations with government-adjacent funders or data-residency obligations, that is the point. For everyone else, it is simply one less account to breach.
- — Not cloud collaborative software. If you need real-time multi-user editing and a mobile app, a hosted platform is the honest answer, not this.
- — Not necessary below about five concurrent grants. If you run two or three, a clean free template and a shared calendar genuinely outperform any tool. Come back when the portfolio bites.
- — Not a Single Audit substitute. For federal awards over the Single Audit threshold, this organises the evidence; it does not replace the audit or the dedicated Federal pack.
- — Not an AI product. It is a workbook with a reporting engine, and AI is bolted on only where it earns its place, disclosed every time.
For a federal portfolio, a consultant managing many clients, or a funder mix that needs its own crosswalk, the kit becomes a custom build.
Same engine, configured to your awards, your report templates, and the standard your reviewers enforce. Scope and price are confirmed after the portfolio is understood.
Talk about a custom build →