Budget and spending

The Budget & spending panel shows what a grant was budgeted to spend, what has actually been spent, and what remains by category and period. It gives grant, program, and finance teams one shared view of the award without replacing the accounting system where the organization's books are kept.

Find it by opening a grant and selecting Schedule & work → Budget & spending.

Availability: Budget and spending requires Grant Pro. Viewing follows the user's normal access to the grant. Creating or changing categories, periods, lines, expenses, or imports requires Manage Grant Finances or Administer Grant Center.

What the summary means

The cards at the top answer four different questions:

Awarded — the amount awarded by the funder.
Budgeted — direct and indirect expense budget lines. Match is excluded.
Spent — recorded expenses on direct and indirect lines, plus unallocated spending. Match spending is excluded from this headline figure.
Left in budget — Budgeted minus Spent. A negative amount means the grant is over budget.

When a budget exists, Percent spent is Spent divided by Budgeted. If nothing has been budgeted, the percentage is left blank because there is no meaningful denominator.

The panel may also show how much of the award is unspent. That figure is Awarded minus recorded grant spending. It is not the same as Left in budget because an approved budget and an award amount do not always match.

How the budget is organized

A grant budget has three parts:

Categories describe what money is for, such as Personnel, Travel, or Supplies. Categories are shared across the organization so the same kind of cost can roll up consistently across grants and programs.
Periods divide the budget over time. A one-year grant may have one period; a multi-year grant may have Year 1, Year 2, and Year 3.
Budget lines put an amount at the intersection of one category and one period.

Revenue and expense categories appear in separate sections. Expense categories are also classified as Direct, Indirect, or Match so those amounts can be totaled correctly.

How actual spending gets into the grant

You can add spending in either of two ways:

Select Record expense to enter a transaction manually.
Select Import spending to upload a CSV exported from QuickBooks, Xero, Sage Intacct, or a spreadsheet.

Each expense may be assigned to a budget line. If the correct line is not known yet, record it as Unallocated. The expense still counts in total spending and remains visible until someone assigns it.

The source summary above the grid tells you how many transactions were entered manually or imported and when the latest activity occurred.

What Match means

Match represents money the organization contributes from another source. BetterUnite totals match separately so it does not overstate what the grant itself paid for.

Match budget and match spending remain visible in the grid and reports, but they are excluded from the headline Budgeted, Spent, Left in budget, and Percent spent figures.

Budget tracking is not accounting

Budget & spending is a grant-reporting view over transactions maintained elsewhere. It does not:

Post transactions to a general ledger
Maintain debit and credit balances
Manage vendors or accounts payable
Pay vendors, staff, or any other party
Change anything in QuickBooks, Xero, Sage Intacct, or another accounting system

Your accounting system remains the book of record. BetterUnite organizes the relevant spending around the grant so teams can answer funder and management questions without rebuilding the budget-to-actual view by hand.

Recommended first-time setup

Open the grant and go to Schedule & work → Budget & spending.
Create or review the organization's shared budget categories.
Add the grant's budget period or periods.
Add the approved amount for each category and period.
Record or import expenses.
Resolve unallocated rows and review variance regularly.