Report on Multi Year Grants and Configure Budget Alerts

Classification: GoldFinch Native · Salesforce Platform · Additional Application · Configured Solution

Overview

Grant award periods may cross an organization’s accounting year and may also span state or federal fiscal years. The grant data model should preserve the award’s own dates and budget periods while GoldFinch Accounting records transactions by their accounting and posting dates.

Multi-year grant reporting requires aligned grant, budget, and accounting dimensions. Budget alerts require accurate approved budgets, complete actuals, defined commitment rules, and configured Salesforce automation.

Multi-year tracking

Maintain the following separately when required:

• Grant beginning and ending dates
• Organizational fiscal year and accounting periods
• State or federal fiscal-year references
• Grant budget periods or grant years
• Original and revised award amounts
• Original and revised budgets by period
• Reporting and compliance deadlines

GoldFinch transactions retain their accounting dates. When the appropriate grant relationships and budget data are available, configured reports can present activity by accounting period, organizational fiscal year, grant period, grant year, or life of award.

Recommended reports

• Budget versus actual by grant, period, account, cost category, project, program, or fund
• Original budget, revisions, commitments, expenditures, and available budget
• Direct, allocated, and indirect costs
• Reimbursable costs, submitted requests, approved amounts, receipts, and outstanding reimbursements
• Required match compared with recorded match activity
• Current-period, fiscal-year, grant-year, and life-of-award activity
• Upcoming reporting deadlines and compliance requirements
• Grants approaching expiration or closeout

These are recommended report designs. They are not necessarily prebuilt GoldFinch reports.

Define budget calculations

Before creating reports or alerts, document:

• Whether the approved budget means original or latest revised budget
• Whether open purchase orders and other commitments reduce the available amount
• Which posted GoldFinch transactions count as expenditures
• How credits, cancellations, transfers, and adjustments are treated
• Whether overhead and allocations are included
• How reimbursements, receipts, and match activity are measured
• Which currency and conversion rules apply

Reconcile these calculations with the budgeting application, GoldFinch source transactions, and general ledger.

Configure budget alerts

Configure Salesforce Flow or another approved automation method to notify designated users when spending or commitments reach an approved threshold. For example, the organization may choose to alert users when 80 percent of a budget has been consumed, or 20 percent remains.

The percentage is an example—not a standard GoldFinch rule.

The organization must define:

• Whether the threshold uses expenditures only or includes commitments
• Whether the alert measures budget consumed or budget remaining
• Which budget version and period apply
• Recipients and escalation owners
• Delivery method and reminder frequency
• Treatment after an amendment or budget revision
• How repeated or resolved alerts are handled

Recommended controls

• Send alerts to both the grant owner and responsible financial reviewer.
• Identify grants with missing or expired budgets.
• Prevent repeated notices from obscuring new exceptions.
• Review threshold configuration after amendments and budget revisions.
• Monitor failed automation and inactive recipients.
• Reconcile alert calculations before relying on them for spending control.

Limitations

Salesforce supplies the automation framework, GoldFinch supplies the applicable transaction data, and an additional budgeting or grant application may supply grant budgets and award information. Alerts, calculations, report types, and dashboards require configuration and testing.