Grant Application & Reporting Tracker

What this tool does

CM8-176 is a working grant register for charities, community groups and other nonprofits. You record each funding application once, keep its status up to date as it moves from an idea to a submission to a decision, and the tool does the rest: it counts your live pipeline, calculates your real success rate, totals what has actually been awarded, and — the part that saves relationships with funders — keeps every submission deadline and post-award reporting date in one sorted list so nothing is discovered the week after it was due.

Everything runs inside this single file. There is no account, no upload and no network request of any kind, so your funding strategy, the amounts you ask for and the feedback funders give you never leave the computer you are using.

One row per application

Each row is one application to one programme. If you apply to the same funder twice — a core costs bid and a project bid, or the same fund in two successive years — that is two rows. The row carries the whole life of the application:

• Date identified — when you found or committed to the opportunity. The monthly chart uses this date, so it also shows you whether anybody is actively looking for funding or only reacting.
• Funder, programme and project — who you are asking, which of their funds, and what the money is for. The per-funder summary groups on the funder name, so spell it consistently.
• Amounts — what you asked for, and separately what was awarded. They are often not the same number, and the difference matters.
• Dates — the submission deadline, the decision date, and for awarded grants the next and final report dates.
• Notes — eligibility conditions, match-funding requirements, and above all the feedback funders give on rejections. Feedback is the most valuable thing a rejection produces; write it down while you still remember the phone call.

The status lifecycle

The status field drives every calculation, so it is worth keeping current. The stages are:

• Status — Meaning — Counts in
• Researching — Assessing fit before committing effort — Live pipeline
• Preparing — Writing the application — Live pipeline, deadline warnings
• Submitted — Sent, awaiting a decision — Live pipeline, pending value
• Awarded — Grant live, reporting obligations running — Success rate, awarded totals, report warnings
• Rejected — Decided against you — Success rate denominator
• Withdrawn — You pulled out before a decision — Neither — see below
• Closed — Awarded, delivered, final report accepted — Success rate, awarded totals

A closed grant is an awarded grant whose reporting is finished — it stays in your success rate and your awarded totals; it simply stops generating report warnings. A withdrawn application counts in neither: the funder never decided it, so it says nothing about your hit rate either way.

The success rate, honestly

The most common way organisations flatter their success rate is to divide awards by decided applications while quietly forgetting the rejections, or to divide by everything including bids still in progress. This tool does neither:

"Awarded" here means status awarded or closed. Applications still researching, preparing or submitted are excluded because they have no outcome yet; withdrawn applications are excluded because the funder never decided them. Until at least one application has been decided the tile shows "—" rather than a meaningless 0% or 100%.

This is a success rate by count, not by value. Winning three small grants and losing one large one is a 75% success rate and can still be a bad year financially — read the rate alongside the awarded and rejected values in the monthly outcome chart, which tells the money side of the same story.

Treat small numbers gently. Two decided applications produce a rate of 0%, 50% or 100% and none of those figures means much. The rate becomes informative over a year or more of applications.

Requested, awarded and restricted money

The two amount fields are deliberately separate, and the tool is strict about which it uses where:

An awarded amount on a row that is not awarded is refused when you save the row — otherwise a hopeful figure typed in early would inflate the awarded total. Equally, an awarded row must carry an awarded amount, because funders frequently award less than was requested and the difference is a real budget gap: the sample data includes an award at 83% of the request for exactly this reason. When an award is cut, revisit the project budget before accepting — delivering a full project on a partial award is how deficits start.

The restricted funding checkbox records whether the money may only be spent on the purpose it was given for. This tool does not do fund accounting — it does not split balances into restricted and unrestricted funds — but the flag on each row, and the note it prints on the report, tell whoever prepares your accounts which awards need a restricted fund set up. If most of your wins are restricted project money and your core costs are unfunded, that is a strategic problem the register makes visible.

Deadlines and warnings

For applications still being researched or prepared, the register shows the days remaining to the submission deadline:

Dates within the deadline warning days setting (14 by default — set it to match how long an application actually takes you to finish) show amber; past dates show red. Submitted applications stop being warned about, because the deadline no longer needs action from you.

The Upcoming deadlines table on the Reports tab merges both kinds of date into one list, soonest first: submission deadlines for open applications, labelled with the amount at stake, and report dates for awarded grants. It is the page to look at every Monday morning.

Reporting after the award

Winning the grant is the middle of the job, not the end. Almost every funder requires monitoring reports, and a late or missing report is the fastest way to turn a supportive funder into a former one — some will withhold instalments or claw back money until reporting is up to date.

For each awarded grant, record the reporting frequency, the next report due and the final report due. The register shows the days to the next report for every awarded grant, using the final report date when no interim report is set, and flags an awarded grant with no report date at all in amber — because "we did not know one was due" is the failure this field exists to prevent. When you submit a report, move the next-report date forward to the following one; when the final report is accepted, set the status to closed.

The "Reports due ≤ 30 days" tile counts awarded grants with a report date inside the next 30 days, including any already overdue — overdue reports are called out separately underneath it.

Reading the funder summary

The per-funder table shows, for each funder: applications made, grants awarded, the success rate on decided applications only, and the total value awarded. Funders with no decided applications show "—" rather than a fake rate. Two patterns are worth acting on: a funder you win with repeatedly is a relationship to invest in beyond the application cycle, and a funder you have been rejected by several times deserves a conversation before a fourth attempt — most programme officers will tell you why bids fail if asked. The requested-versus-awarded chart shows the same relationships by value: a funder with a long bar and no green means a lot of effort has gone somewhere it is not working.

Printing and sharing

Print Report produces a board-ready report from whatever the current filter shows: the headline tiles, all four charts, the deadline list, the funder summary, the full register and your closing notes. Print to PDF to circulate it to trustees or a management committee.

The scope line under the title states any filter in force. Filters apply everywhere — tiles, charts, tables, the CSV and the printed report — so filtering to one status or one reporting frequency changes every figure on the page. Clear the filters before issuing anything described as the full position.

Saving your work

Applications, settings and the report header are written to this browser's local storage as you type, and the toolbar shows the time of the last save. That storage belongs to one browser on one computer: another machine, a private window or a clean-up tool that clears site data will not have it.

Treat Export .json as the real save — one file containing everything, which Import .json restores anywhere; it is also how the register moves between the people who share it. Export CSV gives you the register for spreadsheet work. Reset asks twice, then erases everything this tool has stored. There is no undo.

Accuracy & disclaimer

This tool records what you enter and calculates from it. It cannot know whether a status is current, whether an award letter said what was typed in, or whether a funder has changed a reporting date — and every figure on the Reports tab depends on those entries being kept up to date.

It does not submit applications, file reports, or communicate with any funder, and nothing here is accounting, tax or legal advice. How restricted funds must be accounted for and what records funders require you to keep differ by country and by funder — check your grant agreements and ask whoever prepares your accounts.