Automate Grant Reporting and Compliance Tracking

How We Slashed Grant Compliance Work by 80% (35 Lines of Code)

Your grant coordinator just burned 18 hours on a quarterly report. Three days later, you missed a $15,000 deliverable—buried in row 247 of a spreadsheet. That clawback notice? Not a warning. It’s what happens when spreadsheets run your grants.

Spreadsheets Lie Quietly—Until They Cost You

Spreadsheets don’t scream when they’re wrong. One nonprofit overspent $20K on personnel over six months—just one forgotten cell. Finance found out late. Grant was 15% over. Funder froze the next payment.

Deadlines vanish. Deliverables scatter across email, Slack, and tabs. No single source of truth. With five grants and 12 deliverables each, memory isn’t a system—it’s a liability.

Reporting steals a week per quarter. Pull data, reformat charts, fight Word templates—15 to 20 hours gone. That’s 80 hours a year. Time you could spend on impact.

Leadership asks questions. You export a CSV, pivot it, hope it’s right. It’s not.

The Fix: A 35-Line Script That Automates Compliance

We built a self-running grant tracker in Google Sheets. One tab for budget, one for actuals pulled from accounting exports, one for deliverables. A 35-line Apps Script checks deadlines daily. Sends email reminders 30 days out. Another script fills a Google Doc template with live data—quarterly reports done in one click. Dashboard shows real-time spending and compliance across all grants. No new software. No subscriptions. Just code.

// Pseudo code for the application 
FUNCTION sendComplianceReminders
  GET Sheet 'Deliverables'
  READ All Data (Batch Operation)
  
  FOR EACH Row in Data:
    EXTRACT [Grant, Deliverable, DueDate, Status, Email]
    IF Status 'Complete' OR Missing Data THEN SKIP
    
    CALCULATE DaysUntilDue = (DueDate - Today)
    
    IF DaysUntilDue EQUALS 30 THEN
      TRY
        SEND Email Reminder to Owner
          SUBJECT: "Grant Deliverable Due in 30 Days: {Deliverable}"
          BODY: "Grant: {Grant}, Due: {Date}..."
          
        INCREMENT SentCounter
      CATCH Error
        LOG Email Failure
      
  RETURN SentCounter
END FUNCTION

// Usage: Set up daily time-driven trigger via Edit > Triggers in Apps Script // Required OAuth scope: https://www.googleapis.com/auth/spreadsheets // Required OAuth scope: https://www.googleapis.com/auth/gmail.send

How It Works: The Automation Flow

Build It in a Day: Step-by-Step

1. Structure your data. Tabs: Grants, Budget, Actuals, Deliverables, Templates, Dashboard. Columns: Grant ID, Category, Due Date, Status, Owner, Email. Keep it consistent.

2. Link budget to actuals. Use SUMIFS() to pull spending from Actuals. Add conditional formatting: yellow at 90%, red at 100%.

3. Deploy the script. Paste the code into Apps Script (Extensions > Apps Script). Set a daily trigger (Edit > Triggers). Authorize Gmail and Sheets.

4. Make a report template. Google Doc with {{GrantName}}, {{Q1_Spending}}. Write a script to replace placeholders using getValues() and body.replaceText().

5. Build the dashboard. Use pivot tables and SPARKLINE() for visuals. Show: % Deliverables On Track, Total Burn Rate, Days to Next Deadline.

6. Test with one grant. Fake a due date. Run the trigger. Check the email. Verify the report. Fix bugs before adding more.

7. Scale and watch. Add the rest. Watch the 6-minute execution limit. Hit quotas? Split jobs or batch calls. Check the Apps Script logs weekly.

Build vs Buy: The Real Math

If you manage fewer than 50 grants, building wins. You get what you need. No bloat. No markup. If you need audit trails or ERP sync, look at SaaS. Otherwise, keep the money in your programs.

Book a call, running by Friday. 30-day warranty.