SF-424A: The Federal Budget Information Form

The SF-424A is the Budget Information form for non-construction federal grant programs. Where the SF-424 cover form captures who you are and what you are proposing, the SF-424A captures what it costs, broken out by object class category and by budget period. It is the form reviewers turn to when they want to know whether the numbers behind your narrative hold together.

Which budget form your program uses

The federal budget forms split by program type, and using the wrong one is a compliance failure rather than a stylistic choice.

• SF-424A: non-construction programs. Costs organized by object class category. This is the form most applicants encounter.
• SF-424C: construction programs. Costs organized by construction cost classification: site work, architectural and engineering fees, contingencies, and so on.

You do not choose. The correct form arrives inside your opportunity's application package in Grants.gov, and that is the one to complete. If your project mixes construction and program activity, read the funding notice carefully, some programs require both.

The six sections, and which ones matter

The SF-424A has six sections, but they are not equally demanding.

Section A, Budget Summary. One line per program or funding source, showing estimated unobligated funds and new or revised budget amounts. Most single-program applicants fill in one row.

Section B, Budget Categories. This is the form. Section B is where your entire budget is expressed as object class categories, and it is where nearly all of the work and nearly all of the errors live. More on it below.

Section C, Non-Federal Resources. Your match or cost share, broken out by applicant, state, other sources, and in-kind. If your program requires match, this is where you prove it. Our guide to matching funds and in-kind contributions covers what counts and how to document it.

Section D, Forecasted Cash Needs. Your projected draw-down by quarter for the first year. Agencies use it for cash management, not scoring, but an implausible pattern invites questions.

Section E, Budget Estimates of Federal Funds Needed for Balance of the Project. Out-year projections for multi-year projects.

Section F, Other Budget Information. Space for direct charges, indirect charges, and remarks. Use the remarks line to note anything a reviewer would otherwise have to guess at.

Section B, line by line

Section B organizes every dollar into standard federal object class categories. The lines are fixed and the definitions are consistent government-wide.

• 6a Personnel: salaries and wages for your own employees only. Not contractors, not consultants.
• 6b Fringe Benefits: employer-paid benefits on the personnel in 6a, calculated at your actual or negotiated fringe rate.
• 6c Travel: transportation, lodging, and per diem for staff. Participant travel usually belongs in 6h Other.
• 6d Equipment: tangible property with a useful life over one year and a per-unit cost at or above your capitalization threshold, which is $5,000 unless your policy sets it lower.
• 6e Supplies: everything tangible that is not equipment. Laptops below the threshold land here, not in 6d.
• 6f Contractual: contracts and subawards for work performed by other organizations.
• 6g Construction: usually blank on an SF-424A, since construction programs use the SF-424C.
• 6h Other: costs that fit nowhere above: participant stipends, tuition, rent, communications, printing.
• 6i Total Direct Charges: the sum of 6a through 6h.
• 6j Indirect Charges: your indirect cost recovery. See below.
• 6k Totals: 6i plus 6j.

The distinction between 6d Equipment and 6e Supplies catches more applicants than any other line. It is driven by your organization's own capitalization policy, not by intuition about what feels like equipment, and misclassifying can trigger prior-approval requirements you did not plan for.

Getting line 6j right

Indirect costs are the single most misunderstood line on the form. Two rules govern it.

First, you may only claim indirect costs at a rate you are entitled to: either the rate in your federally negotiated indirect cost rate agreement, or the 15% de minimis rate available to organizations that have never held a negotiated rate. You cannot invent a rate because it looks reasonable.

Second, the rate applies to a base, and the base is almost never your total direct costs. The most common base is modified total direct costs, which excludes equipment, capital expenditures, and the portion of each subaward beyond the first $25,000. Applying your rate to the wrong base inflates the request and produces a number that will not survive review.

Our explainer on how indirect cost rates work walks through the calculation with worked examples, and the Uniform Guidance cost principles at 2 CFR 200 sets out what is allowable in the first place.

The arithmetic reviewers check first

Before a reviewer evaluates whether your budget is reasonable, they check whether it is correct. Four checks take them under a minute:

1. Does 6i equal the sum of 6a through 6h? Column arithmetic is the first thing that fails when a budget is edited late.
2. Does 6k equal 6i plus 6j?
3. Does the SF-424A total match block 18 on the SF-424 cover form? These are filled out at different moments and drift apart constantly.
4. Does every category total match the budget narrative? The form gives the number; the budget narrative shows the math behind it. They must agree to the dollar.

A budget that fails any of these is not merely untidy. It tells the reviewer that no one checked, which is exactly the impression you cannot afford when the next section they read is your justification for spending their money.

Build the narrative and the form together

The most reliable way to produce a clean SF-424A is to refuse to treat it as a form to be filled in at the end. Build the budget in a spreadsheet with the object class categories as your rows from the very first draft, write the justification for each line as you create it, and let the SF-424A be a transcription of arithmetic you have already checked. Applicants who assemble the budget narrative first and then back into the form almost always discover a mismatch on deadline day, when there is no time to trace it.

For the wider package this form sits inside, see the SF-424 cover form and how the SF-424 and SF-424A differ. To build the underlying numbers, our grant budget builder produces a categorized budget you can map straight onto Section B.