Grant Reporting Services

Grant reporting services cover the obligation that begins the day the money arrives. Every award carries a reporting schedule, and meeting it is not administrative housekeeping; it determines whether payments continue, whether the award is renewed, and how your next application is read.

We prepare and file the financial and performance reports your awards require, reconciled to your own accounting records, on schedule.

Why reporting is where good awards go wrong

Organizations put considerable effort into winning a grant and then treat reporting as a chore for whoever has capacity. The consequences arrive quietly.

Payments stop. Agencies routinely withhold disbursements when a report is overdue, which creates a cash flow problem in a program already spending against the award.

Findings accumulate. Reports that do not reconcile to the ledger, or that report against a budget that was silently revised, generate questions at the time and findings at single audit.

It follows you. Federal agencies and major foundations track grantee performance. A record of late or corrected reports is visible when you apply again, and a clean record is one of the quieter reasons organizations get funded twice.

The failure is rarely dishonesty. It is that nobody owned the calendar, and by the time the deadline was noticed, reconciling three quarters of spending was a bigger job than anyone had time for.

What we prepare

Federal financial reporting. The Federal Financial Report (FFR), reporting expenditures, unliquidated obligations, cost share, and program income against the approved budget. We reconcile to your general ledger before filing and flag variances against the budget while there is still time to request a revision.

Federal performance reporting. The Research Performance Progress Report (RPPR) and its equivalents: accomplishments against the approved aims or objectives, products, participants, impact, and plans for the coming period. Our explainer on the RPPR and FFR covers what each section is actually asking for.

Foundation reporting. Narrative and financial reports to the funder's own format, which varies widely and is often more demanding than it looks, many foundations ask for outcome data against what you promised in the proposal, which is only answerable if someone has been collecting it.

Interim and ad hoc reporting. Milestone reports, no-cost extension requests, budget revision requests, and prior-approval submissions where the award terms require them.

How the work runs

A reporting calendar first. Every award, every report, every due date, with lead times working backwards. Most reporting crises are calendar failures rather than data failures.

Data collection built into the period, not the deadline. We agree what outcome data is needed and how it will be captured at the start, so the performance report is compiled rather than reconstructed. Reconstructing participant numbers eleven months later is where reports become fiction.

Reconciliation before filing. Financial reports are tied to your ledger before submission. If spending has drifted from the approved budget, you find out from us with time to request a revision, not from the agency after you have filed.

Variance analysis you can act on. A report showing 40% of the budget spent at the two-thirds point is telling you something about the program, not just satisfying a requirement. We surface that.

Filed, with the confirmation retained. Submission through the relevant system, with the receipt and a copy of everything filed kept in a form that survives staff turnover.

What we do not do

We do not maintain your books. Your finance team owns the general ledger; we reconcile to it. Arrangements where a consultant keeps a parallel set of records produce two versions of the truth and a difficult conversation at audit.

We also cannot report outcomes that were never measured. Where an award requires data your program has not been collecting, we will say so immediately and help design the collection, but the gap has to be closed going forward, not invented backwards.

Reporting for government awards

Government awards, federal and state pass-through, carry the heaviest surface: the FFR schedule, performance reporting, subrecipient monitoring if you have made subawards, procurement documentation, and the record retention obligations you certified to in the SF-424B assurances.

Where you administer pass-through funding to others, your reporting obligations include theirs. That is a common and underestimated exposure, and one worth scoping explicitly at the start of an engagement.

Can it be paid from the grant?

Often, yes, and this is a genuine difference from proposal writing. Under the Uniform Guidance cost principles, pre-award proposal preparation is generally unallowable, but post-award administration including reporting is frequently allowable as a direct or indirect cost depending on your indirect cost agreement and the award terms.

Check the specific award before budgeting for it. Where it is allowable, building reporting support into the budget at proposal stage is far easier than finding the money afterwards.

Why flat-fee, never commission

We quote a flat fee per report or per award year before work begins, and never a percentage of the award. Contingency pricing violates the GPA code of ethics, and percentage-based fees on a federal award are an unallowable cost, which would introduce a finding into the very records we are engaged to keep clean.

How to get started

Send us your award terms and reporting schedule, and a specialist will return a written, flat-fee quote, usually within one business day. Nothing is due until you approve the scope and price.

Reporting usually sits alongside broader grant management, and organizations preparing for their first federal award often start with a grant readiness assessment instead. For the underlying obligations, see grant reporting requirements and post-award grant management.