GRANT WRITING
Grant Writing Basics
Common Elements of a Grant Application
Proposal Development
Planning
Writing a Competitive Proposal
Goals and Objectives
Activities
Module Evaluation
GRANT BUDGETING
Budgeting Basics
Essential Budget Elements
Building Your Budget
Budget Management
Module Evaluation
GRANT MANAGEMENT
Management Basics
Post-Award Basics
Common Terms
Module Evaluation
R E S O U R C E S
Home > Grant Budgeting > Budget Management
Budget Management
Once approved, adopted, and prepared, the budget should be closely managed:
- Set and maintain a minimum cash balance.
- Formulate general policies and procedures needed to achieve objectives.
- Keep an accurate log of financial transactions (income and expenses): maintain in your organization record book (check and balance records periodically).
- Set up internal controls designed for safeguards and accurate accounting data — this encourages adherence.
- Control costs – allow only approved expenditures
- Assess budget at any given point of time during the budgeted period.
What are Budgetary Controls?
Budgetary controls include:
- - Reviews of budget to actual expenses regularly to avoid cost overruns.
- - Identification of expenditures that many not be budgeted to ensure they can be claimed.
- - Identification of expenditures that may need approval before being claimed
Key Budget Controls
- Regular monitoring of budgets to actual year-to-date and current period expenditures or outlays
- Explaining any budget variations that are unexpected or unusual and determining necessary adjustments
- Ensuring compliance with laws, regulations, and CNCS provisions, particularly matching percentage requirements
- Requesting prior approvals for modification, if necessary
- Assure budget changes are properly approved
Budgeting Methods
Object Class (Line Item) Budgeting
What’s Budgeted | Advantages | Considerations |
---|---|---|
Personnel | Least time consuming | Difficult to relate to performance |
Fringe benefits | Based on prior expenditures | Cannot relate data to activities |
Travel | More simplified accounting system | Data not conducive to making timely adjustments |
Equipment | Controls line item expenditures | Difficult to determine reasons for over/ under expenditures |
Supplies | ||
Contractual | ||
Construction | ||
Other indirect costs |
Activity-Based Budgeting
What’s Budgeted | Advantages | Considerations |
---|---|---|
Child health and development | Can identify opportunities for improvement and cost reduction | Can identify opportunities for improvement and cost reduction |
Education and early childhood development | Relates costs to performance data | Relates costs to performance data |
Child health and safety | Enables assessment of processes that are effective in serving customers | Enables assessment of processes that are effective in serving customers |
Child nutrition | Requires an accounting system that records at the needed levels | |
Child mental health | Time consuming | |
Family partnerships | ||
Community partnerships | ||
Program governance | ||
Management systems | ||
Quality improvement |
Zero-Based Budgeting
What’s Budgeted | Advantages | Considerations |
---|---|---|
Begins at zero resources | Useful for analyzing priorities | Time consuming |
Forces ranking of purposes | Managers must argue the merits of their efforts | Requires an accounting systems that records at the needed |
Requires a clear focus on priorities | Potential generation of competition and conflict among program components | |
Emphasizes tangible results | ||
Process must consider mandates | ||
Modified version called “targeted budgeting” puts only 5 or 10 percent at risk | ||
Requires justification of proposed activities |
Course Progress
70%