How to Choose the Best Grants Management Solution for NetSuite

By: Mark Brousseau  | August 12, 2020

Grants are critical to the success of non-profits and government organizations. But traditional approaches of managing grants and subawards can be a burden.

Ensuring compliance, accountability, and overall program success requires most non-profits and foundations to spend a lot of time manually keying data, guarding against overspending, piecing together data, chasing down information such as indirect costs, and producing reports. Ensuring that the organization is a responsible pass-through entity only makes things more challenging.

The stakes are high to get the grants management process right. Non-compliance and non-adherence to grant terms and conditions can cause long-lasting reputational damage and lost revenues.

It is for these reasons that more NetSuite users are automating the way they manage grants.

Grants management solutions for NetSuite help non-profits and others optimize the grants lifecycle.

But choosing the wrong grants management solution can result in a lousy return on investment, time and money wasted on redeployment or customization, and a loss of trust with the CIO or CFO.

Here is what to look for to ensure that you choose the best grants management solution for NetSuite:

  1. End-to-end solution. The best grants management solutions for NetSuite help all types of non-profits and government organizations manage the entire grants lifecycle, including grant application, award receipt, and closure. All grant lifecycle changes are automatically recorded. And the technology does this for pre-paid awards and cost-reimbursable awards.
  2. Real-time tracking. The best grants management solutions for NetSuite record minute grant features that are specific to a customer and provide a real-time snapshot of grant expenses and revenue. Users can instantly access grant expenses, revenue, and other details. The visibility provided by grants management solutions help non-profits and government organizations comply with reporting mandates.
  3. Matching. The best grants management solutions for NetSuite match grants with other funding sources. For instance, dollar-for-dollar grants can be matched to other grants.
  4. Automated revenue generation. The best grants management solutions for NetSuite help prevent lost revenues through accurate indirect cost calculations and automated chargebacks.
  5. Tight integration with NetSuite. The best grants management solutions are built right on the NetSuite platform and have the same look and feel of a typical NetSuite page from a user interface perspective. This tight integration extends the functionality of NetSuite to provide full grants management and accounting.
  6. Streamlined operations. The best grants management solutions for NetSuite make it easy to create large program grants to fund smaller initiatives. And the technology can automatically generate outbound sub-award grants.

These six features are critical to choosing the best grants management solution for NetSuite.

Want to learn more about automating your organization’s grants management lifecycle?