1. Grant Reporting Templates
Any software solution for best practice grant reporting should allow users to create reporting templates. Templates help reduce the time and effort needed to report and standardise information that does not need to change. The audience for your report, and the reporting party, will each appreciate a more consistent reporting standard. This makes it faster and easier to digest information, as well as provide it in the case of the grant report respondent. Templates should be easy to reuse, support cloning so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time, and support images, text and charts.
One size does not fit all. Every organisation must report to a variety of stakeholders, from internal management and other business areas to external investors, partners, community organisations, and regulatory bodies. Each stakeholder has their own information needs and are likely on their own schedule. An impact reporting software system needs to provide the ability to generate reports and align them to stakeholder groups or personalise information and delivery to a particular stakeholder. Best practice systems integrate contact management to streamline reporting administration.
2. Personalised Grant Reporting
One size does not fit all. Every organisation must report to a variety of stakeholders, from internal management and other business areas to external investors, partners, community organisations, and regulatory bodies. Each stakeholder has their own information needs and are likely on their own schedule. A software system needs to provide the ability to generate reports and align them to stakeholder groups or personalise information and delivery to a particular stakeholder. Best practice systems integrate contact management to streamline reporting administration.
Enter your email below for a free interactive tour of Enquire’s reporting features
3. Searchable and Configurable Data
Reporting demands reflect a wide range of needs, not just a recap at the end of a project or grant round. At every stage reporting supports critical business decision-making on grant applicants or suppliers, contract renewals, program activities, finances and performance.
Software must make enterprise search and filtering information easy. Organising information well is key for best practice grant reporting. The system should allow users to save filtered searches to automate reporting. Users must be able to customise data and align it to important processes, like workflows or project milestones. The ability to create alerts, or triggers on important dates or events, is critical to avoiding last-minute reporting surprises and missed obligations.
4. Scheduled and Ad hoc Grant Reporting
Grant, contract and program managers can benefit from scheduled automated reporting. Software systems can generate standard and personalised reports based on important dates and events. The system streamlines administrative efforts by automatically generating reports on triggers. The system should automatically populate the relevant information, where possible to minimise manual handling which increases errors and limits the usability of the report. It is also critical the system supports any requirements to generate ad hoc reports to quickly respond to inevitable requests. Best practice systems should support report dissemination, manage contacts lists and offer reports in a variety of formats.
5. Reporting to 3rd Party Frameworks
Frequently organisations must report to regulatory bodies or partners that have sector wide frameworks. The frameworks are often used to measure and monitor impact across a wide range of programs. Reporting should allow a grant, contract or program manager to adopt external reporting frameworks like the GINI, IATI or UNSDG, or regulatory agency frameworks. Reporting against 3rd party frameworks means systems must be easily configurable. Best practice software systems should allow a view of data across one or many programs to avoid the problems of trying to collate data across differing sources and systems when reporting to sector wide frameworks.
6. Single System/Single Source of Truth
Best practice grant, contract and program management software must offer the ability to consolidate data assets into a single repository with online accessibility. It’s important all stakeholders engage with the same single source of truth. The system needs to support role and user-based access and version or history management for traceability and security. Collaborating with all stakeholders in a single system over a single source of data eliminates errors. It also reduces the vast amount of time needed to collaborate, collate, and prepare information. It provides auditability on who has done what and when.
Best practice reporting is core to modernising grant, contract, and program management. Understanding reporting requirements across the whole lifecycle will help define and deliver improved business processes and practices. It will save time, money and reduce risk.
Enquire serves all Grant Reporting Requirements
Tactiv’s Enquire was designed to support Australia’s leading government and non-profit organisations who faced complex reporting demands from government investors, community stakeholders and delivery partners. Today organisations worldwide face new and emerging demands as reporting needs evolve and change, often frequently. If you would like to see Enquire’s reporting capability in action, book a free demonstration below.
