Ensure Transparency and Maintain Funding with the Right Project Time Tracking Solution

Non-profit organizations that receive grant funding often grapple with meeting stringent record-keeping requirements about how project funds are expended. Organizations may be in jeopardy of non-compliance if they either don’t have a means to track project time or employ an inefficient manual time tracking process.

A lack of transparency into specific project costs can leave organizations vulnerable to exceeding the funded amount without even being aware of it. Therefore, it is imperative to have an accurate audit trail detailing project related costs to avoid the peril of non-compliance. It is important to tackle this challenge before funding sources decide to cut, limit, or withhold future grants.

Link project time to specific grant funding sources to guarantee compliance

Cloud based project time and cost solutions empower non-profits to capitalize on project time tracking transparency by allowing them to easily link project hours to specific funding sources to ensure compliance. What’s more, proactive employee time tracking eliminates painfully outdated manual tracking processes, while real-time visibility into hours spent on specific projects assures managers they have up-to-date information about fund allocation for better decision making.

By guaranteeing the ability to provide an audit trail, organizations will not only preserve current funding sources and encourage future donations, but also reassure potential new funding sources that they are a reliable and trustworthy partner.

With the right cloud-based grant management solution implemented, organizations can:

• Create a reliable audit trail of how and where funding is spent
• Encourage non-profit employees to report their time accurately
• Prove compliance with government regulations
• Compare estimated costs versus actual costs in real time
• Track time from anywhere with mobile access
• Easily configure reports to see the data the way you need it
• Reduce administrative costs
• Eliminate hassles associated with manual time tracking and auditing

The failure to manage non-profit grants properly can have serious consequences, including cancellation of funding, litigation, criminal prosecution, and negative publicity. Grant managers should make sure that they have a clear understanding of donor reporting requirements, and implement robust solutions to ensure compliance.

“In Action” Snapshot

Seattle BioMedical Research Institute Complies with Federal Audit Requirements

Seattle BioMedical Research Institute (Seattle BioMed) is a research organization striving to eliminate the world’s most devastating infectious diseases. Because the Institute is non-profit and receives federal grants, it is required to maintain accurate records of after-the-fact actual time spent on all projects, but was struggling to do so because it was using an inefficient, paper-based process to track hours toward projects, attendance, and overtime. Seattle BioMed’s own internal auditors felt that this system was leaving them open to potential legal ramifications and loss of funding.

To rectify the situation, Seattle BioMed chose the TimeAttend and TimeBill solutions from Replicon after evaluating multiple options. Because the solutions are so intuitive, no training was required and there was quick staff adoption. The employees use the solutions to electronically enter their hours through the simple web-based interface. They now enjoy automated managerial approval of actual hours reported, as well as the transfer of employee time to the payroll system.

Says Ann Herbig, Project Manager at Seattle BioMed: “Replicon’s hassle-free solutions have helped us become 100% compliant. We have greater peace of mind now that we don’t have to worry if we’re tracking time properly, or if we’re compliant with audit requirements. We have streamlined our organization’s time entry and minimized our risk for losing funding, so we can focus more resources on our core mission: eliminating infectious diseases.”