Skip to main content

Understanding Budget, Payments and Milestones in Grants Manager Plus


Managing finances is at the core of InfoStrat's Grants Manager Plus software for grantors to manage the full lifecycle of a grant.  This post explains key concepts for understanding how budgets, payments and milestones are managed in the solution.

Grants Manager Plus may be configured to your business rules, so your implementation may differ from the scenarios described here.  Many of the functions and workflows are nearly universal for grant management, such as having an approval routing workflow or checking the amount requested against budgets and remaining funds.

When a grant manager creates a grant program, it will contain related budget codes, budget line items, and optional budget gates and milestones.  The budget codes are used by grantees to provide their proposed budgets, and hence to roll up totals for reporting.  Budget gates are thresholds which are tied to project (grant) progress which is measured by milestones.  In a building project, for instance, a payment may be triggered by 50 percent completion (a milestone) and tied to a pre-defined percentage of funds for which a grantee is eligible at that time.  Like budgets, the milestone budget control gates are established on a program level where the system connects Program Budget Codes, Milestone Types and the percentage that the completion authorizes in a Program Milestone Budget Gate entity.

Many grants involve vendors who provide goods and services to grantees.  A payment request may include one or more vendor invoices which are used to provide proof or work and supporting documentation for auditing a grant.  Vendor invoices may contain invoice lines which are mapped to budget line items and milestones.

Payment requests are usually initiated by the grantee using the grants portal.  Below is the payment request screen which is rendered with Microsoft Dynamics Portal:

Payment request on the grantee portal

The create/edit payment screen shows the details of the payment request.  It also allows creation of line items and submission of file attachments to the payment request.


The portal stores data directly in Grants Manager Plus, and accesses data from Grants Manager Plus to allow the grantee to check on payment request status.  As the payment request is processed and approved, the status of the record will change.  For instance, here is a description of some of the business rules pertaining to a payment request which are triggered when a payment request is submitted.  You will want to document similar rules for your organization:
  • Set new status ‘Under Program Review’
  • Validate Service Date range must be within the Subrecipient’s contract begin and end dates
  • Reset to Draft, notify submitter if rule is violated
  • For Vendor Payments only--Service Dates should not cross over Agency’s Fiscal Year (default Fiscal year ends on the last day of August each year)
  • Reset to Draft, notify submitter if rule is violated
  • Validate that Invoice Total exceeds Payment Request Line Item (PRLI) total
  • Reset to Draft, notify submitter if rule is violated
  • Iterate over each PRLI and validate that none are overdrawn
  • create Task: Payment Request should be approved by Program staff within 7 calendar days
  • Start waiting for 28 days: Invoice should be processed for payment (or declined) by Finance staff within 28 calendar days of submittal

You may want to change some of the deadlines such as 7 and 28 days depending on your organization's business rules.

If you are using program milestone budget gates, your conceptual data model will look something like this:



When a new grant application is created, the budget/milestone structure is copied from the Program to the application. A grant manager may change it on an individual application level if needed.

When a new Budget Line Item (BLI) is created, the set of Milestone Completion Gates is copied by system from the application/contract to this new BLI.

Milestone Completion Gates enforce business rules like these examples:

  • For a single BLI record where Funded (Obligated) = 100K, Net Drawn=20K, Remaining=80K, a Milestone for 50% is Completed
  • System calculates Milestone Gate Permitted Amount as 100K * .5 = 50K
  • System calculates Amount Available to Draw as (Funded Amount)* (% milestone complete) – (previously drawn amount)= (100k * .5)– 20k = 30k
  • Someone submits a payment request (PR) with the PR Line Item connected to this BLI with PR Line Item Amount Requested = 40K
  • On submit of PR, system compares amount requested from each PR Line Item with the Amount Available to Draw value from BLI record that is a parent of PR Line Item
  • In this example, PR Line Item Amount Requested (40K) exceeds Amount Available to Draw (30K)
  • System automatically sets PR Line Item's field Over BLI Limit to true
  • When a grantee Submits a PR, System scans all Line Items and finds one where Over BLI Limit = true. System automatically rejects the entire PR by resetting the status of this entire PR to Draft and sending appropriate notification (we can also flag offending PR Line Item)

In Grants Manager Plus, internal grant manager users see payment requests using the Dynamics 365 user interface, such as this payment request line item:


The review and approval process is based on a Dynamics 365 business process flow. It may include alerts to participants who review payment requests to notify them when a new request is submitted.  Payment reviewers may also use dashboards which show pending review tasks.

Dynamics 365 includes queues for work such as payment processing which allow activities to be assigned to a group of people rather than just to an individual.

Together, these payment request features allow grantors to enforce management controls on their finances and ensure that they are in compliance with guidelines associated with their grant funding.

5 Ways to Ensure Compliance with Your Grant Management System
6 Things to Look for in Grant Management Software
Estimating the Cost of a Microsoft Grants Manager Plus Implementation
Extending Grants Manager Plus
Flexible Grant Management Software: Long Term Considerations
Grant Management for Community Development Block Grants (CDBG)
Grant Management Portal: What to Include
Grant Management with FedRAMP Certification: Microsoft Dynamics 365
Grants Manager Plus: Theme and Variations
InfoStrat Grants Manager Plus Review on FinanceOnline
InfoStrat Releases New Version of Grants Manager Plus
InfoStrat Releases New Videos on Grants Manager Plus
Microsoft Grants Manager Plus
Microsoft Grants Manager Plus Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Online Resources for Microsoft Grants Manager Plus
Portal Options for Microsoft Grants Manager
Statewide Grant Management Systems
The DATA Act Driving Grant Management Automation
The Story of InfoStrat and Grant Management
Usage Scenarios for Microsoft Grants Manager
User Stories for Grants Manager Plus
Understanding Budget, Payments and Milestones in Grants Manager Plus
Understanding Grant Management Data: CDBG-DR Programs
Understanding Programs in Grants Manager Plus



Popular posts from this blog

Key Concepts for Microsoft Dynamics 365: Tenant, Instance, App and Solution

Updated 8/15/2022 To understand Microsoft Dynamics 365 (formerly Dynamics CRM) and Power Apps, you need to learn some new terms and concepts that may be a bit different from what you know from databases and solutions that are hosted on premises.  These concepts also apply to Power Apps.  The main difference is that with Power Apps you are not starting with a Microsoft app but more of a blank canvas for your custom apps.  This post introduces some key terms and how these concepts are important for planning your implementation. While Dynamics 365 is still available on premises, it is most commonly deployed on the Microsoft cloud.  This blog post discusses only cloud implementations. Microsoft has multiple clouds such as commercial and government community clouds in several countries. We start with a Microsoft tenant .  A tenant is the account you create in the Microsoft Online Services environment (such as Office 365) when you sign up for a subscription. A tenant contains uni
Read more

Understanding Dynamics 365 and Office 365 Admin Roles

Managing Dynamics 365 instances If you run Microsoft Dynamics 365 (formerly Dynamics CRM) in the Microsoft cloud, you need to understand how your Dynamics instances relate to Office 365 and choose which of your administrators receives which roles and permissions to manage Dynamics 365. In on premises deployments, your network administrator would create and delete user accounts.  The Dynamics 365 admin would then assign permissions to users in Dynamics 365. This post explains three administrator roles: Office 365 Global Administrator Dynamics 365 System Administrator Dynamics 365 Service Administrator You may think that the Dynamics 365 system administrator would have power to do all the actions needed to manage Dynamics 365, but this is not the case. What's different in Microsoft cloud deployments is that licenses and user accounts are managed in Office 365 by an Office 365 Global Administrator.  This role is analogous to a network administrator for an on premises
Read more

My Favorite Microsoft Power Apps Bloggers and their Blogs

  by James Townsend Updated 7/5/2022 Microsoft Power Apps is one of my favorite subjects, and I enjoy reading blog posts from members of this thriving technical community.  Here are some of my favorite bloggers and their blogs: The Official Microsoft Power Apps Blog   I have to start with the official Microsoft Power Apps blog.  It has many contributors, largely Microsoft program manager, including frequent posters Denise Moran ,  Greg Lindhorst , Kartik Kanakasabesan , and  Adrian Orth .  This is the place to go for product announcements, updates and technical how-to for a broad range of Power Apps topics.  April Dunnam April Dunnam was formerly focused on SharePoint and now devoting herself to Power Platform.  April offers highly understandable explanations of Power Platform, Dataverse and other top Power Apps topics. She joined Microsoft in late 2019 and has a thriving YouTube channel .  Carl De Souza Power Apps Blog and eBook This is one of the most extensive and best organized blo
Read more