It would be great if the new budget field could have a feature that would prevent applicants from advancing in the application if their numbers don't add up. We ask our applicants to break down their budget by category (staffing, supplies, etc.). We have a separate currency field and text box for each category (so they can explain how specifically they would use the dollars). All the fields should add up to the requested amount. Alas, often they don't. Any help our applicants can get to prevent them from making careless math errors would be most welcome!

Summing columns mostly for us. We also could use a sum for the rows in order to calculate the total budget for a multi year grant where they split their projected budget per year.

Hi Sammie,

I've attached a copy of the project budget we ask grantees to complete. We just use the SUM function for our columns.

Sara

Hurrah! I am attaching one of our current budget forms here. We use Sum and If formulas - that's it, but would prefer to be able to compare (if then). Essentially a simple profit and loss setup is all we need. We do sum by both column and row. Happy to discuss. I would like to up-vote Miranda and Natashea's comments.

Sum, differences, if/then logic, and sum carryover are all currently used in our excel budget templates for some of our more complicated grants. It would be nice to have everything integrated eventually, but sum would be a great start for our simpler grants. It would be lovely to have an option that would automatically round amounts entered to the nearest $10 as well.

SUM would not really be applicable for our needs. We require a budget option more for SLM than GLM.

I'd love to see a grid option where we as administrators create the budget line and students would fill in the amounts. I've attached a sample of a budget from one of our scholarship applications.

While we provide the examples of what's required, students don't always follow the templates and will create their own spreadsheets that don't always include or breakdown the figures that are being asked for. This creates much frustration for our evaluators as they aren't comparing apples to apples. The evaluators want a required question type where the information is the same from one student to the next.

Thanks so much for considering this!

Michelle Collins
Oakville Community Foundation

I would love for us to be able to do simple calculations in evaluations eg. we input the Current Assets and Current Liabilties and then Foundant automatically calculates the Working Capital Ratio for us for the evaluation. Currently we need to do this in a separate spreadsheet.

Addition, Subtraction, Division

Ability to create rules that alert the applicant/grantee that they've exceed a threshold for a particular line item...etc.

I've developed a budget template and require applicants to download, complete, and then upload, but that means that those fields aren't reportable, which I would prefer, unless I ask the applicant to double-enter, which I don't want to do. My form is attached. My applicants particularly like the bottom of the form where it tells them if they are meeting all of our requirements.

One note - I would not want a budget to "fail" if anticipated funding exceeded expenses. That's just smart budgeting. So funds must equal or exceed expenses.

This is a huge problem for us when applicants download our excel budget, then resize the documents or save it as a pdf. We have been able to protect cells but not margins on our excel budget.

Agree... with Chromebooks, users don't always have Excel and we require a budget spreadsheet for applications. Would be nice if built in to the program.

It would really help to be able to create a standard budget grid, i.e.one that looks like what Excel does for any kind of budget. Having to export to Excel to create such a document and then upload each document is a real problem.

In addition to sum, we need multiplication (e.g. # of units * unit cost = sub-total)

In addition to sums, percentage, and multiplication.

I would love to see the percentage/percent of change if applicable.

Percentage - our budget ask for them to add the cost for the whole budget and then what they are requesting from us. having the percentage info help to identify how much of the budget we're being asked to fund.

1. Yes
2. Yes
3. Yes, helpful for easy access to compare expenses vs. budget

Percentage.
Example: "Match Funding must be 20 percent of Total Amount Requested"

1. no
2. Yes!
3. Yes! When there is a budget being requested in the application.

1. not necessarily
2. yes
3. Yes, that would be helpful.

Also would be helpful"
- an error if a budget is submitted where expenses and revenue don't balance to zero
- if it auto-populates with their grant request amount in the application, and in the follow up with the granted amount

Hi Sammie - we too use a link to our budget...

1. certain fields
2. absolutely
3. Not necessarily