Running a donor project: budget, commitments, actuals
How Cambodian NGOs track a project budget against real commitments and posted spend, so "available" means something before the money is gone.
Budget minus spend is the wrong number
The figure most project managers watch is budget minus what has been paid. It is optimistic by exactly the amount of everything already approved but not yet invoiced — which, in a busy quarter, is most of what is going to be spent. Two teams can both be told the same money is free, and both be wrong.
What a donor report has to reconcile to
- The grant agreement, its period, and its approved budget lines
- Purchases committed against the project but not yet paid
- Expense claims and payroll charged to the same project
- Assets bought with donor money and still held
How a project budget stays truthful
The single idea below is that money is committed the moment a purchase is approved, not the moment it is paid. Everything else follows from that.
- 1Finance
The grant agreement comes first
Donor, period, approved budget lines, and restriction rules are recorded against the grant itself. The project references that record instead of carrying a free-text donor name that nobody can reconcile.
- 2ManagerPlanning → Active
The project opens against the grant
A project in planning can be shaped freely. Making it active is what opens it to spending, so the transition is a decision rather than a side effect of somebody raising the first purchase.
- 3Humaneti
An approved purchase becomes an open commitment
The moment a purchase request linked to the project enters approval, its amount is committed against the project budget. It stays committed until it becomes posted spend — so the money is never invisible in between.
- 4Humaneti
Availability nets off both
Available is budget minus posted spend minus open commitments. That is the number a project manager should be looking at, and it is the one that stops a second team from spending money the first team has already promised.
- 5Humaneti
Grant eligibility is checked at the request, not the report
A purchase against a grant must fall inside the grant period and the grant must be active. Catching it here costs a conversation; catching it in a donor report costs a finding.
- 6Finance
Everything charged to the project lands in one place
Purchases, expense claims, payroll allocations, and assets all carry the project on them. The donor report is then a read of the project rather than a reconstruction from four modules.
- 7ManagerCompleted → Closed
Closing is deliberate
A project moves to completed, then closed, rather than simply going quiet. Closing it is what stops late costs landing on a grant you have already reported and settled.