Microsoft dynamics AX 2012 introduces Grants as funding option in Project management and accounting

Hi Friends,

Its been a long time coming here. Work keeps all of us busy. 🙂

In today’s post , I will take you through a new functionality and it’s concept called Grants in the Project accounting and management module of dynamics AX 2012. In one of my earlier posts, I introduced and explained about the new advanced funding functionality in dynamics AX 2012 where in customers/users can set up split funding of projects/contracts. They can attach more than one funding source which can be of different types such as Customers, On Hold, Grants, Organization etc.

Let us discuss the Grant funding source type out of these different funding sources in this post. We will also discuss the significance of introducing the Grants in AX 2012, how to create and manage grants  and their billing or utilization related stuff in projects.

A grant in dynamics AX 2012 represents a fund designated by federal government or local government authorities for a specific purpose/project and usually there are restrictions imposed on how the grant can be spent. This type of funding source gains attention in the public sector and research firms. They may also apply for a grant to do undertake a sponsored project and will request a grant amount when applying the grant. The awarded grant amount could be equal or less than the applied amount.

Now let us assume that we as a construction company will apply for a sponsorship grant to install high-end security features at the Basketball stadium and we will apply this to the Basket ball stadium customer in CONTOSO data. Let us go through the steps to create and maintain grants in AX 2012.

1. Navigate to Project Accounting and Management > Common > Grants > Grants.
2. Click New > Grant on the action pane.
3. Fill in the required details to complete the grant. See the screens below for the sequence of data.

Now let us discuss some of the key terms while setting up the grant.

The Contact Information section includes all contact information about the organization that provided the grant and your staff members which are responsible for managing the grant.

Under the Dates and Deadlines section, define all the important dates which are required for the grant such as the requested, approved, awarded, expiry, renewal date etc.

Under the Setup section there are few important parameters which needs to be setup.

Matching Type : This field is required when matching of funds are required in a particular grant. Matching funds are the money/resource that the company which is awarded the grant needs to spend to match the amount which is awarded. The matching percent and matching amount gets calculated from the selection of matching type. This signifies that the grant terms requires that the awarded company will spend certain amount from its budget.

The State mandate, Federal mandate and CFDA are all country specific fields(for United states) and are required and when the primary address of the organization is USA.

This is it in today’s post. There are several fields for which data can be setup for the grants and explaining all of them here will get me writing and writing and writing. Please feel free to ask me back if you do not understand the significance of any of the fields in setting up a grant and any other generic questions about grants in AX 2012 and their usage.

keep watching for my next post which will explain How to use a grant and a customer as funding sources in a project and how the billing for the grant will be carried out. I will explain all of it in detail.

Have a nice day.

Thanks

Keep DAXING 🙂