Features
WebGrants is a comprehensive Grant Management System with rich and robust features that have been added to the system over many years.
Each WebGrants customer is unique. Each customer has unique requirements and business rules. WebGrants can be molded to accommodate vast differences in business rules, data, and workflow. WebGrants was designed from the ground up with flexibility in mind. Each customer can tailor their WebGrants implementation to uniquely suit their own personal needs. The data captured in the applications, reviews, grants, progress reports, payments, site visits, amendments and other oversight documents is different for each customer and different for each program. WebGrants supports the configuration of unique forms for each customer and for each customer's program. Workflow can also be tailored by customer and by program. One program can require two levels of approval while another program can require four levels of approval. The system will automatically enforce these different rules for each program.
While the data, business rules and workflow can be different for each program, all the data is stored in one central database. This allows management to generate reports across multiple programs. Even though the budget form for program A is completely different from the budget form for program B, management can still generate a single report that summarizes data across the budgets of both programs.
The administrator can control access to each program at the individual level. Some internal staff work exclusively in program A and some internal staff work exclusively in program B. The staff that works in A does not need to see the data in program B and vice versa. The admin can set the security such that staff in program A has exclusive access to the data in A and staff in program B do not see any data for program A and vise versa. This allows access to only the data that staff needs to have access to and restricts access to data they do not need.
The initial WebGrants setup and configuration can be done by either the customer's staff or by DTPi staff. The set up of forms and maintenance of the system over time can be done by either party. Customers can have the peace of mind that they themselves can make any edits or changes that need to occur to the forms, business rules, or workflow without DTPi involvement. This saves time and money by allowing the customer to be self-sufficient and not tied to a vendor for every little change.
The management of applicants and internal staff is greatly simplified with WebGrants. All user contact information resides in a single location. Updates to specific information like telephone numbers and email addresses in a single location are automatically reflected in all associated documents.
Organization information is kept separate from people information. People and organizations are associated together by reference. Therefore many people can belong to the same organization and a single organization can have many members. Regardless of the number of members, the organization information is stored in only one location. Any updates to either the people or organization information is immediately reflected in other parts of the system. A person's name or an organization's address is stored only in the profile. This information is displayed on all associated documents like applications and status reports but is not stored in that document itself.
Each person can be assigned a highly specific level of security. Each person can be associated with one or more agencies. An agency is a department, chapter, or division of an organization. Even though a person is associated with the overall organization they may only need to see information in a certain agency. Therefore it is possible to limit the access to the agency level. People can also be associated with program areas or grant types. Some users may need to see data for all grant types others do not. This access can be restricted. Users can also be assigned roles. Each role is made up of over 70 possible privileges. A privilege is the ability to perform an action like create a document or edit or delete a document. The customer administrator can create and assign their own roles.
Users can subscribe to automated email notifications and alerts. There are approximately 60 different automated alerts in the system that are sent under a wide variety of circumstances. For example an alert is sent when an application is submitted, reviewed, awarded or not awarded. Some people may want to be notified when these events happen others do not. Therefore users can subscribe or not subscribe to each alert on an individual basis.
External sources of funds, or awards, can come from the federal government, state and local governments or even from private and corporate donations. All of your awards can be tracked within WebGrants so you can ensure the most efficient use of your available funds without the danger of over committing your resources. Staff can sub-divide award money into one or more fund sources. These fund sources can then be used to fund individual projects.
One or more fund sources can fund a single project. Once money is allocated to a project, WebGrants will automatically calculate the uncommitted, committed, expended and unexpended amounts. These amounts can be viewed at a single project level or rolled up for a fiscal year or grant competition or across other search criteria.
Both staff and management have a quick and easy to use financial dashboard that provides instant insight into the financial situation for an organization. This module provides quick and up to date financial information drilled down to a single organization or across a large spectrum of organizations.
Grant opportunities for each program area can be posted at any time. WebGrants will automatically close the opportunity at the specified end date and time. Late submissions are not allowed. On a funding opportunity basis, staff can add or remove application forms, they can set maximum budget limits and they can require an initial pre-application or letter of intent. Staff can attach opportunity announcement documents or instructions in the form of Word or PDF documents for the benefit of the applicants.
Submitted applications can be prequalified. WebGrants will not allow the submission of incomplete applications. Staff can develop qualification rules that will auto-reject an applicant if they are not compliant. Once submitted, staff can route applications back to the applicant for further editing or error corrections. All negotiations are automatically versioned. The original submission is retained along with each subsequent new version. Staff can make internal notes on each application and also provide automated feedback to the applicant.
Submitted Applications can be reviewed by any number of internal or external reviewers. A single grant competition can span up to five review rounds. Meaning that up to five different evaluation panels can review the same set of applications. Each round can have its own reviewers, its own review forms and its own average score. Reviewers can be assigned to application in an ad hoc fashion or via pre-established static panels. Once assigned, each reviewer will receive an automated email notification indicated that they have applications to review.
Staff can impose an optional conflict of interest process. Prior to actually reviewing the application, the reviewer will be exposed to a small subset of the information in the assigned application. Based on this limited information, the reviewer then indicates if they have a conflict of interest. If they do have a conflict then internal staff can remove the reviewer from the application or from the entire panel.
Reviewers log into WebGrants and view an inbox of applications assigned to only them. They click on each application and open the full application, or a partial application defined by internal staff, where they can read it, convert it to PDF or print it to read later. The reviewer can open the online evaluation forms and enter their scores and comments directly into the system. Once submitted, internal staff will receive an automated email notification indicated that the reviewer has completed their review. If a reviewer has made a mistake or wishes to revise their scores or comments, staff can unlock reviews. These reviews are versioned so the original information is retained.
The system will automatically calculate an average score per round. Staff can then decide which applications to award and which to reject. Staff can sort the applications by score, rank, status, notes or other criteria. Once an application is awarded, the system will automatically create the corresponding grant and all relevant information will automatically copy.
Awarded applications become grants. Data from the application is automatically copied into the grant. This data includes the contact information and also the budget, project description, objectives and other data. Staff can search for grants using a rich search screen that includes ID, status, title, organization, year, program, and the status of various sub-documents.
Numerous data elements can be tracked on an individual grant basis including the budget, project description, objectives, progress reports, payments, allocations, encumbrances, correspondence, site visits, contract amendments, and other user defined information. Grant data can be viewed individually for a single project or rolled up across numerous projects.
Both internal staff and grantees have access to the grant data. Staff can configure what data is hidden from the grantee and what data is view-only for the grantee. The grantee can view the status of their projects in real time. They can view the status of payments and other submissions without the need for staff to send notifications or answer phone calls or emails.
WebGrants sends automated email alerts to both internal staff and grantees. Numerous people can receive alerts on both sides for a single grant. These alerts act as reminders and provide users information without the need to continuously log into the system. Grantees receive automated alerts 21, 14, 7, and 3 days prior to the submission deadline for progress reports, payments, contract amendments, site visits, etc. Internal staff also receives alerts when these documents are submitted and when these documents require their approval.
WebGrants flexible workflow allows staff to define approvals for up to five levels for payments and contract amendments. The system will notify people in level one that a document is ready for approval. When the document is approved at level one, the system will automatically notify level two. When someone in level two approves the document, level three is notified and so on up to five levels. This automated process removes the time and effort it takes staff to coordinate the approval process themselves. The approval process can now be set on autopilot and management can log into the system and see the status of any document at any approval level.
Using both flexible reporting and system queries, staff and management can see the status of each project or a roll up of many projects. Staff can see the amount of money allocated, spent and pending. Staff can see the percentage complete and documents submitted via simple queries into the system.
WebGrants supports both direct payments and claim reimbursements. A payment is typically on a schedule. Staff can define a global schedule for a single program, for example to pay a grantee $1,000 per month for the next 12 months. WebGrants will automatically setup these payments in advance and process them when the scheduled pay date arrives. This process can include or not include human approval and this approval can be up to five levels.
The second type is claim reimbursements. A reimbursement is based on the overall project budget. WebGrants automatically reproduces the project budget inside the claim for the benefit of the user. The grantee can then enter for each budget line item their expenses this period. Certain rules can be configured to allow or not allow the grantee to exceed certain line items without a formal contract amendment. For example, it is possible to limit the maximum request amount to never exceed the line item limit in the budget. Or it is possible to exceed this limit by a certain percentage like 10%. Regardless the system will prevent the grantee from ever requesting more money than the total budget amount.
Once submitted, staff has the ability to route the claim back to the grantee for corrections. This process automatically versions the data so the original submission is retained. Staff can make notes on the claim and provide feedback to the grantee. The payment also supports an approval process of up to five levels. Once approved, staff can process the payment.
Staff can allocate one or more fund sources to a grant. For each payment staff can dictate from which fund sources funds will be drawn from. For example, if two fund sources are associated with a single grant then, for each payment, staff can dictate that salaries be paid from fund one and equipment be paid from fund two. Also staff can automate certain accounting practices like First in First out (FIFO) and Last in First out (LIFO).
When funds have been assigned and approvals have been made, the payment is ready to be processed. This can happen manually or via an electronic integration between WebGrants and the customer's financial accounting system. Integration can happen many ways but the most common is via a batch process that writes all transactions in a 24 hour period to a flat file. This file is exported from WebGrants by a server side process and is imported into the financial accounting system. The financial system will then process each transaction and in turn produce an output file. This output file is exported from the financial accounting system and imported into WebGrants. WebGrants then updates the date paid and the check number for each successfully processed transaction.
WebGrants also supports voided, canceled, reprocessed and other exception cases for checks.
WebGrants supports two types of reports built-in and ad hoc. Built-in reports are reports that are predefined in WebGrants. When running these reports, staff can select certain filter criteria such as program, competition, status, date range and others. They can also specify the output to be HTML, PDF, Word or Excel. Customers cannot modify these reports themselves. However, DTPi can create new reports at the customer's request. These requested reports can follow extremely specific print format guidelines. For example, DTPi has developed reports for customers that exactly mirror the look and feel of federal required documents. The text, layout and design of the report generated directly from WebGrants looks exactly like the required federal form. Also, internal reports can be developed that produce specific information in a specific layout.
The second type of report is ad hoc. Using ad hoc reports the customer can develop their own reports. Staff can create a report, save it and run it any number of times in the future. When creating a report, staff can add fields form virtually anywhere in the system including from the application, review, opportunity, grant, status report, payment, site visit or contract amendment. Data from multiple locations can be combined together. Staff can also define other report parameters like the sort order, the column order, and the group by and join conditions. Staff can filter on any field selected by using logical operators like equal to, greater than, less than, IN, Between and Like. Staff can also insert mathematical formulas for totals, averages, and min/max values, and can use the standard operators add, subtract, multiply and divide to perform mathematical operations on any columns selected. Once the report is defined, staff can export the data to HTML, Comma Separated Value (CSV) or Excel.
Customers who purchase WebGrants have access to extensive customization features to tailor the system to their own particular needs. The primary customization tool is called the Form Creator. In this module, users have the ability to configure the system to map to their current data requirements, business rules, and workflow. Staff can create new forms. Forms can be created either at the program area level or globally across the entire organization. Forms can be created for applications, reviews, funding opportunities, grants, status reports, payments, site visits and contract amendments. Staff can define various form types, for example, forms dedicated to certain functions like the budget, attachments, reference letters, reviews, etc. Staff can also configure the people, organization and award profiles. The forms themselves have configuration properties that allow staff to designate when the form is used, who has access to it under certain circumstances, how it moves through the workflow and under what circumstances do certain people see it either read only or editable. Inside the form, staff can add sections to a form to define a single editable interface or a multiple list of data or a grid like an Excel spreadsheet. Inside the section staff can add fields. The field type can be defined to be text, number, currency, date, drop down, percentage, email, phone, yes/no, etc. Once the field type is set, the interface will enforce that type. For example, it is not possible for a user to enter a letter into a date field or into a currency field. Staff can also define additional parameters on a field level like the maximum length of allowable characters, instructions, calculations, order, default values, whether the field is required or optional, sub-totals, etc.
Staff can create mathematical functions that allow staff to calculate values inside a single form or across multiple forms. Staff can set formulas to include the standard mathematical operators of add, subtract, multiply and divide. Staff can define complex formulas by using parenthesis to establish order of operations. For example, staff can define a formula to calculate (field1 x field2)/field3. The fields in the calculation can all be on the same form or on different forms. When the user saves the form, the system performs the calculations and stores the result in the database along with the rest of the form values. This alleviates the need for applicants themselves to perform calculations. This is a great time saving feature and eliminates issues from incorrectly calculated values.
Staff can define their own alerts and email notifications. Each of the 60 automated email alerts can be customized by staff. Staff can edit the subject and the body of each message. They can add variables to the message that inserts dynamic data when the email is sent. For example, staff can insert into the body of the email, variables that translate into the user's name, their application or grant title, the id, the program name, the organizations name, etc. The result is a custom tailored email that is more personal than a generic form letter and provides user specific data.
Drop down lists used in the system are editable by staff. Staff can also create their own drop down lists. Once created, the drop down can be inserted into one or more forms. Staff can edit the options in the drop down, they can reorder the options, insert a blank option, etc. Staff can also define reference tables which restrict the options in a drop down when more than one drop down is used on a single form. For example, if a user selects a particular state from a drop down of all US states then the second drop down for cities automatically becomes restricted to only those cities that are in that state. Thus the user cannot make a mistake by selecting combinations that don't make sense like California and Seattle.
Staff can define new security roles or modify existing roles using any combination of over 70 privileges that allow users to perform certain actions like gain access to a module or edit or delete or approve a document. These roles can be associated with certain people types like internal staff or external reviewers. Once a role is defined, that role can be assigned to one or more people. A single user can have more than one role. Staff can edit a role at any time which changes the access rights of anyone with that role.