Step by step how guide how to create a Customer Contract of type GRANTS or GRANTSAUTOBILL in situations where the Grant Project does not exist yet.
Revenue for contracts of type GRANTAUTOBILL is recognized daily as the billing processes for this contract type are scheduled to run automatically each day. Accounting for bills and payments is also created automatically. Using contract type GRANTAUTOBILL does not necessarily mean sending bills to the Sponsor, but this can be configured for your department if desired and the invoices can include your logo. Please open a ticket through SF Employee Support and we will work with you.
Contracts of type GRANTS should only be created if you have a business reason for manually generating bills or you do not plan to create bills.
Scenario: Create a Proposal, Customer Contract, and Project with or without automatic billing.
Navigation: My Apps Portal > My Dashboard > SF Financials > Financial homepage
Step 1: On the Financial homepage, select the Grants tile.
Step 2: The Copy Proposal page will appear. Select Create / Maintain Proposal > Add a New Value. Enter the Business Unit and click the Add button.
Step 3: For this example, we’ll enter the Description, Reference Award Number, Title, Principal Investigator ID, Sponsor ID*, and Purpose. Proposal Type will default to New.
* Note: Be very careful when selecting the Sponsor (Customer) as it cannot be changed after the Award has been generated or the Contract has been activated. If a Sponsor does not exist in the system, please complete this form: Customer Creation and Modification Request Form | Knowledge Base | SF Employee and SF City Partner Support
The Assistance Listing Number is for Federal Grants. If your AL Number is not listed, submit a ticket and we will route it to the appropriate team in AOSD.
We’ll leave the Proposal Status as Draft and uncheck the Facilities & Admin Requested checkbox as we are not using that functionality. For the Start Date and End Date, be sure to enter the entire length of the contract. Here the Grant will span two fiscal years.
Click the Yes button if this message appears:
We are entering budgets into Commitment Control, so budgeting out of Grants has been disabled. Enter 1 in the No. Periods field. It’s not generating any budget, so it will have no downstream effect.
Click the Build Periods button.
Step 4: The Budget Periods section will populate. Click the Projects tab.
Step 5: Select the Project Type. The Department will populate with the department of the Principal Investigator, but this can be updated. If a popup message to update the Institution and Subdivision appears, click Yes and enter the desired values. Here, the values appeared by default.
In the F&A Distribution section, update Department if needed and be sure the Percent Share column totals 100%. Click the Location link at the bottom left of the form.
Step 6: On the Location tab, check the Location value and update as needed. Click the Budgets tab.
Step 7: The Budget ID will default to 0001. This will become the project Activity ID. Optionally enter a Description. Here we’ll enter Food Program and click the Save button. The Proposal ID and Project ID will be generated automatically after saving. The project hasn’t been created in the system yet, but the Project ID has been reserved.
Step 8: In the Budget Header section, click the F&A and Pricing Setup link.
Step 9: Pricing Method should be As Incurred, and Product should be GRANTS_INVOICE. Click OK.
Step 10: From the Submit Proposal page, change the Submit Status from Not Submitted to Submitted and click the Save button.
Step 11: On the Generate Award page, enter the Business Unit and Proposal ID, then click Search. This will need to be done by someone with the required access.
Step 12: Confirm that the value of To Award is the same as From Proposal, Project ID is the same as From Project, and Activity ID is the same as From Budget. Click the Generate button. While generating the Award, the system will create the Customer Contract with the same ID as the Proposal, create the Grant Project, and link it all together. This may take a minute or two.
Step 13: Now update the contract. Under Manage Contracts, we’ll navigate to the Define Contract General Info page and search for the new contract by entering Business Unit and Contract ID, which has the same ID as the proposal we created. Click the Search button.
Step 14: On the contract’s General page, note that the Contract Type is GRANTS and the Contract Status is Pending. If you wish to automate billing and accounting, select Contract Type GRANTAUTOBILL. Here we will accept the default value. Select the Lines tab.
Step 15: The Contract Line will already exist with the default product GRANTS_INVOICE. This was created for us during Award generation. The start and end dates were inherited from the Proposal. Select the Detail tab.
Step 16: On this tab, there are four pages that we will update or review: the Billing Plan, the Amount Allocation, the Accounting Distribution, and the Contract Terms. The order in which we update these is not important. In the Billing Plan column, click the Pending link.
Step 17: On this page, we’ll enter the department that would be issuing the bill in the Bill Source field. Although departments creating contracts of type GRANTS may not plan to bill from the system, we’ll capture this information anyway so that it’s available if the department wishes to amend the contract in the future to change the contract type to GRANTAUTOBILL so that the accounting is automated.
Some of the other features available on this page include the Pre-Approved checkbox, which provides for automatic approval of Billing Worksheets and the Minimum Bill Amount, which lets us set a minimum bill threshold if we don’t want to bill until a certain amount is reached. Again, these features only apply when billing through the system.
Click the Save button.
Step 18: Click the Return to General Information link.
Step 19: Click the Amount Allocation link to establish a billing limit.
Step 20: The Billing Allocation page allows us to establish a billing limit, which is useful when we use the Billing module to generate invoices as it prevents us from accidentally overbilling the sponsor. Enter the Total Billing amount, then the Billing Limit and click the Recalculate button. The Allocation field will change to Complete.
The Unallocated Billing amount should be zero, while the Fixed Billing field is only used for Prepaid Grants. Click Save.
Step 21: Click the Return to General Information link.
Step 22: Click the Detail tab, then in the Accounting column, click the Distribution link.
Step 23: Validate that the Effective Date is the beginning date of the contract. In this case, it is 07/01/2025 as expected.
Click the Correct History button. In the Contract Asset section, Account will default to 100040. Accept the default and enter the Fund, Department, Authority, Agency Use if appropriate, and Project. Note that these values are only used by the system if we are selling goods or equipment. Since we are not, the values do not matter. They are not inherited anywhere else in the system, but we can still use them for reference or in queries.
Click Save, then OK to acknowledge the message.
Step 24: Scroll to the right and verify the row is Valid, then click the Return to General Information link.
Step 25: Click the Detail tab, then the Contract Terms link.
Step 26: The project that was created by the Proposal will be linked here. Review the PC Business Unit, Project and Activity. These were created by the Proposal. In the Associated Rates section, pay particular attention to the Effective Date. If you need to pick up costs from the past, make sure the Effective Date is prior to the date those costs were eligible and incurred. Depending on how you navigate to this page, or if you associate a new rate set, it will sometimes default to the current date, so be aware of that.
If needed, you can also use this page to associate additional project activities with the customer contract. If you are unable to add your desired activity, it may already be assigned to another contract, and you can check this using the NavBar by navigating to Menu > Customer Contracts > Review Contract Information > Proj & Activities on Contracts.
Click the Return to General Information link.
Step 27: Select the General tab, then change the Contract Status to ACTIVE. The page will autosave.
Step 28: Select the Lines tab, then the Detail tab, and validate that the Billing Plan and Revenue Plan show as Ready. The contract is complete!