Allowable cost

In detail

Reasonableness is the test that catches people. It asks what a prudent person would have paid under the circumstances at the time, which means a cost can be allowable in one month and unreasonable in the next for the same item at a different price.

Allowability is decided partly by the government-wide rules, partly by the programme’s own notice, and partly by the recipient’s written policies. A cost blocked by any of the three is unallowable, and the three are not published in one place.

Against use of funds

`use_of_funds` is a list of categories a notice says the money is for — the funder’s restriction, extracted where it is stated. Allowability is a set of tests applied to a specific expense in a specific budget. A cost can sit inside a stated category and still fail the reasonableness test, so a record that lists a category is not telling you an expense will be paid.

How GrantTrove stores it

• `use_of_funds` is the field, shown on a record under “What can the money be used for?”. Where a notice states no categories, the record prints Not stated rather than an empty list.
• We never publish a judgement about whether a particular expense is allowable. That judgement belongs to the awarding agency and to your own auditor, and a database asserting it would be inventing an authority it does not have.

Common questions