Cost allocation plan

In detail

The plan is what turns a shared cost into an allocable one. Without a written method, an auditor has no basis to accept that 40 percent of the rent belonged to this award rather than another, and the cost becomes a questioned cost regardless of how reasonable the split was.

The method has to be applied consistently across every funder, not chosen per award. Allocating more of a shared cost to whichever grant has room in its budget is the failure mode the requirement exists to prevent.

Against an indirect cost rate

A rate recovers overhead as a percentage of a base. An allocation plan splits a specific shared cost across specific programmes by a documented method. An organisation can have both, and the same cost must not be recovered twice — once through the rate and once through the plan. Neither is a field on an opportunity; both are properties of the applicant.

How GrantTrove stores it

• We hold nothing about an applicant’s accounting. The record holds what the funder published, and links it.
• Where a notice states a budget requirement, it is in the notice; we do not restate requirements as fields, because a requirement field that is blank on most records reads as "no requirement".

Common questions