Not-for-Profit /Decisioning live field guide · 8 min

Restricted-Fund Reconciler

Matches program spending lines against each restricted grant's approved categories and budget, flags every line that doesn't map or that overspends, and hands finance an exceptions list to decide on — turning a manual cross-match into a short review.

Open the live demo

theater/demos/nfp_restricted-fund-reconciler.html · sandbox · read-only

Open

FIG. 1

The live demo, running on fabricated data. Open it to step through the full flow — every output is shown for a person to approve before anything happens.

How it would work

Reads the coded expenditure for a restricted grant and that grant's funding agreement, checks each line against the approved categories and caps, and surfaces every exception for a finance officer to clear before the acquittal is lodged.

Input 01

The ledger export + the agreement

A period's expenditure coded to one restricted fund — from Xero, MYOB or a ledger export — and the funding agreement that sets the eligible cost categories, the admin cap, and the acquittal conditions.

Agent 02

Matches each line to a condition

Maps every expense line to an approved category, checks it against the agreement's caps and exclusions, and computes the variance — separating the lines that clear from the lines that are over-cap, out of scope, or it can't place.

Output 03

An exceptions list, working shown

A reconciliation showing eligible spend, ineligible spend, and each flagged line with the agreement clause it failed and a drafted reallocation note — for a finance officer to clear, reallocate or escalate before the acquittal is lodged. Nothing is posted to the ledger.

Where it works well

It runs the full line-by-line cross-check against the agreement every time, and shows its working.

Done by hand it is the bottleneck in the monthly close, and the line-by-line check is the first thing skipped when the deadline bites.
Best for a finance officer reconciling multiple concurrent grants with different funder rules and reporting periods.
Across five-plus active grants, the recaptured hours go back into program oversight and acquittal quality, not retyping a ledger into a funder's template.

The slow, invisible cost of an acquittal is the cross-referencing — tracing each coded line back to an eligible category, an admin cap, and a scope exclusion buried in a funding agreement that reads differently for every grant.

Where it works badly

It is confidently wrong when it's matching against a stale or misread agreement — and a clean exceptions list looks more authoritative than the rules behind it.

Weak where eligibility is a judgement, not a rule — a shared cost split across two grants, an in-kind contribution, a cost the funder approved by email but not in the agreement. It should flag, not guess.
If your grants are each bespoke one-offs with conditions that live in correspondence rather than a structured agreement, it gives you less than your own reading already does.

The honest test

If you cannot say, right now, which version of each funding agreement — including variations — this is reconciled against, the tool makes your wrong acquittal faster, not safer.

Point it at last quarter's agreement, a variation it never saw, or an admin cap it read as a percentage when the funder meant a dollar figure, and it produces a tidy, plausible reconciliation that clears the wrong lines. That is the trap.

What it doesn't do — and shouldn't

It drafts the reconciliation. A finance officer clears it. That boundary is deliberate.

WHAT IT DOES

Surfaces each line, the category it matched, and the agreement clause it checked against

Shows the variance and the drafted reallocation for every flagged line

Flags lines it can't place against an approved category rather than clearing them

WHAT IT WON’T

Post a journal or reallocation to the accounting system

Sign off or lodge the acquittal with the funder

Decide whether a borderline cost is genuinely eligible

An acquittal is a representation to the funder and sits under the charity's obligations to use restricted funds as donors and grantors intended — part of the ACNC Governance Standards. A wrong acquittal risks clawback of funds, a damaged funder relationship, and the charity's standing with the ACNC. The accountable finance officer stays on the decision because the consequence lands on the charity, not the tool.

What your data has to look like

Expenditure coded to the fund, and the funding agreement's conditions in a form the tool can check against.

Typical readiness

across orgs we see, before the first job

Expenditure coded to the restricted fund

Usual weak point

The funding agreement's eligible categories and caps

Needs shaping

The current version of each agreement, including variations

Needs shaping

A consistent chart of accounts across grants

Usual weak point

The reporting period and acquittal deadline per grant

Usually ready

The real first job

The weak point is almost always the coding and the agreement terms — spend pooled rather than tagged to its fund, and conditions held as prose in a PDF nobody has structured. Fixing how expenditure is coded and how each agreement's rules are captured is usually the real first job — larger and more valuable than the matching layer on top. Once the inputs are clean, every acquittal after that is faster and right by default.

Right fit if…

You acquit multiple concurrent restricted grants with different funder rules

Five-plus active grants where the monthly close drags on reconciliation

You can produce expenditure coded or tagged to each fund

Each agreement's eligible categories and caps can be stated as rules

Walk away if…

Most grants are bespoke one-offs with conditions living in email threads

Spend is pooled in one account, never tagged to its grant

The funding agreement is unstructured prose nobody has captured as rules

You need a tool that signs off and lodges the acquittal for you

Open questions

The worried-buyer questions, answered straight

It can match a line wrongly — which is exactly why nothing is cleared or lodged on its say-so. For each expense it shows the category it matched, the funding-agreement clause it checked against, the variance, and a flag where it couldn’t place the line cleanly. A finance officer reviews those before clearing or reallocating. The tool surfaces the exceptions; the person stands behind the acquittal lodged with the funder.

It works from expenditure tagged to each fund and from the agreement’s rules — eligible categories, the admin cap, scope exclusions. If spend is pooled in one operating account, or conditions live as prose a bookkeeper interprets differently each quarter, the reconciliation is only as good as that coding and that reading. Getting expenditure coded to the fund and each agreement captured as rules is usually the first piece of work — and the piece that pays off across every acquittal after.

No. It removes the line-by-line cross-referencing — tracing each coded entry back to an eligible category and a cap — so the finance officer spends their time on the judgement: whether a borderline cost is genuinely eligible, how to reallocate, whether a line needs to go to the board or the funder. The acquittal is still theirs. The capacity it frees goes back into program oversight and acquittal quality.

Current to the reporting period being acquitted. A funding agreement can be varied mid-term, and expenditure is only complete once the period’s transactions are all coded. Reconcile against last quarter’s agreement or a half-coded ledger and it produces a confidently wrong result. The honest test: do you know, today, which version of each agreement — including variations — and which closed period this is reconciled against?

A charity’s grant ledgers and donor-linked financial records are sensitive and fall under the Privacy Act and the Australian Privacy Principles. Any deployment runs against your own accounting systems and data handling, not a shared pool — we scope where the data sits and who can see it as part of the build. The demo here runs entirely on fabricated data; NorthWest Community Services and its grants are not real.

No. It reconciles to the conditions it’s given and flags lines that fall outside an eligible category or a cap, but it does not certify compliance. Your obligations to use restricted funds as the grantor intended sit under the funding agreements and the ACNC Governance Standards — a person confirms those are met for this acquittal before it’s lodged. The tool gets the reconciliation most of the way; the accountable finance officer closes the last step.

What it takes to build

3–4 weeks · 4 phases

Reused from template~70%

Bespoke to this skin~30%

stack · Claude · Xero/MYOB API · review UI

What it would cost

Fixed scope, fixed price, fixed dates.

Bite-sized first piece

One funder's acquittal, low risk

Pilot build

Most builds land here

Embedded support

Scale on proof

Considering this for your org?

The honest place to start is a bite-sized first piece — one funder's acquittal, low risk. Tell us where the close drags; we'll play it back, scope it, and show you what's possible.

Book a call How we work