Research Grant Tracking Platform That Gave a University Lab Full Control Over $8M in Active Funding
The research center moved from a fragmented, spreadsheet-driven approach to grant management into a unified platform that gave every stakeholder — from junior researchers to the center director — the visibility and control they needed to manage $8 million in active funding with confidence. By automating compliance documentation, spending approvals, and funder reporting across all 22 grants, the center eliminated the scramble that had defined every reporting deadline and replaced it with a structured, proactive workflow that surfaced issues before they became problems. Principal investigators gained real-time budget clarity, the finance coordinator gained a portfolio-wide view, and the center gained the institutional infrastructure to pursue larger and more complex funding opportunities.
A university-affiliated biomedical research center managing 22 active grants totaling $8 million from NIH, NSF, and private foundations was struggling to maintain financial visibility and compliance across its portfolio. With 45 researchers and staff, the center had outgrown its ad-hoc approach to grant management — a combination of Excel workbooks, email chains, and quarterly reconciliation meetings that left principal investigators uncertain about their remaining budgets and left the center's administration scrambling before every funder reporting deadline.
JSG was engaged to build a centralized grant tracking platform that would provide real-time budget visibility, automate compliance documentation, streamline spending approvals, and generate funder reports on schedule — all while integrating with the center's existing IRB workflows.
Client: A university-affiliated biomedical research center
Employee Size: 45 researchers and staff
Industry: Higher Education
Services: - Custom Software Development - AI Automation & Workflow Design - Financial Systems Integration - Compliance Workflow Design
The research center's grant management problems were systemic and interconnected, touching every stage from application to closeout.
First, budget visibility was critically poor. Each principal investigator maintained their own tracking spreadsheet for their grants, using different formats, different categorizations, and different update cadences. The center's finance coordinator attempted to reconcile these against the university's central accounting system on a monthly basis, but the reconciliation process itself took five to seven business days and was routinely delayed. As a result, PIs frequently did not know their accurate remaining budget until weeks after expenditures occurred. On two occasions in the prior fiscal year, spending on a grant exceeded the approved budget line before anyone noticed — triggering clawback discussions with the funder and jeopardizing the center's reputation.
Second, compliance documentation was a persistent vulnerability. NIH and NSF grants carry detailed requirements around effort reporting, subcontractor documentation, equipment purchases, and human subjects protocol compliance. The center tracked these requirements in a shared document that was updated inconsistently. During the most recent NIH audit, the center spent three weeks assembling documentation that should have been readily accessible, diverting senior research staff from active projects and delaying a pending grant application.
Third, the spending approval process was slow and opaque. Purchase requests above $500 required PI approval, and requests above $5,000 required additional sign-off from the center director. These approvals were handled via email, with no tracking of where a request stood in the chain. Researchers reported waiting up to two weeks for approvals on time-sensitive equipment purchases, in some cases missing vendor pricing windows or delaying experiments.
Fourth, funder reporting was a quarterly fire drill. Each of the center's 22 grants had different reporting schedules, different templates, and different requirements for financial and narrative content. The finance coordinator and individual PIs would scramble in the days before each deadline, pulling data from multiple sources and manually assembling reports. Two reports had been submitted late in the prior year — one resulting in a formal warning from the funder.
Fifth, the center's IRB workflows existed in a completely separate system with no connection to grant records. When a grant required human subjects approval, there was no automated way to verify that the approval was current, that modifications had been submitted, or that continuing reviews were on schedule. This created a compliance blind spot that grew more dangerous as the center's portfolio expanded.
The center needed a platform that would: - Provide real-time budget visibility across all 22 grants - Automate compliance tracking and documentation assembly - Streamline spending approvals with clear status tracking - Generate funder reports on schedule with minimal manual effort - Integrate IRB status into the grant management workflow
JSG designed and deployed a comprehensive grant tracking platform on the TMX framework, integrating AI-powered financial monitoring, automated compliance workflows, and a unified dashboard for the center's entire $8M portfolio.
Key Components
Unified Grant Portfolio Dashboard A centralized platform was created to display all 22 active grants in a single view — showing remaining budget by category, burn rate trends, upcoming deadlines, and compliance status. PIs could drill into their individual grants while the center director and finance coordinator had portfolio-wide visibility. Power BI dashboards provided the visual layer for trend analysis and board-level reporting.
AI-Powered Budget Variance Detection Azure OpenAI was integrated to monitor spending patterns against budget projections in real time. The system flagged anomalies — such as accelerated burn rates, spending in unapproved categories, or line items approaching their caps — and surfaced them to the PI and finance coordinator before they became problems. The model learned from historical spending patterns across similar grant types to improve its detection accuracy over time.
Automated Spending Approval Chains N8N workflows replaced the email-based approval process. Purchase requests were submitted through the platform, automatically routed based on dollar thresholds and grant-specific rules, and tracked with full visibility for the requester. Approvers received notifications with one-click approval capability. Escalation rules ensured that requests did not stall in anyone's inbox for more than 48 hours.
Compliance Documentation Engine Azure OpenAI was used to assist in generating compliance narrative sections for funder reports, drawing from the center's activity logs, expenditure records, and milestone tracking data. The system maintained a living compliance checklist for each grant, automatically updating status as documentation was uploaded or milestones were completed. Effort reporting, equipment certifications, and subcontractor agreements were tracked with expiration alerts.
Funder Report Scheduling & Assembly N8N automation managed the reporting calendar for all 22 grants. Four weeks before each deadline, the system initiated a report preparation workflow — pre-populating financial tables from the budget database, prompting PIs for narrative updates, and assembling the report in the funder's required template. The finance coordinator reviewed and submitted the final version, reducing assembly time from days to hours.
IRB Integration Workflow The platform was connected to the university's IRB system to pull protocol approval status, modification dates, and continuing review deadlines into the grant record. When an IRB approval was expiring or a required modification had not been submitted, the system triggered alerts to the PI and the center's compliance officer.
## Quantifiable Impact
- $8M in active grant funding managed with real-time budget visibility for the first time in the center's history
- Budget overruns caught an average of 23 days earlier than under the prior manual reconciliation process
- Spending approval cycle reduced from an average of 9 business days to 1.5 business days
- Funder report assembly time reduced by 70%, from an average of 18 person-hours per report to 5 person-hours
- Zero late funder reports since deployment, compared to 2 late submissions in the prior year
- PI time spent on grant administration reduced by an estimated 6 hours per PI per month
- 100% of IRB compliance gaps identified proactively — no mid-project protocol lapses since launch
- Frontend: Next.js
- Backend: .NET API
- Platform: TMX (grant management engine, role management, approval workflows)
- Cloud: Microsoft Azure
- Database: Azure SQL
- AI & Automation: Azure OpenAI (budget variance detection, compliance narrative generation)
- Workflow Orchestration: N8N (spending approval chains, deadline alert workflows, funder report scheduling, IRB integration triggers)
- Reporting & Analytics: Power BI (grant portfolio dashboards, burn rate analysis, compliance status views)
- Communication: SendGrid (deadline reminders, approval notifications)
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