Subaward Monitoring

Sizing up a subrecipient before the award is only half the job. Uniform Guidance (2 CFR 200.332) also asks you to keep watch during the award — to make sure the money is spent as agreed and the work gets done. That ongoing watch is monitoring, and NP Ledger keeps a running log of it per subaward.

Each entry records one check-in: what kind, when, what you found, and what happens next. Over the period, the log becomes the paper trail that shows an auditor you were paying attention — not just that you cut a check and hoped for the best.

Not every check-in is a plane ticket. Match the type to the risk and the moment.

• Desk review. You review documents from your desk — progress reports, financial reports, drawdown requests. The everyday backbone of monitoring.
• Invoice review. You look closely at a specific invoice or reimbursement request before paying it: are the costs allowable, allocable, and within budget?
• Performance report review. You check progress against the program's goals — are they hitting the milestones the subaward was funded to reach?
• Site visit. You go there. Higher-touch, usually reserved for higher-risk partners or when a desk review turned something up.
• Other. Anything that doesn't fit the buckets above — a call, a spot check, a technical-assistance session.

The rhythm follows the risk level you set in the risk assessment:

The compliance report watches the clock against this cadence. Log check-ins on pace and the subaward stays green. Let it slip past the window and the light turns yellow; slip well past — more than 30 days — and it goes red. The point isn't to hit a quota. It's to make sure a quiet partner doesn't drift out of sight.

From the subaward's Monitoring tab, choose Log monitoring event and fill in:

1. Type and date — which kind of check-in, and when it happened.
2. Summary — what you reviewed and the shape of what you found.
3. Issues identified — flag it if you turned something up, and describe it. Be specific: "Q2 report late, received 2 weeks after due" beats "some delays."
4. Resolution — how it got resolved, once it did. Leave it blank while the issue is still open.
5. Next action date — when you'll next check in or follow up.
6. Attachments — the report you reviewed, notes from the visit, whatever backs up the entry.

Attach the underlying document whenever you can. A monitoring entry with the source report behind it is far stronger evidence than a summary line on its own.

Finding an issue isn't a failure of monitoring — it's the point of monitoring. What matters is what you do next.

Mark the entry as having an issue and describe it plainly. If the subrecipient is high-risk, NP Ledger emails your admins so it doesn't sit unseen. The issue stays open — and counts against the subaward's compliance status — until you record a resolution on it. So when it's genuinely handled, come back and fill in the resolution. An issue with no resolution reads, correctly, as one still hanging.

If an issue is serious or you're unsure how to handle it, that's a moment to loop in your CPA or grant compliance officer. Monitoring surfaces the facts; the harder calls about disallowed costs or corrective action are judgment calls worth a second opinion.

The monitoring log flows straight into the Subaward Compliance report and into the PBC audit export from the CPA Dashboard — a CSV of every check-in across every subaward, alongside the risk assessments and agreements. When Single Audit season comes, the record's already built. You did the work as you went; now it just prints.

• Subawards and Subrecipients — the full subaward record and the compliance report
• Subrecipient Risk Assessment — where the monitoring cadence is set