Proposals, award letters, budgets and reports pile up across a dozen funders.Proposals, award letters, budgets and reports pile up across a dozen funders. Filex reads the funder and the grant year on each one and files it in the right place, so report season is a lot less stressful.
The short answer
Give each funder its own folder, then open a folder for every grant year inside it, like 2026-27. Keep that year’s proposal, award letter, budget and reports together. Start each file name with the date and the document type, and add the award number if the funder gives one, so the grant reads in order.
The problem
Elena Park · Program officer
Attached is the award letter and updated terms for this year’s grant.
Downloads
Award_letter.pdf
Hartley budget v3.xlsx
proposal FINAL.docx
The proposal is in a shared drive. The award letter is in an email. The budget is on someone’s laptop. The report draft is in a document called “final v3”.
Dev Okafor · Executive director
Can you pull everything for the Hartley grant? The report is due Friday.
Downloads
Hartley
Hartley old
Grants 2025
You need last year’s numbers and this year’s terms, and the person who filed them left in the spring.
Or a report goes out with the wrong terms. Maybe the funder’s terms for restricted money were in a letter nobody could find, or the reporting period did not match your fiscal year. Filing it properly would have taken a few minutes.
Late or inaccurate reports can make renewal conversations harder.
Your files should make it easy to get it right.
How it works
Describe your folder rule once in plain words. Filex reads each document and files it by funder and year.
Drop in proposals, award letters, budgets and reports. They do not need to be named or sorted first.
It finds the funder, the grant year and the document type on the page, names the file with the date, and files it under that funder and year.
Ask for “everything for the Hartley Foundation” and get every document across years, newest first.
What you get
Documents land under the right funder and year, and you can ask for any funder, year or document by name.
Filex reads the funder and the contact on each document and links them. Open a funder to see their whole history with you.
Grant Award Letter
Found on page 1: “Funder: Hartley Foundation”
Ask for “everything for the Hartley Foundation” or “all award letters” and Filex gathers every match into one group. New documents join automatically.
Describe a group…
Report deadlines and renewal dates are written in your award letters. Filex reads them and reminds you in the app ahead of time, with the letter one tap away.
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Complete guide
Funders think in grant years, and so do their reports. So your folders should work the same way: funder first, then year.
Keep everything for a grant year together. The proposal, the award letter, the budget and the report tell one story, and they are easiest to read in one place.
Start with the date, year then month, then the document type. Files sort in the order things happened, so a folder reads like a timeline of the grant.
If the funder gives each grant an award or agreement number, put it in the name too, like 2026-03-Award-Letter-4471.pdf. Two grants from one funder then never look alike, and the number is what the funder asks for when you write to them.
Some grants come with conditions on how the money may be used, and those conditions are in the award letter or its attachments. Keep the letter, any amendment and the approved budget side by side, so whoever writes the report starts from the funder’s own words. Check your auditor or funder if you are unsure how long to keep them.
A multi-year award can cross your fiscal year and its reporting period may not match it. Give each grant year its own folder and keep the first award letter in the first one, with a short note in later years pointing back to it. Keep the report you sent apart from the drafts you wrote, so the submitted version is never in doubt.
Many small nonprofits keep a grants calendar in a spreadsheet and a folder per funder, copied forward each year. It works while the grants manager who built it is still there, and it gets patchy when a development director or volunteer takes over mid-season.
Some teams add a donor database or grants tracker for the status of each ask. Those tools record that an award exists, but the signed letter and scanned reports still need a home. With Filex you describe your folder rule once, upload the documents, and it reads each one and files it.
It files documents. It does not write reports, track spending against a budget, or decide whether a gift is restricted. It only knows a due date if it is written on a document, and it needs the funder and year to be clear on the page, so a letter without them may need a quick look from you.
It files documents from the day you turn it on. Cleaning up older grants is a separate job, and so is deciding how long to keep them.
Answers about a folder per funder and per grant year
Make one folder for each funder and a folder for each grant year inside it. Keep the proposal, the award letter, the budget and the reports for that year together, and name files with the date and the document type.
Funders review you year by year, and reports are due for a specific year. Funder first means a funder’s whole history is in one place, and the year folder keeps one grant’s documents together.
Date first, then the type, like 2026-03-Award-Letter.pdf. The files sort in the order things happened, so a folder reads like a timeline. Add the funder’s award number at the end if there is one, so two grants from the same funder never get mixed up.
In a separate drafts folder inside the grant year. Keep only signed award letters and reports you actually submitted in the main folder, so there is no doubt about which version counts when the funder asks about it later.
Yes, when the scan is clear. Filex reads the text it can make out on PDFs and scans, so a legible award letter is filed under its funder. If the funder’s name is hard to read on a poor scan, you will need to file that one yourself.
No. Filex only renames your grant documents and files them according to your rule, such as funder then grant year. It never edits what is written inside a letter, budget or report, so the content stays exactly as the funder sent it.
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