Contents

• Overview
• What is Initiating a Disbursement?
• ⚠️Important Notes
• Step-By-Step Instructions
  • Initiate One Disbursement
  • Initiate Several Disbursements at Once (Bulk Initiate)
• What Happens After Initiating
• Awardee Experience
• Troubleshooting
  • Why is Initiate grayed out?
• Related Articles

Overview

This article shows Program Admins how to initiate disbursements in Next, and what happens after you initiate them.

What is Initiating a Disbursement?

A disbursement is a scheduled payment to an awardee. Initiating is the last step: it marks the disbursement as “Completed” so Next has a record of the payment. Next doesn’t send any money. You pay the awardee through your own process.

• Who can initiate disbursements:
  • Organization Owners
  • Client Admins
  • Program Owners
  • Program Managers

⚠️Important Notes

• Disbursement approvals: If your cycle uses approvals, each disbursement must be approved before you can initiate it. On the Disbursements page, look for a “Pending Approval” status or a Request Approval option in the Actions menu. For help requesting an approval, see ➡️ Requesting Disbursement Approvals.
   
• Disbursement statuses that can be initiated: You can initiate a disbursement only when it has one of these statuses:
  • Cycles without disbursement approvals:
    • “Reports Approved”: All the progress reports it depends on are approved.
    • “Scheduled”: It doesn’t depend on any progress reports.
  • Cycles with disbursement approvals:
    • “Approved”: The disbursement has been approved.

Step-By-Step Instructions

Initiate One Disbursement

1. In the award cycle, click Disbursements under Financials in the left-hand menu.

2. Find the disbursement you want to initiate. To find it faster, enter the awardee’s name in the search bar, or filter the Status column to “Approved” or “Reports Approved.”
   
   
    
3. Click Actions on the far right of the disbursement, then select Initiate.

4. In the Complete Disbursement? pop-up, complete the following:

• If you see a Fund field, select the fund the payment should draw from. This field is required and appears only when your cycle uses Funding Source Tracking.
• Enter a note in the Add a Note field (optional).
• Click Complete.
  
  
  • A confirmation message appears in the bottom-left corner of the screen. The disbursement changes to “Completed.”

Initiate Several Disbursements at Once (Bulk Initiate)

1. In the award cycle, click Disbursements under Financials in the left-hand menu.
   
   
    
2. Select the checkbox next to each disbursement you want to initiate.

3. Click Actions in the upper-right corner of the screen, then select Initiate.
   
   

4. In the Confirm to mark Disbursement as complete pop-up, review the selected disbursements. Enter a note in the Add a Note field (optional), then click Complete. 
   (To remove a disbursement from the list, click the trash can icon next to it.)
   
   
   • A confirmation message appears in the bottom-left corner of the screen. The disbursements change to “Completed.”

What Happens After Initiating

• Disbursement status: The disbursement changes to “Completed.” This is the final status.
   
• Activity history: An entry is added to the disbursement’s history. Click the clock icon next to its status on the Disbursements page to see the full history.
   
• Fund balance (if your cycle uses Funding Source Tracking): The disbursement amount counts as spent (“Debited”) on its fund.
  • You can track this in the award’s Funds Log (Cycle Settings > Financials > Award Setup, then click Funds Log on the award).
• Award balance (if your cycle uses Award Balance Enforcement): The disbursement amount counts as spent (“Debited”) on the award.
  • You can track this in the awardee’s Award Ledger (Open the cycle, click Awardees in the left-hand menu, click the awardee’s name, then select the Award Ledger tab).

Awardee Experience

• Awardees aren’t emailed when you initiate a disbursement, and there is no communication trigger available for it at this time.
   
• They can see the updated status by opening their award (Your Awards > View Award), then selecting Financials > Disbursements. 
  
  

Troubleshooting

Why is Initiate grayed out?

Possible causes:

• The disbursement isn’t ready yet: Its status must be “Reports Approved,” “Scheduled,” or “Approved,” depending on whether your cycle uses disbursement approvals. See Important Notes for more info. 
   
• The disbursement needs approval: If you see Request Approval in the Actions menu, then your cycle uses disbursement approvals, and you must request approval first. See ➡️ Requesting Disbursement Approvals.
   
• You're initiating in bulk, and your cycle uses Funding Source Tracking without approvals: Each disbursement needs its own fund, so you must initiate them one at a time. See Initiate One Disbursement.

Related Articles

➡️ Initiate Payment for Disbursements (Payments Enabled)
➡️ Add Disbursements After Award Acceptance (Bulk Disbursement)
➡️ How to Request Approvals for Awarding, Disbursements & Reimbursements
➡️ How to Set Up Approvals for Awarding, Disbursements & Reimbursements
➡️ Add Attachments (Supporting Documents) to a Disbursement
➡️ How to Export Disbursement Data



 

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