Funding: Sources, Allocations and Disbursements
Money moves through your centre in three steps: it arrives from somewhere, you earmark it for a program, and you release it to a startup. This is also the first thing to set up on a new portal - until a funding source exists, you cannot open an intake at all.
What you will learn
- Why funding must be set up before anything else works
- The three-step model: source, allocation, disbursement
- The seven types of funding source and when to use each
- How to release money in tranches against milestones
- How to keep an audit trail your funder will accept
Do this first#
It is tempting to leave funding until later - it feels like a finance job rather than a setup job. Do not. Every batch must have funding attached, and that funding has to be drawn from a source that already exists. Until you add one, the Create Batch button stays greyed out and nobody can apply to any of your programs.
This blocks your first intake
New centres routinely create a program, try to open an intake, and hit a dead end with no explanation. The only clue is a quiet 'No funding sources found' line inside the batch dialog. Add at least one funding source before you sit down to launch a program and you will not meet this at all.
Finding the screen#
Funding lives under Investments in the left-hand menu - the menu label and the page title do not match, so look for Investments and expect to land on Funding Management. Four figures run across the top and three tabs sit beneath them.
| Figure | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Total Funding | Everything you have received, across all sources. |
| Total Allocated | How much is earmarked to programs. The line underneath shows what remains unallocated. |
| Total Disbursed | How much has actually left your account and reached startups. |
| Pending Disbursements | Payments approved or in progress but not yet completed. |
Good to know
The gap between Allocated and Disbursed is the number worth watching. A large gap means you have committed money you have not yet released - which may be perfectly normal, or may mean a startup is waiting on you.
Step one: record where the money came from#
A funding source is a pot of money that arrived at your centre - a government grant, a CSR cheque, your own corpus. Add Funding Source opens a form with a live preview and a small checklist showing what is still missing before you can save.
- Source Name should be recognisable a year later - 'NIDHI Grant 2026', not 'Grant 1'.
- Total Amount and Currency: rupees by default, dollars also available.
- Received Date and Expiry Date - the expiry matters if the money must be spent within a window.
- Reference / Grant ID is where the funder's own reference number goes. Fill this in; it is what an auditor will ask for.
- Notes and a receipt or proof document can be attached.
| Source type | Typical use |
|---|---|
| Government Grant | Central or state schemes - NIDHI, a state startup mission, a department grant. |
| CSR | Corporate social responsibility funding from a company partner. |
| Internal | Your own institution's corpus or budget allocation. |
| Investor | Money from an investor or fund routed through your centre. |
| Donation | Philanthropic or alumni giving. |
| Sponsored | A sponsor backing a specific cohort or theme. |
| Other | Anything that does not fit the six above. |
Tip
Record the grant reference number and attach the sanction letter when you create the source, not later. Reconstructing which cheque matched which grant eighteen months on is the single most painful thing about grant reporting.
Step two: earmark money to a program#
An allocation reserves part of a source for a particular program, so you can see what each cohort has to spend. Choose a program from the dropdown to see what has been allocated to it.
- One source can be split across several programs.
- One program can draw on several sources - which is what the Funding Sources section of the batch dialog is asking about.
- The 'unallocated' figure on the overview tells you what is still uncommitted.
Careful
Allocating is not spending. Money shows as allocated the moment you earmark it, whether or not anything has been paid. Do not report allocated figures to a funder as though they were disbursed.
Step three: release money to a startup#
A disbursement is money actually going out to a named startup. This is the record that has to stand up to scrutiny, so it captures rather more than the other two steps.
- 1
Pick who is being paid
A disbursement is paid to a startup's place in the program - its onboarded application, or, for a startup that joined without applying (brought in from your records, or added to the program), the place itself. The list says how much each can still receive: what is left of its approved amount, and never more than the program's allocation still holds.
- 2
Say which source it is paid from
Paid from lists the funding sources allocated to that program or its batch, with what each allocation still holds. With one, it is chosen for you; with several, choose one - approving a startup's funding request asks the same. A startup that joined without applying has a registration for its place, so its founders ask for money like anyone else; with no approved amount, a request - and its approval - is bounded by what the allocation still holds. Each source's page then has a Paid from it tab listing every payment that named it, with the startup, program and batch it went to.
- 3
Choose lump sum or tranche
Lump Sum releases the whole amount at once. Tranche releases part of it, which is how most grant-backed programs work - a slice on joining, a slice on hitting a milestone, a slice on completion.
- For a tranche you can name the milestone it is tied to - 'MVP Launch', 'Revenue Target'.
- The Progress column on the list shows how much of the commitment has been released so far.
- 4
Record the payment reference and attach proof
Enter the bank reference - a UTR number, for example - and upload the receipt or proof document. Add notes explaining anything unusual.
Tip: Attach the proof at the moment you record the payment. It takes ten seconds now and saves a day of searching during an audit.
| Disbursement status | What it means |
|---|---|
| Created | Recorded but not yet approved. |
| Pending | Waiting on approval or processing. |
| Approved | Signed off, not yet paid. |
| Completed | Money has gone out and been recorded. |
| Failed | The payment did not go through. |
| Cancelled | Called off before payment. |
Recording money you have already paid#
When you move to Ecosync you have years of grants already paid out. Record them as they happened rather than pushing each one through approval today: every step keeps its own date, and each record says it was entered after the fact, by whom and when. On Disbursements, Record Past Payments opens a grid with one row per startup in the program; a startup's own Funding tab records one payment at a time.
- Import Payments brings in a ledger file: startup (or Ecosync ID), program, batch, source, amount, date and reference. Every row is checked the same way, and the whole import can be undone in one step.
- Convert Support Given turns the Support given column from an imported startup list into payments: its program, its source and its joining date are proposed, and only the part not already on record is offered.
- Founders see these payments on their profile under Funding received, marked as recorded by your incubator, and the Audit Center's Funding utilisation report shows them in the year they were paid.
- 1
Backdate the source and the allocation
Give the funding source the day it was received, and for a government scheme the day and number of the sanction order. Give the allocation the day the program or batch was given the money. Neither can be dated in the future, and an allocation cannot come before its source.
- 2
Record the payments
Each row names the startup's program and batch, the source whose allocation paid it, the amount and the day it was paid. Paste a block copied from your ledger in Excel - with or without its header row - and the grid fills itself; amounts like 2,50,000 or 5 lakh and dates like 12/08/2019 are understood. Without a header row, the columns are read in the grid's own order (Startup, Paid from, Amount, Paid on, Type, Reference) or as Startup, Amount, Paid on, Reference, Notes when that fits better, and the reading is shown above the rows as chips you can change.
- A payment dated before the startup joined, before the source was received or sanctioned, or before the allocation was made is refused in words.
- A payment from a source comes from its allocation, and only up to what is left in it - twenty rows cannot each use the last lakh.
- A payment after the startup left, or one that looks like a payment already recorded, asks you to confirm first.
- The grid is saved together or not at all, with every problem listed on its row.
- 3
When you only know the year
Tick Date not known and the earliest day your records allow is used - usually the joining date - marked Date estimated. The payment still counts in that year's figures, and the badge makes it easy to find and correct later.
- 4
When you do not know which source paid
Choose Source not known yet in Paid from - it is always the last choice, and it is chosen for you when nothing is allocated to the program or batch. The payment counts as paid in the startup's funding, Total Disbursed and the Audit Center, but in no source and no allocation, and it waits in Investments › Source not known until you link it.
- 5
Correct or cancel, never delete
A recorded payment can be corrected at any time - amount, date, source, reference, and more proof. A wrong one is cancelled with a reason and stays on record. The funding history keeps every earlier version.
Tip
Allocate before you record when you know the source. If a program or batch has no allocation, the grid records the payments with Source not known yet and offers Allocate funds instead - you can backdate that allocation too.
Linking a payment to the source that paid it#
Investments › Source not known lists every payment recorded without a source, grouped by program and batch; a filter shows the ones paid through Disbursements before funding sources were entered. Tick one or several and press Link to a source - or use Link on a Disbursements row or a startup's Funding tab.
- Linked payments leave Source not known and show under that source everywhere, including the Audit Center; the funding history keeps who linked them and when.
- A linked payment can go back to Source not known through Correct, with a reason that goes into the history.
- Payments without a source still use up the program's room for new payments and what founders can still ask for - the money was paid.
- 1
Pick the source
The list shows each source's type, its sanction or received date and what it has not yet allocated. Add a funding source from the same window if it is not there yet.
- 2
Check the allocation
Where the source already has an allocation to the program or batch, the payments draw on it. Where it has none, the link makes one in the same save: the payments' total, dated the earliest payment. Change amount or date before you save if the real allocation was bigger or earlier.
- 3
Read the checks, then link
Each check that passed is marked OK; anything that stops the link says why and what to do - a source cannot pay before it arrived, so pick the source that did, or record that source's earlier sanction date. Nothing is saved until every payment can be linked.
Keeping an audit trail that holds up#
Grant funders and institutional finance teams ask the same handful of questions. If you do these five things as you go, every one of them is answerable from this screen in under a minute.
Name sources properly
Include the scheme and the year. 'NIDHI Grant 2026' tells you everything; 'Grant 1' tells you nothing in eighteen months.
Always fill the reference field
The funder's own grant or sanction number is the key that ties your records to theirs. Leaving it blank guarantees a painful reconciliation.
Attach proof at the time
Sanction letter on the source, payment receipt on the disbursement. Never 'I will upload it later'.
Use tranches against milestones
Naming the milestone a payment is tied to turns a list of transactions into evidence that money was released against delivery.
Watch the expiry dates
Grants with a spend-by date are the ones that catch centres out. Record the expiry when you create the source.
Keep allocated and disbursed distinct
Report what actually went out, not what you earmarked. Confusing the two is the fastest way to lose a funder's confidence.
Common questions#
You have no funding sources. Every batch needs funding attached and that funding must come from a source. Add one here first, then go back to the program's Batches tab.
The menu label and the page title differ - the menu says Investments, the page says Funding Management. They are the same thing.
Allocated means earmarked for a program. Disbursed means the money has actually left your account and reached a startup. A funder asking 'how much have you deployed' means disbursed.
Yes. When you create a batch you say how much comes from each source, so a cohort can be part government grant and part CSR.
Choose Tranche rather than Lump Sum, and name the milestone the payment is tied to. The Progress column then shows how much of the total commitment has been released.
Add the funding source with its received (or sanction) date, allocate it to the program or batch with the day it was allocated, then use Record Past Payments on the Disbursements tab - or Record a Payment Already Made on the startup's Funding tab. The payment is saved as completed on the day it was paid and marked as recorded after the fact.
Record it with Source not known yet in Paid from. It counts as paid straight away and waits in Investments › Source not known; when you find out, use Link to a source there. If that source has no allocation to the program yet, the link makes one.
Open its menu and choose Correct. The same checks run again, and the funding history keeps the earlier version. If it should never have been recorded, choose Cancel With a Reason - it stays on record as cancelled and no longer counts as paid.
No. Set its status to Failed and record a new disbursement for the successful attempt. Deleting the failed record breaks the audit trail, and the failure itself is something you may need to evidence.
Funding is one of the nineteen permission areas. Most centres give full rights to a finance officer and the centre head, and view-only or nothing to program managers. See Adding Your Team and Setting Permissions.
