How we read a funder’s cost guide before touching your spreadsheet

Before we open a client workbook, we print or pin the funder’s cost chapter. The narrative may be inspiring; the cost guide is the contract.

We mark three things first: eligible categories, hard caps (especially overhead or management fees), and whether costs must fall inside a specific project period. Those three notes prevent half the late-night revisions we see in Thai municipal and foundation calls.

Then we look for quiet traps — travel treated as a separate envelope, equipment that needs three quotes, or volunteer time that must be valued with a published wage table. If your application claims match through community labour, the valuation method belongs in the annex, not only in a covering letter.

Only after that pass do we reconcile your lines. An audit that starts in the spreadsheet without the guide is just arithmetic.