A grant management system (GMS) — also called a research administration system, sponsored programs software platform, or (in the specific case of NIH’s own tool) an electronic research administration (eRA) system — is software that supports an institution’s administration of externally funded research from proposal development through award closeout. It is a category of software, not a single product: what a “grant management system” actually is varies by vendor, but the category is defined by the functions it covers, not by any one implementation.
This page describes the category at the level a research administrator, sponsored programs officer, or IT decision-maker needs to evaluate it — what these systems do, how the category relates to (and differs from) a CRIS/research information management (RIM) system and from NIH’s eRA Commons specifically, and what institutions typically weigh when selecting or replacing one. It does not compare or endorse specific vendors.
What a grant management system does
Grant management software is organized around the same pre-award/post-award division that structures the research administration profession itself (see Pre-Award vs. Post-Award Office Roles) and the broader award lifecycle covered in CASRAI’s grants management pillar. A full-featured system typically spans four functional areas:
1. Pre-award: proposal development and routing
Before submission, a GMS provides the workflow for building a proposal package and moving it through internal review and approval — commonly called “routing.” This includes:
- A proposal record capturing the sponsor, opportunity, budget, personnel, and required certifications.
- Electronic routing and sign-off from the principal investigator (PI), department chair, and the sponsored programs office (or Authorized Organizational Representative) before submission.
- Budget-building tools that calculate direct and facilities-and-administrative (F&A) costs using the institution’s negotiated indirect cost rate — see Uniform Guidance (2 CFR 200) for how those rates are governed.
- In many US institutions, integration with or direct submission through Grants.gov (via the System for Award Management, SAM.gov) for federal proposals, and with agency-specific portals such as NIH’s ASSIST for particular mechanisms.
- Conflict-of-interest, human-subjects, animal-use, and other compliance-certification checkpoints built into the routing workflow itself, so a proposal cannot be submitted without the required approvals attached.
2. Post-award: budget tracking and financial administration
Once an award is made, the same platform (or, in institutions without an integrated system, a connected one) typically manages:
- Award setup — establishing the account/fund structure the institution’s general ledger uses to track the grant.
- Budget-to-actual tracking: comparing expenditures against the awarded budget by category, a requirement 2 CFR 200.302(b) makes explicit for any federal-award financial management system.
- Cost-transfer processing and documentation, encumbrance tracking, and no-cost-extension or rebudgeting requests.
- Subaward issuance and monitoring where a portion of the award is passed through to a collaborating institution.
- Closeout processing — final financial reporting, equipment disposition, and record-retention flags.
3. Compliance and effort reporting
Because federal and many non-federal sponsors require documented assurance that costs charged to an award are allowable and that personnel effort matches what was proposed and certified, GMS platforms commonly include:
- Effort-certification workflows — periodic certification, usually by the PI or a responsible official, that the percentage of a person’s paid effort charged to an award reflects the effort actually contributed.
- Cost-allowability rules and written-procedure documentation, which 2 CFR 200.302(b) requires an institution’s financial management system to maintain.
- Audit-trail and internal-controls features supporting the institution’s obligations under 2 CFR 200.303 and, for institutions expending federal awards above the statutory threshold, its Single Audit under 2 CFR Part 200, Subpart F.
- Conflict-of-interest and other disclosure tracking tied to specific awards, not just at the institutional level.
4. Reporting to sponsors
A GMS typically generates or feeds the reports a sponsor requires during and after the award period: progress reports, financial status/federal financial reports, and final technical and invention reports. For NIH awards specifically, much of this reporting — including the Research Performance Progress Report (RPPR) — is submitted through eRA Commons rather than the institution’s own GMS directly, which is one reason institutional systems and agency systems increasingly need to exchange data with each other (see below).
How a grant management system differs from a CRIS/RIM system
Grant management software is easy to confuse with a current research information system (CRIS), or research information management (RIM) system, because both sit in the same institutional research-administration technology stack and both may hold data about the same award. The distinction is about what each system is for:
- A grant management system is financial- and compliance-administration software. Its core record is the award: the money, the budget, the routing approvals, the effort certifications, the sponsor reports. Its primary users are sponsored programs staff, department administrators, and PIs managing a specific award.
- A CRIS/RIM system is research-output and researcher-information software. Its core records are people, organizations, projects, and outputs (publications, datasets, patents) and the relationships between them, typically structured around a data model such as CERIF. Its primary use cases are institutional reporting on research activity, researcher profile pages, and national research-assessment exercises — not managing an individual award’s budget.
In practice the two categories increasingly need to talk to each other: a CRIS benefits from knowing which grants funded a given publication or dataset (grant-linking), and a grants office benefits from knowing what a PI’s active award and output portfolio looks like. But they remain distinct software categories with different systems of record, different primary users, and — in most institutional technology stacks — different vendors. A “grants management system” is not a synonym for a CRIS, and neither replaces the other. See CASRAI’s CRIS and identifiers pillar for the research-information-management side of this distinction.
How a grant management system differs from eRA Commons specifically
eRA Commons is NIH’s own electronic research administration system — the interface through which grant applicants, recipients, and NIH staff track and manage administrative information for NIH grants specifically. It is not a general-purpose grant management system an institution buys or builds; it is the federal agency’s own portal, and every institution that receives NIH funding must use it for NIH-specific functions such as viewing summary statements, submitting the RPPR, and processing certain closeout documents (including, where applicable, submissions to iEdison for invention reporting).
An institutional grant management system is different in three respects:
- Scope: eRA Commons covers only NIH (and, through shared infrastructure, some other Public Health Service) awards. An institution’s own GMS typically covers every sponsor the institution works with — NIH, NSF, other federal agencies, foundations, industry, and international funders — in one system.
- Ownership: eRA Commons is operated by NIH; an institutional GMS is licensed, hosted, or built by the institution itself (or its vendor).
- Function: eRA Commons is the system of record for NIH’s own review and post-award administration of the specific award; an institutional GMS is the system of record for the institution’s internal routing, budgeting, and compliance workflow around that same award, and around every other award the institution holds.
Because both systems can hold overlapping data about the same NIH award, many institutional GMS platforms offer eRA Commons integration — pulling notice-of-award data in, or pushing progress-report data out — to reduce duplicate entry. That integration is a feature of some institutional systems; it does not make eRA Commons itself a grant management system in the institutional sense, and it does not make an institutional GMS a replacement for the NIH-mandated use of eRA Commons for NIH-specific transactions.
How institutions evaluate grant management systems
Selection criteria vary by institution size and portfolio, but the recurring evaluation dimensions are consistent across the research-administration field:
Integration with financial systems
The single most consequential evaluation criterion is how well the GMS integrates with the institution’s general ledger and broader enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. A GMS that requires duplicate manual entry into the institution’s financial system creates exactly the kind of reconciliation risk 2 CFR 200.302(b) is designed to prevent — the regulation requires “effective control over and accountability for” award funds and accurate, current, and complete disclosure of financial results, which is difficult to sustain across two systems that don’t reconcile automatically. Institutions evaluate whether a candidate GMS offers native integration, a vendor-supported connector, or only manual export/import with their specific ERP (e.g., Oracle, Workday, PeopleSoft), and how real-time that integration is.
Compliance and reporting capability
Because 2 CFR 200.302(b) specifies concrete, auditable requirements — identification of all federal awards, budget-to-actual comparison, written cost-allowability procedures, and audit-ready recordkeeping — institutions evaluate whether a system’s built-in reports and controls map directly onto those requirements, and onto the institution’s Single Audit preparation under 2 CFR Part 200, Subpart F. This includes whether the system supports configurable effort-certification cycles, generates the sponsor-specific reports (RPPR-compatible data, Federal Financial Report data) staff otherwise assemble by hand, and maintains the record-retention periods required under 2 CFR 200.334.
Proposal routing and workflow configurability
Institutions differ in how many approval steps a proposal requires and who has authority at each step (see Departmental vs. Central Sponsored Programs Office). A system that can’t be configured to match the institution’s actual delegation-of-authority structure creates workarounds outside the system — which defeats the purpose of routing software in the first place.
Sponsor and agency system connectivity
Given how much federal proposal and reporting traffic flows through Grants.gov, agency-specific portals, and (for NIH awards) eRA Commons, institutions evaluate whether a candidate GMS offers direct submission/pull integration with those systems or only supports manual re-entry of the same data.
Data model and reporting flexibility
Sponsored programs offices, deans, and provosts each need different views of the same underlying award data — active-award dashboards, indirect-cost recovery summaries, subaward risk reports. Institutions evaluate whether a system’s reporting layer can be configured to these different audiences without custom development for every request.
Total cost and support model
As with any enterprise software, institutions weigh licensing/subscription cost, implementation and data-migration effort, ongoing vendor support responsiveness, and — for cloud-hosted systems — the vendor’s data-security posture, since award data routinely includes information subject to institutional and, in some cases, federal research-security requirements.
Frequently asked questions
Is a grant management system the same as a CRIS?
No. A grant management system administers the financial and compliance lifecycle of an award — budget, routing, effort, sponsor reporting. A CRIS (current research information system) manages research-output and researcher information — publications, datasets, and the people and projects connected to them. Some institutional technology stacks connect the two so grant data can inform output records and vice versa, but they are distinct software categories with different systems of record. See CASRAI’s CRIS dictionary entry for the research-information-management definition.
Does an institution need both a GMS and eRA Commons?
Yes, for any institution receiving NIH funding. eRA Commons is not optional or substitutable — it is NIH’s own required system for NIH-specific transactions such as viewing summary statements and submitting the RPPR. An institutional GMS handles everything else: internal routing, non-NIH sponsors, and the institution’s own financial and compliance recordkeeping. The two are complementary, not competing, systems.
What does “pre-award” and “post-award” mean in the context of this software?
Pre-award refers to the proposal-development and submission phase, before an award is made; post-award refers to everything from notice of award through closeout. Many grant management systems cover both phases in one platform, though some institutions still use separate tools for each — see Pre-Award vs. Post-Award Office Roles for how the underlying office functions typically split.
Is Grants.gov a grant management system?
No. Grants.gov is the US government’s centralized portal for finding and submitting to federal funding opportunities — a discovery and submission gateway, not an institutional administration platform. An institutional GMS may integrate with Grants.gov for proposal submission, but Grants.gov itself does not track an institution’s internal routing, budgets, or effort certifications.
What regulation governs the financial-system requirements a GMS needs to support?
For US institutions receiving federal awards, 2 CFR 200.302 (part of the Uniform Guidance) sets out the specific financial management system requirements — award identification, accurate and current financial disclosure, budget-to-actual comparison, internal controls, and written procedures for cash management and cost allowability. See Uniform Guidance (2 CFR 200) for the full framework these systems are built to support.
