Introduction to Funding Recipients
Funding Recipients are the funded entities — startups, SMEs, awardees, or other beneficiaries — that sit inside a Funding Program and represent the individuals or organizations that have been awarded support. This is where the post-award process becomes operational: each recipient gets their own allocation, compliance checklist, milestone structure, and disbursement tracking.
Understanding where Recipients fit in the hierarchy is important for clean data:
- Parent: Every Recipient must belong to a Funding Program.
- The Recipient level is where money is actually committed, tracked, and paid out.
The Funding Module is only available as a paid add-on. If you do not see Funding in the top navigation menu, the module has not been enabled for your account. Contact the AcceleratorApp Client Success team to add it.
Where to Find Funding Recipients
There are two ways to access recipients:
- From the left sidebar — Click Recipients for a consolidated view of all recipients across all rounds and programs.
- From inside a Funding Round — Click Funding in the top navigation menu, select a Funding Round, open the relevant program, and select the Recipients tab.
Step-by-Step
1. Activate the Funding Program
Before you can add recipients, the Funding Program must be set to Active:
- Inside the Funding Round, locate the program you want to manage.
- Click the status dropdown next to the program name and change it from Draft to Active.
Activating a program locks its core structure. Any structural changes after activation must go through Amendments.
2. Add a Recipient
- Click Funding in the left side menu and select the relevant Funding Round.
- Locate the program, set its status from Draft to Active, and open it.
- Select the Recipients tab from the tabs below the program header: Overview, Round Inflow, Recipients, Disbursements, Amendments, and Documents.
- If no recipients exist yet, click Add Recipient.
- Fill in the following details:
- Recipient — Select the startup or funded entity.
- Amount allocated — The funding amount for this recipient, within the range defined in the program settings.
- Milestones — Define the payment structure for this recipient.
- Date — The funding period.
3. Navigate the Recipients Table
Once recipients are added, they appear in a table giving you a real-time overview of where each recipient stands. For each row you will see the recipient name, funding program, amounts committed, disbursed and remaining, milestone progress (e.g. 1/5 completed), compliance percentage, number of disbursements processed, and current status.
Click on any row to open the recipient detail screen and manage their compliance, milestones, and disbursements.
4. Track Progress with KPIs
At the top of the recipient detail screen, a set of KPIs gives you a real-time snapshot of where things stand: total budget allocation (based on milestones defined for this recipient), total committed, total disbursed, total remaining, compliance percentage (how much has been verified vs. pending), and milestone completion percentage. These figures update automatically as actions are taken on compliance, milestones, and disbursements.
5. Manage Compliance Requirements
Compliance requirements are set at the program level and inherited by each recipient. From the recipient detail screen:
- The recipient (startup) clicks on a compliance requirement to open the action panel.
- They click Submit to upload the required file and add notes.
- Your team receives a notification and can review the submission.
- From the Actions panel, choose to Verify or Waive the requirement.
As items are verified or waived, the compliance percentage updates in real time.
6. Create and Manage Milestones
Milestones define the payment tranches tied to deliverables or dates. To add a milestone:
- Inside the recipient detail screen, go to the Milestones section.
- Add a new milestone and fill in: Title, Description, Tranche amount, Available budget and Due date.
The recipient sees all milestones in a table. When ready to submit evidence for a milestone, they:
- Select the milestone and click Submit.
- Upload an evidence file and add notes.
Your team receives a notification to review. From the review screen you can:
- Approve the milestone — confirming the amount and selecting the payment method.
- Request clarification — triggering a notification back to the recipient. The full back-and-forth exchange is tracked with history.
7. Process Disbursements
Once a milestone is approved, the disbursement moves to the Disbursements tab. From here:
- Move it forward to approval, or mark it as rejected or cancelled.
- Mark as paid — confirming the payment with a reference ID, supporting documents, and payment date.
- Mark as failed — to flag a payment that did not go through.
All actions update the recipient's committed, disbursed, and remaining figures automatically.
8. View All Recipients Across Programs
For a consolidated view across all rounds and programs at once, click Recipients in the left sidebar. At the top you will see the total number of recipients, followed by a table showing each recipient's name, funding program, funding round, committed and disbursed amounts, remaining balance, milestone progress, compliance percentage, number of disbursements, and current status. Use the filters to narrow down by status (Active, On Hold, Completed, Closed, or Cancelled) or by type (User or Startup).
Best Practices
- Activate the program before adding recipients. Draft programs do not allow recipient creation — switching to Active is a required first step.
- Set up compliance templates before creating programs. Standardizing your documentation requirements in Settings > Compliance Templates means they are ready to apply consistently across all recipients.
- Use milestones to structure accountability. Breaking the total allocation into tranches tied to deliverables gives both your team and the recipient a clear roadmap of what needs to happen before each payment is released.
- Use the sidebar Recipients view for cross-program reporting. When managing multiple programs simultaneously, this consolidated view saves time compared to navigating into each round individually.
- Treat the recipient detail screen as your audit trail. All compliance submissions, milestone evidence, clarification requests, and disbursement actions are logged with full history.