Grid Layout of sections
When adding a new section to a form in SmartyGrants, you have the option to make that section a 'Grid' layout.
A Grid layout allows you to create a grid and customise what and how many questions that you build into it. You have the ability to define how many rows your applicants may enter (minimum or maximum row limit), or give them the ability to add as many rows as they need.
Grids are not only helpful for customising your own budgets, but can be useful for collecting other types of information from your applicants.
Important: We recommend being familiar with the default output layout in a report when choosing to collect information in a grid layout. See grid layouts in reporting for more information.
Default Budget grids (Single Question)
Info: This article explains the single question default budget grids as well as using grid sections in general. Note that there are default Standard Section budget grids that can be added to forms, and we highly recommend using them if they suit your needs. Please see How do I add standard sections to forms? for more information.
There are three default Single Questions Budget grids in the system. The default Budget grid sections are:
Income
Expenditure
Income & Expenditure (selecting this option adds both the income and expenditure budget grid sections).
Once added to a form, these sections can be edited as required.
Income
Expenditure
Income and Expenditure
Insert a default Budget grid
To add a default budget grid layout section of these grids to your form, select Add Question.
Select Income, Expenditure or Income & Expenditure.
You will see the budget grid is then added to your form.
Budget Totals
You will see that in addition to the Budget grid, a Budget Totals section is also added underneath the grid. This will total the relevant currency questions (column) in the grid. These fields are pre-loaded calculated fields. The full grid and total fields can be customised, for example, edit the question text or add validations.
Tip: Some grantmakers like to add a validation to the 'Income-Expenditure' field to set the minimum and maximum amount to zero. This field automatically calculate the Income minus the expenditure. Setting the validation to zero ensures the applicant must make both income and expenditure balance.
To specify how many rows you would like the grid section to display by default, select the section from the canvas area.
Select Show default rows: and enter the default number of rows to be shown. The default Income, Expenditure and Income & Expenditure grid layout sections will display 8 rows.
If you wish to only allow a specific amount of rows, ensure that the Maximum field is set to the required amount.
If this maximum is not set (i.e. left blank), or set to a higher number than the Show default rows field, the person filling out the form will be able to add as many rows as they want.
Pre-Determine Question Responses
You may give a hint, or 'pre-determine' the responses to certain questions.
For example, you may want to prompt applicants to give you specific expenditure items such as Salaries, Equipment, Rent or Insurance.
To do so, select the field you would like to populate a response into and type in the required text.
Important: Entering responses in a field in the form editor does not lock the responses. It will populate the entered response into the form in fill out mode, but these will be editable by the person filling out the form.
Customise a Grid
Grids can be created and customised to feature a variety of question types. This can be useful for collecting other types of information from your applicants, or customising budget grids that are more complex than the set default budget grids.
Enable a grid layout
Within a new section of your form, click on the layout drop down arrow in the left hand form panel. This will bring up 4 different options - select Grid (Labels Above) option.
Once the Grid (Labels Above) option is selected, you will see that a blank grid with rows is now added to your form in the canvas area. From here, you can build your questions directly into the grid.
Add questions into a grid layout
From the canvas area, select the grid. Then, from the control panel, click on the Add Question button and select which type of question you wish to include.
In this example, a short answer question has been added into the grid. Once a question has been added, you can add in your question text and any required validations or hints from the control panel.
Tip: Don’t forget to label your questions!
Repeat these steps as necessary to add in extra questions. Each question addition will add a new column into the grid (like the examples pictured below):
Hint positioning
If you’d like to enable hints for the questions in the grid, you can control whether the hint will be displayed at the top or the bottom of the grid.
First, add the required questions into the grid section using the steps here.
Add in your hint from the control panel.
Highlight the entire section from the canvas area. Then, in the control panel, select the drop-down list beside Hint. You can choose either the Top of Grid or Bottom of Grid options.
Grid layouts in reporting
It is important to note that there are limitations on the layout appearance of grids in reporting, particularly in Microsoft Excel. Microsoft Word however, allows you to customise your grid in more detail.
Below is an example of how a budget grid has been created and filled in by the applicant on a form and then how it is displayed in an Excel report.
Example of a filled in budget grid on an application:
Example of how the above budget grid is displayed on an Excel report:
Note that the information from each budget line now appears all in the same excel cell.
Below is an example of how a grid will initially display when running a Word report, noting that the row items initially appear one after the other.
This template report, however, can be customised to re-arrange the positioning of the data that’s been captured - see below:
Learn more about customising a grid template or reporting.