The most common way to track an LOI Deadline is to use a task to track the LOI Deadline and mark it complete when it is submitted.
- Locate or create the Opportunity for the Grant request that has an LOI.
- The Opportunity deadline would be set to the LOI due date, especially if that is the only deadline you know at this point.
- If you know when the actual proposal deadline would be - use that as the Opportunity Deadline.
- Create a task under the Opportunity to track the deadline and submission of the LOI. To create a task – click on the ‘task’ tab, then select green button to ‘add task’
- Task Name = It is a good practice to put 'LOI Deadline' in the task name so you can easily find and report on these tasks later.
- Due date = deadline for LOI,
- Mark it as ‘closed’ when you have submitted the LOI;
- Attach the LOI document to the LOI task so you have a record of what you submitted.
Another way to track the LOI phase is to the the Opportunity Status field to track through the LOI-Draft phase, LOI-Submitted phase and if successful, moving the Opportunity to Application-Draft status and so on.
- If the opportunity has an LOI phase, set the Opportunity status to 'LOI-Draft' while you are working on the LOI step.
- When you submit the LOI, update the Opportunity Status = LOI-Submitted.
- Fill in the Submitted Date to the date you submitted the LOI.
- Keep the Opportunity Deadline to be the date when the LOI was due. Indicate the proposal deadline in the opportunity description field if you are aware of what it is.
- Once you hear back on the LOI:
- if you were turned down, mark the Opportunity Status = Denied and update the Decision Date to indicate when the decision was made. You may want to copy the Opportunity to next year if you are going to try again.
- If you were invited to continue, update the deadline of the Opportunity to the date of proposal deadline, and the Status = Application-Draft. And set up any other tasks as you normally would.
If you are entering historical information where you already know the outcome, you don’t have to take the time to set up a task – you could just attach your LOI document, as well as any other documents, to the Opportunity - using the 'documents' tab, and mark the Opportunity as Awarded, Awarded-Closed (if all follow up tasks are complete) or Denied.