How To Fill Out a TerraFund Annual Project Expense Report

This article provides guidance on how to fill out your project's annual project expense report, which you will submit once annually, with your January reports. In the financial report, you will detail how project funds have been distributed across different areas of work over the previous calendar year.

Article Outline

Project Expense Report Overview

Demonstration of how to fill out the Project Expense Report

Step-by-step Guidance on the Project Expense Report

Project Expense Report Overview

You can find the project expense report template in your project report form, or attached at the bottom of this article. Your team will need to download the template, fill it out, and upload it to your January project report on TerraMatch. Non-profits and enterprises will use the same expense report template. You are required to use this template to submit your project expenses for review.

Please note:

• The currency of your project expense report should match the currency of your contract.
• If you are reporting in USD, you must note the exchange rate that you are using.
• It should cover all expenses to date for your TerraFund project – and only for your TerraFund project. Be accurate to the $0.01.
• It must be signed by your financial officer and executive director.
• We do not require you to submit receipts or other transaction documentation, but you must collect that information and provide it if we request it
• You are required to fill out the project expense report and map your expenses according to the category definitions found in the "definitions" tab of the template. We understand that each organization tracks expenses in a different way, but we need to analyze the data and therefore need a comparable format across each project.

Demonstration of How to Fill Out the Project Expense Report

Step-by-step Guidance on the Project Expense Report

• Download the report template in EN or FR from your report form, or from the bottom of this article.
• Fill out required details such as your organization name, project name, the year for which you are reporting, and the currency/exchange rate you're using.
  • Note: Please keep track of all exchange rates used from USD to local currency throughout the reporting period. For project expense reporting, we advise you to report the average exchange rate, considering the documented rates used during that implementation period.
• Insert the total approved budget (inclusive of Years 1-6/7) in USD in column 2. This is the exact total in your project budget approved by your project manager.
• Enter your project's expenses for the following categories on the summary page in the Year 1 column. 

Personnel/Salaries

This includes the salaries and benefits associated with staff officially and legally employed by the implementing organization. This should cover only those staff who are actively working on the project.

Community Engagement & Capacity Building

This line includes all work to mobilize smallholder farmers and other community members that will contribute to the project, along with any conference or training costs.

Monitoring & Reporting

This line includes costs associated with collecting the information needed to establish sites and submit reports on the TerraMatch platform, along with expenses related to data collection, in-field monitoring and evaluation work. Crucially, this includes expenses related to producing high-quality geospatial shapefiles of each restoration site. There should be a modest budget for this line for each year of the project. Note that monitoring professionals will independently analyze progress within each site; this budget line should not include that data analysis.

Communications 

This line includes all communications and marketing expenses related to the project, e.g., printed materials and website development.

Local Transportation

This line includes the costs of local travel undertaken within the project area, including per-diems for staff and drivers, fuel, mileage etc. External travel, including all flights and international conferences, must be either covered by the organization's overhead or by requesting additional funding from the assigned project manager.

Administrative Expenses & Indirect Costs

This line includes all the costs that will go toward the management of your organization. It is expected that these expenses will be shared across multiple projects, but the reported cost should only include the relevant proportion of the costs for this TerraFund project. It is expected that many partners will include different types of costs in this section but some examples would be office space, phones, internet, etc.

• Enter the individual expenses for the following categories in the 'YR1_Detailed Expense Report' tab. Within each category, list the line item, cost per unit, and quantity. The “total cost” will auto calculate and auto populate into the summary tab. *Repeat this step annually utilizing the appropriate “YRX_Detailed Expense Report” tab found in the workbook* Report on multiple expenses together, e.g., “Seeding purchases,” if you had several transactions of the same type.  
  

External Contractors 

This includes any work that may be outsourced to other organizations or individual contractors and must involve formal contracts for goods or services rendered. This should not be a significant portion of the budge and must be justified.

Seedlings Cost

This line includes the costs of growing seedlings in a nursery or purchasing them from a third party. This should include payments to community members that care for seedlings but are not formally employed. For natural regeneration projects, this cost should be 0.

Tree Nursery Management

This line includes all construction, management, and expansion costs of nurseries managed by this project. If the project does not operate its own nurseries, this cost should be 0. This should include payments to community members that construct or manage nurseries but are not formally employed.

Site Preparation 

This line includes all of the start-up costs related to work within the project's restoration sites, including clearing vegetation, fencing, building infrastructure, and preparing the ground for planting. This should include payments to community members that work on preparation but are not formally employed by the organization. Note that this can include buying land, but projects that do not have access to land already are less likely to be selected for funding.

Tree Planting

This line includes all of the costs associated with planting trees on prepared sites. For natural regeneration projects, this cost should be 0. This should include payments to community members that work on planting but are not formally employed by the organization.

Tree & Site Maintenance 

This line includes all work on the site after the initial restoration work is complete to ensure that the trees grow to full health, in line with the proposal. This should include payments to community members that work on maintenance but are not formally employed by the organization. There should be a modest budget for this line for each year of the project.

Material Inputs

This line includes expenses for materials that improve the livelihoods of communities but are not related to nursery management, site preparation, or tree management, e.g., processing machinery, bee hives, and water pumps. This should be a modest portion of the budget.

Other Project Costs

Other costs must remain less than 5% of the total project costs and be directly related to implementation, but they must not be included in one of the above categories. They must be clearly defined in the project proposal.