labs@atheron:~/industries/research-universities/data$ query --warehouse --dashboards

Grant dashboards

Budgets researchers can read themselves.

Investigators want to know one thing: how much is left. We bring actuals from your finance system, commitments, salaries and computing costs into one place, and give each investigator a view of their own grants, while the research office sees everything.

Start a project See the example projects

// what matters here

What is different in this industry.

Fed from your systems

Actuals from your finance system, cluster hours from the scheduler and cloud bills from each provider, each night.

One view per investigator

Each investigator sees their own grants, spend and commitments, and nothing else.

Warnings before trouble

Alerts before a budget line runs out, a grant ends or a group's computing spend jumps.

Funder formats

Reports in the formats your funders and finance office ask for, from the same records.

// example projects

Priced examples for this service.

Each one is hypothetical, labelled as such, and priced live from our rate card. Open any of them in the estimator and make it yours.

Example projectWeb app

Grant budget tracker, rescued from macros

Hypothetical. Not a client, not a result.

// The problem

A research office tracks every grant in an Excel workbook full of macros written by someone who retired, and principal investigators find out they are overspent when the finance office refuses a purchase.

// What we would build

We move every grant, budget line and commitment out of the old workbook, check it with your research finance team, and rebuild it as a web app fed from your finance system each night, so each investigator sees their own grants, spend and commitments, and the office sees them all.

// What is in it

Every grant and budget line moved out of the old workbook, and checked with you
Actuals from your finance system each night
Commitments, salaries and planned spend by grant
A view for each investigator of their own grants only
Alerts before a budget line runs out, and before a grant ends
Reports in the formats your funders and finance office ask for

// Stack

Next.js
PostgreSQL
Excel import
Metabase
DigitalOcean Toronto

// estimate

Build: ≈ US$87,600 to US$134,000, delivered within 19 weeksCAD 124,700 to 190,700
Hosting: ≈ US$176 a monthCAD 250 a month
Support: ≈ US$2,500 a monthCAD 3,565 a month

Prices in your currency are estimates from today's Bank of Canada rate. All invoicing is in CAD or USD.

Timeline by milestone

Discovery: 2.9 to 3.4 weeks
Design approved: 2.9 to 5.4 weeks
Core features: 2.9 to 4.4 weeks
Full build: 1.9 to 2.9 weeks
Testing and fixes: 0.9 weeks
Moved records checked with your office: 0.9 to 1.4 weeks
Launch: 0.9 to 1.4 weeks

Outside our hands, and added to the calendar

Your IT department's security and sign-on review: 4 to 8 weeks
Test access to your finance or research system: 1 to 4 weeks

How it is paid

Deposit 20%: CAD 24,940 to 38,140
Discovery 6.8%: CAD 8,479.60 to 12,967.60
Design approved 6.8%: CAD 8,479.60 to 12,967.60
Core features 20.4%: CAD 25,438.80 to 38,902.80
Full build 13.6%: CAD 16,959.20 to 25,935.20
Testing and fixes 6.8%: CAD 8,479.60 to 12,967.60
Moved records checked with your office 8.7%: CAD 10,848.90 to 16,590.90
Launch 6.9%: CAD 8,604.30 to 13,158.30
Holdback, 30 days after launch (10%): CAD 12,470 to 19,070

Start from this example

Example projectWeb app

HPC and cloud cost dashboards

Hypothetical. Not a client, not a result.

// The problem

A research institute pays for cluster time and three cloud accounts out of one budget, and no lab or grant can see what its own work costs until the year-end bill arrives.

// What we would build

Dashboards that read your HPC scheduler's accounting and your cloud providers' billing exports, tag every job and resource to a group and a grant, and show each lab its spend against budget. We host and look after it, with alerts when a group's spend jumps.

// What is in it

Job accounting from your HPC scheduler, by group and grant
Billing exports from AWS, Azure and Google Cloud
Spend against budget for each lab and grant
Alerts when a group's spend jumps or idle resources run
Monthly chargeback figures for your finance office
Managed hosting with monitoring and backups

// Stack

Python
PostgreSQL
Slurm accounting
Cloud billing exports
Grafana
DigitalOcean Toronto

// estimate

Build: ≈ US$58,800 to US$90,000, delivered within 16 weeksCAD 83,700 to 128,100
Hosting: ≈ US$176 a monthCAD 250 a month
Support: ≈ US$5,010 a monthCAD 7,135 a month

Prices in your currency are estimates from today's Bank of Canada rate. All invoicing is in CAD or USD.

Timeline by milestone

Discovery: 2.9 to 3.4 weeks
Design approved: 2.4 to 4.4 weeks
Core features: 1.9 to 3.4 weeks
Full build: 1.4 to 2.4 weeks
Testing and fixes: 0.9 to 1.4 weeks
Launch: 0.9 to 1.4 weeks

Outside our hands, and added to the calendar

Your IT department's security and sign-on review: 4 to 8 weeks
Test access to your finance or research system: 1 to 4 weeks

How it is paid

Deposit 20%: CAD 16,740 to 25,620
Discovery 7.7%: CAD 6,444.90 to 9,863.70
Design approved 7.7%: CAD 6,444.90 to 9,863.70
Core features 23.3%: CAD 19,502.10 to 29,847.30
Full build 15.5%: CAD 12,973.50 to 19,855.50
Testing and fixes 7.7%: CAD 6,444.90 to 9,863.70
Launch 8.1%: CAD 6,779.70 to 10,376.10
Holdback, 30 days after launch (10%): CAD 8,370 to 12,810

Start from this example

// questions

Questions we get about this.

Can investigators see their grant balances without calling the research finance office?

Yes. Each investigator signs in and sees their own grants, updated from your finance system each night.

Can computing costs be split by research group and grant?

Yes. Jobs and cloud resources are tagged to a group and a grant, and the dashboard adds them up.

Which university finance systems can a grant tracker read from?

Most systems used by universities have an API or a scheduled export. We check yours before we quote.

Back to the industry: Universities and research labs About the service: Data and analytics

// next

Not quite your project?

Tell us what you have in mind. We will come back to you with a range and the questions that would narrow it. Or book a call and talk it through.

Start a project Book a call