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Built in France · Data hosted in Europe

Your researchers do the science. Let BeretPlan mind the budget.

Built for research units in France. Consolidate funding from the ANR (France's national research agency), the EU and your region into a single structured budget. No more late nights in Excel working out what's left on each funding line.

Try it with an ANR project See pricing

Free, no credit card required.

Example research lab budget in BeretPlan: one branch per funded project (ANR, Horizon Europe from March 2027, regional grant until September 2027), each grant broken down by category, totals by quarter, empty cells outside each period, and a funded-FTE line tracked next to the euros. Each grant collapses and expands.

Budget · Research lab

€ · quarterly

Line Type Trend Q1 27Q2 27Q3 27Q4 27Q1 28Q2 28Q3 28Q4 28
38,600 29,100 28,200 35,600 28,200 29,100 28,200 29,600
Staff 20,600 21,600 21,600 21,600 21,600 21,600 21,600 21,600
Equipment 18,000 0 0 6,000 0 0 0 0
Consumables 6,000 6,600 6,000 6,600 6,000 6,600 6,000
Travel 0 1,500 0 2,000 0 1,500 0 2,000
11,500 34,500 34,500 34,500 34,500 34,500 34,500 34,500
16,500 14,500 10,500
FTE 5 5 5 4 4 4 4 4

Illustrative example

20 to 30%
of researchers' time goes on admin work, and up to 80% for lab directors
Cour des comptes, France's public audit office, 2025
The problem, head-on

Three copies of the same budget, none of them up to date

Sifac or Geslab (the accounting systems of French universities and the CNRS) for your parent institutions, one Excel workbook per administrator, and tables rebuilt the night before the lab council. Managing a research lab's budget deserves better than triple data entry.

The institutional tool doesn't steer

Sifac and Geslab keep the statutory accounts, and they keep them very well. But telling you, in real time, what's left on the ANR grant before the cut-off date? That was never their job.

The shadow spreadsheet wears everyone out

Every funder has its own rules, so every lab administrator re-enters everything in their own workbooks. One overwritten cell, one #REF!, and a whole year of tracking goes off the rails.

Funds lost at year-end

A grant starts and stops on its own dates. Without grant-by-grant visibility, unspent funds quietly expire at year-end because nobody saw them in time, a luxury no research unit can afford anymore.

The BeretPlan method

One structured budget, every funding stream inside

ANR, EU and regional funding tracked in one place, in a living hierarchical budget, as readable for your researchers as it is for the lab administrator.

One project, broken down by expense category

Build each funded project's budget (ANR, EU, region) the way you submitted it: one branch per expense category (staff, equipment, travel, running costs), with its lines underneath. Totals compute themselves, and nobody can overwrite a formula by accident.

  • Activity periods per line: a contract starts and stops on its own dates, no conditional formulas required
  • Non-financial lines to track FTEs and PhD students right next to the euros
  • Formulas displayed in plain language: a researcher can check them, not just the administrator
Example ANR project budget in BeretPlan, broken down by expense category, each line with its own activity period: the research engineer stops at the end of February, the post-doc starts in March, consumables in April. Selecting a contract line colours the months of its period and dims the other lines; cells outside the period stay empty.

ANR project · Research lab

€ · monthly · 2027

Line Type Trend JanFebMarAprMay
ANR project 6,700 24,700 7,200 9,000 9,600
Staff 6,700 6,700 7,200 7,200 7,200
3,800 3,800
4,300 4,300 4,300
2,900 2,900 2,900 2,900 2,900
Equipment 0 18,000 0 0 0
1,800 2,400
Travel 0 0 0 0 0

Select a contract line to highlight its activity period.

Illustrative example

Example BeretPlan dashboard for a research lab: one dashboard per grant (ANR, Europe, Region) shows cumulative spend against the Plan, what is left on the grant and the cumulative curve. ANR is on track; the regional project, under-spent, still holds more than half its funding a few months before it ends.

Research lab

Spent

€64,940

2027 to date

Plan €67,700 −4.1%

Left €181,660 · ends Dec 2028

Staff

€40,050

2027 to date

Plan €42,200 −5.1%

Cumulative spend · ANR project

Spent Actuals Plan

Illustrative example

Actuals next to budget, grant by grant

Enter your actuals month by month and see at once where each grant stands: what's been spent, what's left, what's drifting. Preparing the lab council means opening a dashboard, not rebuilding a workbook.

  • Actuals vs budget, line by line and project by project
  • A fast entry grid, built for the administrator's monthly ritual
  • Dashboards and charts generated from the budget, ready to project at the lab council

“If we win this call, can we fund a post-doc for 18 months?”

That question shouldn't cost anyone a sleepless night. In BeretPlan, the post-doc's cost is a named variable (e.g. $postdoc.monthly_cost), and so is the amount you're hoping to win. Change the assumption and the whole budget recalculates: payroll, funding lines, totals. Roll it back just as fast.

BeretPlan scenario comparison for a research lab: the « With post-doc » scenario and its overrides (post-doc monthly cost, the call's expected amount). The grid shows each line's value in the scenario and its delta against the base plan, which has neither the post-doc nor the call. Changing the post-doc cost recalculates payroll and the balance: positive at €3,900 and €4,300 a month, negative at €4,800.
With post-doc

Overrides · 2

Monthly cost
€0
Expected amount
€0 €80,000

+ Add override

Line Total
Funding changed €80,000 +€80,000 ▲
Payroll changed €77,400 +€77,400 ▲
Balance €2,600 +€2,600 ▲

Illustrative example

And to keep the “with” and “without” versions side by side, create an alternative scenario: your baseline budget stays put.

The questions labs actually ask us

Does BeretPlan replace Sifac or Geslab?

No, it works alongside them. Sifac and Geslab remain your institution's statutory tools: commitments, payment orders, official accounting. BeretPlan is the steering tool: you track every funding line in real time, you know what's left to spend on each grant, and you walk into the lab council without rebuilding an Excel workbook.

Where is the lab's data hosted?

In Europe. BeretPlan is a French solution, built in Toulouse, with strict data isolation per organisation, role-based access control and GDPR compliance. Your budgets serve you, and no one else.

Can the lab administrator and researchers work together?

Yes, that's rather the point, and the roles are designed for it: the administrator structures and manages the budget, write access goes to whoever needs it, and project leads follow their grants read-only. Everyone sees where they stand, nobody breaks the formulas. Let's be straight with you: we're opening with the Free plan, which is single-user; working as a team arrives with the paid plans, coming soon. Build the budget now: your team will plug straight into it.

Take back control of your funding.

Build your lab's budget in one afternoon: each project broken down by expense category, actuals right beside it, and a lab council prepared without an all-nighter.

Try it with an ANR project

Free, no credit card required