Common Questions
Product & Pricing information
Download and Web Site
Product & Pricing information
If your company purchases a license for either a single PI of an organization, you will get free support and upgrades for 1 year from date of purchase. Updates and upgrades can consist in software, database or forms enhancements. When the NIH changes the form, an update follows. For example, in Feb 98, we released the latest NIH forms for the SBIR Phase 1 (rev. 98).
Yes. See the home page and follow the links "Try GrantForms"
We do have multi-user licensing discounts. For more information please e-mail sales@grantforms.com or call the sales department at 415/479 6935.
Download Problems
GrantForms download files are around 5 Megabytes self-install executables. If you have a fast link to the internet you do not have to worry, it will take one up to a few minutes depending on traffic.If you have a 28.8K MODEM and connect through an INTERNET PROVIDER, it might take up to 45 minutes. It is common for your browser or FTP client to experience an average 2-3Kbps download average speed, usually starting even lower (Do not trust the initial guess by your software. Very often your software will mention 2, 3 5 ... or even more hours for download. It takes a few minutes for your average download speed to be reached. When you reach that time you can trust your software download time estimates)
Where is the bottle neck, you might ask ? ... see below
With very large providers such as AOL, JUNO or MSN, it might take longer and you might cancel the download, or even the download might not complete properly.
We have two servers, one on the East Coast and one on the West Coast. You can try any of the two servers. Most of the time the west coast is faster.
We take that issue seriously, we want to improve the service and speed of download. We are looking into finding fast mirror sites, but having one (or more) fast web/file server(s) is not the only parameter for solving the download speed problem. Some days, traffic on the Internet is horrible, some days not. We perform tests to monitor speed and throughput. It is usually good out of and within the West Coast site, the East Coast server is usually slower to download when accessed from the West Coast. When we perform file transfers from server to server we get top speed. So, the real question is:
We have customers who download from the West Coast server and who say it is ultra-fast, while others do complain about speed. Download speed depends on:
We found by following packets during their transmissions from our East Coast FTP server to the West Coast for example that a lot of packets were lost between the last node and the local access provider - this is what occurs most of the time.
We do have most of AOL customers for example who cannot complete the download and have to try a number of times, with patience, before they succeed. This is due to AOL traffic. We do less experience with MSN customers, but it seems to be the same problem.We found by following packets during their transmissions from our east coast ftp server for example that a lot of packets were lost between the last node and the local access provider - this is what occurs most of the time. Speed might get down to 900bps.
One can blame the server some times, when they are really busy, but most of the time the Internet Service Providers are the bottleneck. You can find out where is the problem in answering the question: would you go faster to download 5MB from a Netscape or Microsoft server? Let us know how long it took you to download
Common questions and software problems
This is a planned enhancement.
It does ... See the NIH documentation. You have to input a yearly salary (12 months basis), the number of months of employment (here 9 months). The program will get you 9/12th * x% of effort as a formula.
Did you fill out start and end date? Are they the same? If so, the length of your application is 0, hence the computed salary requests will be zero. In SBIR Phase I the time span limit is 6 months (although it could be more, but usually less than a year), and calculations have to be prorated to the length of the project, usually 6 months.
You need to get a license. Please check the home page and follow the "How To Order" or "order" links for information on the web site.
Your question is pretty broad and more appropriate to the SBA (small business administration). We are a software company. You can apply for SBIRs grants or contracts. You can also apply to any type of Competitive grant as long as it is open to "for profit companies". You have to Check programs of various agencies whose mission matches yours. You might Fall under some programs of the NIH possibly ... check through some links we provide on our website for the various agencies. Check also the SBA web site (se link on our web site)
You can download and try the software from our web site under "download".You'll have a demo version with free 30 days support. See the home page and follow the links "Software Trial" or ""Try GrantForms" and "Products" for pricing information. Multiple user agreements and discounts are available. For more information send us an e-mail sales@grantforms.com or call sales at 415/479 6935.
The "postmark on published receipt date" applies to investigator initiated proposals only. [http://www.nih.gov/grants/funding/submissionschedule.htm]For SBIR, we posted the following statement as extracted from the NIH SBIR Omnibus solicitation:
Policy Regarding Receipt Date. Grant applications submitted under this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR). Phase I Grant Solicitation must be received by the published receipt dates of April 15, August 15, December 15 (See section VI, Submission of Grant Applications). However, an application received after the published receipt date may be acceptable if it carries a legible proof-of-mailing date assigned by the carrier and the proof-of-mailing date is not later than one week prior to the deadline date. The receipt date will be waived only in extenuating circumstances. To request a waiver, include an explanatory letter with the signed, completed application. No request for a waiver will be considered prior to receipt of the application, and there is no guarantee that the waiver will be granted.
For PHS deadlines (a direct link to a NIH page) you can read a similar statement:
Solicited applications and proposals must be received by the specified date. However, an application received after the deadline may be acceptable if it carries a legible proof-of-mailing date assigned by the carrier and the proof-of-mailing is not later than one week prior to the deadline date. Solicited applications include those in response to Requests for Applications (RFAs); Program Announcements (PAs) with specified receipt dates, such as Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR), and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR); and Requests for Proposals (RFPs). Whenever a Receipt Date falls on a weekend or holiday, the application is due on the following business day.
Did you enter a start and end date for your grant (page 1)?
By default End-Date = Start-Date = Date of first edition, since length of the grant = 0 the salary is zero and reported as blank.
ENTER YOUR START AND END DATES and calculations will show lead to expected results.