A method to treat a quantum system in interaction with a fermionic reservoir is presented. Its most important feature is that the dynamics of the exchange of particles between the system and the reservoir is explicitly included via an effective interaction term in the Hamiltonian. This feature gives rise to fluctuations in the total number of particles in the system. The system is to be considered in its full structure, whereas the reservoir is described only in an effective way, as a source of particles characterized by a small set of parameters. Possible applications include surfaces, molecular clusters, and defects in solids, in particular in highly correlated electronic materials. Four examples are presented: a tight-binding model for an adsorbate on the surface of a one-dimensional lattice, the Anderson model of a magnetic impurity in a metal, a two-orbital impurity with interorbital hybridization (intermediate-valence center), and a two-orbital impurity with interorbital repulsive interactions.