Starting a nonprofit to do some good in the world is a wonderful undertaking. However, even a whole lot of passion and a solid plan does not necessarily mean that you have a head for accounting and finance—unavoidable parts of any business.
Thankfully, there are tons of amazing resources to help you through, and we’ll start by focusing on one of the most popular choices for accounting software. So, let’s get to the question at hand: Is QuickBooks a good accounting software for nonprofits?
But, before we get down to the nitty-gritty, make sure you’ve made the necessary big-picture considerations. Here are some questions to get you started:
The systems you use to help run your business are all vitally important at the front end, so be sure to carefully consider the services your business will need. In the meantime, let’s talk about using QuickBooks for nonprofits.
1. Software Integrations
Having tools that work well together is a rather important piece to the finance and operations puzzle, and QuickBooks has the advantage over its competitors in this category. For instance, their integrative capabilities ensure that your donor software doesn’t become a reporting hurdle.
The idea of having to manually input every, single line item, so to speak, is not terribly appealing to most—especially when staff, time, and budgets are already constrained. It also leads to a higher probability of succumbing to human error. Integration means that your software can do that “talking” on its own, saving you time, manpower, and doubtless hours of frustration.
Take a look at our blog on Donor Software to get a better feel for some of the fundraising software options available and whether they will “talk nicely” with the systems you already employ. But we think QuickBooks talks very nicely with plenty of software!
2. Flexibility
Having the ability to set up a variety of access levels with relative ease is a huge point in QuickBooks’ favor! Maintaining internal controls and having a clear delineation of duties is necessary for all organizations, nonprofits included.
With the flexibility to adjust and assign a variety of access levels, QuickBooks allows you to efficiently use your resources by maintaining your organization’s checks and balances and allowing certain groups (your board, etc.) to have “view only” access to your account records. This way you can maintain transparency without eating away at the time and availability of your staff to facilitate and manage this directly.
3. Automation
QuickBooks is well known for its automations. In essence, QuickBooks has a lot of systems that can be run without the necessity of a person handling the data directly. Nonprofits are often short-staffed and struggle to find the extra time to manage and maintain systems that can, in fact, be done via automated systems. Automation also greatly reduces the occurrence of human error with data entry on top of saving time and resources.
4. Cloud-Based
QuickBooks Online is cloud-based, and in today’s world—where more and more of us are moving towards remote working scenarios and cloud-based systems solutions—this is a big plus. QuickBooks Online is also accessible via an app, which means you can check balances, send reports, and remain transparent with stakeholders even on the go. Or just when you don’t feel like getting up to walk to your desktop.
5. Reporting
Reporting is a nonnegotiable need for any nonprofit organization. It also tends to take up a lot of time to organize and record funds for specific programs so that it all lines up perfectly for both receiving and dispersing funds. Without organization, it’s just a lot of numbers, and chaos is not a desired or acceptable state for any business’s finances to be in. Just because you’re a nonprofit doesn’t mean you don’t have to think about money!
The class system employed by QuickBooks Online makes it easy to record funds to programs, and easily run reports that are organized and understandable. Especially for those of us that don’t come from an accounting or finance background, these capabilities make a huge difference in keeping your nonprofit organized and on the right financial track.
6. TechSoup’s QuickBooks Discount
Nonprofits are often on very tight budgets. Funding and overhead are constant considerations and are monitored continuously. Though QuickBooks does not provide any direct discounts for nonprofits, they are partnered with TechSoup in order to support nonprofits otherwise.
Not only is the discount itself rather impressive, but the QuickBooks subscription level included is not your bottom-of-the-barrel product. They offer a one-year subscription for QuickBooks Online Advanced—which would normally run up quite a tab at $180 per month—for only $160. You get the whole year subscription for less than a month at the full price! That’s a pretty deep discount.
QuickBooks is a big name in accounting software and service providers. Between their software providing the ability to sync to your bank account and prompt around-the-clock support, their name recognition is not undeserved. QuickBooks can give you a complete set of tools to navigate your business-specific needs all in one place.
Ready to find out what QuickBooks can do for your nonprofit? Contact us today. We can help turn your big idea into a well-run business.
