The Lite FreshBooks subscription, which costs $17 per month, should be enough for most organizations unless you have more than five staff members who need to use it. The Advanced plan is designed for larger nonprofits or those with complex financial operations. It includes all the features of the Plus plan but with more advanced tools and capabilities, making it suitable for growing organizations with more intricate needs. Unfortunately, quicken for nonprofits just like with any type of business, there’s no one-size-fits-all accounting solution for nonprofits. This being said, however, with their reliability, significant feature sets, and overall usability, there’s no doubt that the QuickBooks for nonprofits options are some of the best accounting solutions available on the market. QuickBooks Pro is the first option for the desktop-based versions of QuickBooks for nonprofits.
See how Advanced Reporting works
Setting up classes can also help you organize your nonprofit’s revenue by source. However, QuickBooks doesn’t provide a direct way to track funding restrictions, so you’ll need to manually create two extra classes for permanently and temporarily restricted net assets. QuickBooks is a great tool for nonprofit accounting, but every nonprofit is different. This means that there is a lot of work done outside of the office with remote workers, as well as volunteers and contractors. Whatever the case is, nonprofits are relying on cloud-based technology to have their workforce access information from wherever they are.
Paying employees
Unfortunately, there aren’t many free nonprofit-specific accounting software options. (Nonprofit Treasurer, our favorite free option, recently closed its doors.) If you’re looking for fully featured free accounting software, though, your best bet is Wave Accounting. It offers accounting and bookkeeping features comparable to QuickBooks Online and Xero but for exactly no dollars. Unfortunately, while Aplos’s nonprofit features stand out, its accounting features are more limited. Only the customized plan includes in-depth income and expense tracking, budgeting by project or fund, asset tracking, and recurring transactions. Other options like Sage Intacct, QuickBooks Online, Aplos, and Xero, though not free, offer specialized features to support nonprofits in managing their finances, tracking funds, and preparing accurate financial statements.
How to Choose the Best Accounting Software for Nonprofits
- You can use this data to generate fund-specific reports, demonstrating to both your stakeholders and the government that you’ve used donated funds for their intended purpose only.
- In addition, this code discusses the circumstances in which a nonprofit organization will be liable for taxes, penalties, and other charges.
- Advanced Pricing / Control, customize, and automate pricing is included in the Platinum and Diamond subscriptions only.
- Nonprofit accounting features enable NPOs to manage their funding sources fully, ensuring every dollar and donor is accounted for while their accounts are accurate through proper bank reconciliation.
On the whole, any automation an accounting software can offer to streamline your nonprofit budget processes will be particularly beneficial. Since your nonprofit will be working within a unique and possibly stringent financial structure, you’ll want to ensure that the accounting software you choose can accommodate your specific processes. First and foremost, you’ll want your nonprofit accounting software to be able to track your donors—especially since, more than likely, a majority of your working capital will come from recurring donors. Therefore, maintaining contact with your donors is much more than just a nicety—it’s a fundamental financial process for any nonprofit.
With Enterprise, you can scale the software as your business evolves, allowing you to add on functionality as you need it. Today’s leading accounting platforms offer standard security features, such as data encryption, secure credential tokenization and more. While human error will always play some role in security breaches, you can be confident in your accounting platform when it comes to keeping your information safe. QuickBooks does a lot of the work automatically, saving you and your volunteers precious time. Connect your bank account and QuickBooks will learn to categorize expenses for you. Set reports to be automatically created and emailed to board or committee members on any schedule you’d like.
Wave Accounting: Best free nonprofit accounting tool
At Fundera, Randa specializes in reviewing small business products, software, and services. Randa has written hundreds of reviews across a wide swath of business topics including ecommerce, merchant services, accounting, credit cards, bank accounts, loan products, and payroll and human resources solutions. In fact, any nonprofit founder will know that the exact opposite true—adhering to a tight budget and reporting your spending to your board is enough to make anyone become an accounting perfectionist.
For nonprofits looking to optimize their financial management, QuickBooks for Nonprofits offers the right mix of features to streamline processes, enhance fundraising efforts, and provide valuable financial insights. In many cases, your nonprofit will have to report to your board with any financial decisions you make. Therefore, in order to streamline board presentations and reports, you’ll want accounting software that can help you extract and synthesize your financial data. On the whole, whether exploring QuickBooks for nonprofits or other accounting solutions, you’ll want to keep an eye out for the following capabilities in order to best serve your organization’s needs. These ratings are meant to provide clarity in the decision-making process, but what’s best for your business will depend on its size, growth trajectory and which features you need most.
You can also consolidate the financials of multiple global entities into one platform, then connect business management software such as Salesforce. You can consolidate across multiple currencies and local tax codes automatically and in minutes. With everything consolidated, you can track inter-entity transactions to improve reporting and donor-dollar traceability.