QuickBooks: Accounting Software for Small Churches and Nonprofits

Anyone familiar with accounting procedures knows that double entry bookkeeping is the best way to handle your accounting.

QuickBooks can be an excellent accounting choice for small sized organizations. It is easy to learn and use and can create useful basic reports like balance sheets and income statements.

QuickBooks is best for small churches and non-profit organizations with operating budgets of less than $1 million, that could use donor-tracking information, that have different grants and/or funds that need to be tracked separately, and that have no or small payrolls.



Some of the features I like with this software is:

• Ease of Use (After you set it up...that’s the fun part...but there are a couple of ways to set it up. You can set it up with the class tracking or set up your fund accounts as equity account. I do advise you to sit down and figure out what your church or non-profit needs to keep track of, and what the best way to do it is...before setting up the program. You can even have an accountant sit down with whoever will be keeping the non-profit’s books and help them set it up properly.
• Contains the standard drop-down menu that provides access to all system features, company, vendors, customers and payroll. Below the menu bar are the QuickBooks Centers along with icons that provide access to frequently used functions.
• Ability to track Income and expenses.
• Choose whether you want to password protect it or not.
• Handles bills, payments, and bank reconciliation easily.
• Computes payroll taxes
• Prints Checks
• Compatible with Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, Outlook, etc)

I used QuickBooks Pro when I first started work. They had no accounting procedures and I used QuickBooks to keep track of their budget and produce reports. I set up each fund as a bank account. It worked pretty well but there were many things I couldn’t do with it. The newer editions are more adaptable.

This is what the experts say about QuickBooks: Premier Nonprofit Edition:

It combines the convenience of QuickBooks with basic nonprofit functionality to provide smaller churches and nonprofits with an easy way to track donations, pledges and annual organization budgets, along with the ability to keep a handle on regular financial information.

This edition of QuickBooks has very helpful features:

• Tracking donors and contributions
• Creating personalized letters and envelopes for donors
• Tracking budgets and finances by program
• Preparing IRS Form 990 or Form 990-EZ
• Creating other reports specifically for non-profits

In conclusion, QuickBooks is easy to install, easy to navigate and easy to maintain and is an affordable, sensible choice for smaller churches and nonprofits that have a limited budget and limited manpower.

Tip: On the church accounting forum page, several people have wrote in asking "How To" questions with Quickbooks. Ask your Quickbook questions and comments there.

Basic Church Accounting provides you with basic accounting concepts, examples of financial statements, and step-by-step instructions for posting church business transactions.

A must-have resource book! Running QuickBooks in Nonprofits: The Only Comprehensive Guide for Nonprofits Using QuickBooks
Providing information on using QuickBooks to track financial data in nonprofit organizations, this book covers all versions of QuickBooks.

Management of donors, grants, and pledges, and topics such as allocating expenses to programs, handling donor restrictions, and generating the reports needed for donors and tax returns are covered in detail. In addition to easy-to-follow instructions and tons of tips and workarounds, information on using QuickBooks for fundraising is provided.

On a personal note: you need to know some basic accounting terms to understand this book.

QuickBooks Premier Nonprofit 2010
Demonstrate financial accountability to your Board of Directors with the Statement of Financial Income & Expense Give your Board an overview of your organization's financial status with the Statement of Financial Income and Expense.

Track donations and pledges. Ready to use templates allow you to easily track pledges and donations

Complete your 990 form with one report. Make it easy for you or your accountant to prepare the IRS Form 990 by letting QuickBooks total and organize all your finances according to IRS requirements. The Statement of Functional Expenses 990 matches the IRS Form 990. Just transfer the totals to the form and you're done.

See program budget status in an instant. Once you've set up your budget, you can compare it to your actual performance with almost no effort--just open the budgets versus actual reports from the Report Center and see where you stand.

QuickBooks Pro 2010
Helps make your business more profitable. New features show you exactly where your business stands and saves you time to focus on your business: organize your finances all in one place; manage and customer, vendor, and employee data; save money-track every dollar in and out; know where your business stands with real-time reports.

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