QuickBooks for Non Profits: How to Use, Pros, Cons & More

QuickBooks is one of the most used accounting software. Many businesses around the globe use QuickBooks to keep track of their money. Through QuickBooks, you can perform a number of tasks like paying salaries, preparing budgets, creating invoices, paying taxes, making automatic payments, etc.

While most businesses use this tool, non-profit organizations do not use it that much. Are you a non-profit organization owner? If yes, then this article is for you. In this article, we will tell you how to use QuickBooks for non profits. Along with this, we will also tell you about the advantages and disadvantages of using QuickBooks online for non profits. So, without any further ado, let’s jump on to the main topic. 

How to Use QuickBooks for Non Profits?

We all know that QuickBooks is an accounting software that is used to make accounting easy. A non-profit organization is basically a group of people who work together to generate funds, but none of the funds is used by the members. All the money is distributed among the underprivileged people to provide them with resources like food, education, medical care, etc. 

Now, let’s see how non-profit organizations use QuickBooks to make their accounting easy. 

1. General Accounting 

Being a non-profit organization, you might have fewer people to keep track of all the money that comes in. Moreover, you might be getting money from different resources and using it for different purposes. Hence, QuickBooks can help you keep all the money separate and into different accounts while keeping complete track of it. 

2. Creating Reports 

Transparency becomes very important for a non-profit organization. There are a number of people involved in the process, such as staff, managers, donors, directors, etc. QuickBooks allows you to create a proper report where all the money that comes in and all the money that goes out is available along with their source. Moreover, you can also get a report on any particular time frame by selecting the start and end dates. 

3. Keeping Track of Donations 

Be it accumulating money for any purpose of conducting fundraisers, with QuickBooks for non profits, you can keep track of all the money that comes in through donations. This helps in maintaining transparency. Moreover, you also get information regarding the source of donation so that you know how much money is being donated by a particular person. This assists in creating donation reports. 

4. Cloud Tracking 

There are various nonprofit organizations that operate in different parts of the country or even different parts of the world. With the QuickBooks cloud feature, people from different parts of the globe can have access to the same QuickBooks account, and all the data can be kept in one place. 

5. QuickBooks Tools 

QuickBooks comes with a number of tools that help in conducting functions like keeping track of money, making payments, creating invoices, setting reminders for meetings, payments, etc. This is a great help of QuickBooks on-line for non profits. With the help of these tools and features, the overall working of non-profit organizations becomes quick and easy peasy. 

6. QuickBooks Automation 

With QuickBooks, you can set a lot of tasks on automation, like payments, paying bills, etc. So, with QuickBooks set for non-profits, all these tasks can be set to automation so that you can give all your focus and attention to other necessary things. 

7. Volunteer and Staff Management 

In a nonprofit organization, staff and volunteers keep coming and going. In such a scenario, it becomes quite difficult to keep a record of all the people working with the nonprofit. Hence, QuickBooks can offer a big assistance by keeping a record of the staff and volunteers along with the record of their leaves, offs, etc. 

Advantages and Disadvantages of QuickBooks for Non Profits 

Everything has its own set of advantages and disadvantages. Here is the list of advantages and disadvantages of QuickBooks online for non profits: 

Advantages 

1. Easy to Manage: With all the financial data in one place, QuickBooks makes all the financial management of a non-profit easy. Moreover, it also helps to store data from multiple locations in the same QuickBooks account. 
2. Maintain Transparency: With features like report generation and the entry of every donation, QuickBooks helps maintain the transparency that is extremely necessary for a non-profit organization. 
3. Scalability: Here, you get to store all the data in one place. Moreover, if you need to switch to a bigger plan, and go for QuickBooks data migration. This way, you do not need to worry about accounting. You can shift your focus to other important things. 

Disadvantages

1. Price: The only disadvantage of QuickBooks for non profits is its price. QuickBooks might be expensive for some non-profit organizations. 

Frequently Asked Questions(FAQs)

Q1. How does QuickBooks help nonprofits work? 

Here are some of the instances of how QuickBooks helps in the working of non profit organizations: 

1. a) Tracking money 
2. b) Keeping records of donations 
3. c) Staff and volunteer management
4. d) Creating reports 
5. e) Use of QuickBooks tools and automation feature

Q2. Can I make donation reports through QuickBooks?  

Yes, you can create a report of all the donations on QuickBooks. Not just this, but you can also create a record of the sources of donations. Other than this, you can also make a report of the particular time frames by selecting the start and end dates. 

Q3. What are the advantages of using QuickBooks online for non profits?

There are a lot of benefits to using QuickBooks for non-profit organizations. Here is a list of some of the benefits: 

1. a)  Helps in maintaining financial transparency. 
2. b) Makes management easy. 
3. c) Offers high chances of scalability. 

Conclusion

In this article, you learned how you can use QuickBooks for non profits organizations. In short, if you run a non-profit organization, you must use QuickBooks to manage your accounts. It offers an accessible management environment with advantages like scalability and transparency, along with features like cloud management and automatic payments. QuickBooks setup for non-profits is a great option.