Should Your Church Use QuickBooks?

Perhaps you are a church accounting looking to upgrade from your excel spreadsheets to some bona fide accounting software. QuickBooks Non Profit Accounting Software may or may not be a good solution for your church depending on your situation. Below are some considerations you may want to think about before buying QuickBooks (QB) for your church. Note: the Non-Profit Edition is the version we are talking about here.

Advantages of QuickBooks for Churches

One problem you may be facing when deciding whether to upgrade your churches’ accounting system to QB is that you don’t want to leave behind your trusty excel sheets. They have become second nature to you; they have your sweat and blood in them. While excel may be slightly more intuitive than QuickBooks, chances are QB will save your church time in the long run.

Here’s why. Most organizations, even churches, need some sort of report at the end of the year. Now these reports have to be formatted correctly or the bank, IRS, AICPA, or any other government organization (funny that we can no put banks down as a government organization) will not accept them. QB designers realized this and made it extremely easy for you to generate needed annual, semi-annual, and even daily reports. If the information has been entered correctly (a big if there), then all you have to do is tell QuickBooks what report to generate. To sum up this conversation, excel will give you short term gratification, but QB, or any accounting software for the matter, will save you time in the long run.

One advantage that QB has over other church accounting software is its sheer popularity. Yes, although popularity may not have been your thing when you were in high school (you are an accountant after all), popularity comes in handy in certain situations. When you can’t quite figure out how the blasted thing works, chances are you know someone that knows how to use QuickBooks. If you don’t, then a ton of information exists online.

Disadvantages of QuickBooks Non Profit for Churches

We seem to always have things constraining us in life, and one of those constraints is money. QB is fairly pricey. Prices range from around $200 to $600 depending on how many users you plan on using the software. Also, like Microsoft, QuickBooks comes out with a new version every few years and you’ll have to fork out some cash to get the new version. If you have a large budget, then this isn’t a problem, but for small churches this amount can really put a damper on things. Note: the good news is that you don’t have to pay a monthly fee.

Another disadvantage of using the Non Profit version of QuickBooks for your church’s accounting is that you will have an initial learning curve. QB is fairly user friendly, but it will take some getting used to. In addition, because QB has evolved over time it has added a lot of features that a small church may never dream of using.

Overall QuickBooks is a good piece of software with lots of customer support. It can be used by both small and large churches, but utility comes with a price.