church accounting software | QuickBooks Non Profit Review

QuickBooks Non Profit Review


Recently, a lot of questions have arisen about the usefulness of QuickBooks as church accounting software. The following is an unbiased review of using QuickBooks for your Church’s accounting:

QuickBooks has multiple versions of accounting software. They don’t have any software that is specifically named “Church accounting software.” They do however have a QuickBooks Nonprofit Edition. This version would probably be the best to use for your church’s accounting system, although I have heard of churches using normal QuickBooks.

Advantages of Your Church Using QuickBooks

The number one advantage of using QuickBooks NonProfit for your church’s accounting is its ease of use. Many people, even those without much of an accounting background, are able to use QuickBooks effectively. A learning curve does exist, but it isn’t as large a curve as trying to learn a specialized church accounting software system.

Another advantage of using QuickBooks is its customer support. When we mention customer support, we are not necessarily talking about the people at Intuit who designed the software (although they are probably excellent). Chances are you know someone who is already quite familiar with QuickBooks. Imploring them to help you set up and run QuickBooks as your church accounting software might be the best route for your church.

Disadvantages of QuickBooks

QuickBooks doesn’t leave much of an audit trail in some situations. If an error is made you can easily reverse what has been done without leaving a trail. For example, let’s say your church accountant accidentally books a donation to the tithing fund instead of the missionary fund. He or she can delete the entry to the tithing fund and switch it to the missionary fund without any sort of documentation.

You may be thinking that being able to easily correct errors is something you want in your church accounting system. The downside of this is that it can be easily manipulated. Most church accounting software requires an adjusting entry when an error is made. This leaves what is called an audit trail so that a church auditor, loan officer, or banker can look back and see any adjustments made throughout the year.

QuickBooks even allows you to change entries made years ago without any documentation or support. A skilled church accountant could easily cook your church accounting books using this software. However, having proper internal controls in place can help limit some of the risk of using QuickBooks as church accounting software.

Update: Another disadvantage of QuickBooks is that it was originally designed for businesses, not churches. Intuit’s non-profit software has some customization features, but it may not support your church’s reporting requirements or terminology. This is especially true if they are not similar to a normal business’s reporting requirements and terminology.

In Review:
• QuickBooks can be used for your church’s accounting
• Advantages include ease of use and great customer support ( a lot of people know how to use this software)
• Disadvantages include it doesn’t leave an audit trail which could jeopardize the trustworthiness of your church accounting system and it may not support your church’s accounting language


Filed Under Church Accounting Software Reviews |

Tagged With , , , ,

Comments

One Response to “QuickBooks Non Profit Review”

  1. Stephen Maafo on February 4th, 2010 1:56 am

    Just want to inform you that the major disadvantage that you gave for quickbooks is not true. QuickBooks has a wonderful Audit Trail which track all changes made to transactions. It gives a report of all changes, indicating what the original transaction was, what it has been changed into, who changed it and when it was changed. Thank you.

Leave a Reply