Nonprofit Treasurer - accounting question

5StarShield

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5:56p, 3/16/25

AG

I've volunteered to be the Treasurer for our education foundation. It's a new org and books have been done in excel up to this point. Any recs on an online based accounting software? Currently looking at Xero but wondering if anyone has experience with others they'd recommend (besides QB, too expensive for us).

Also, for anyone involved with a non-profit, I'm curious how you handle using apps like Cash App, Venmo etc. to accept donations but keep controls to prevent misappropriation. (view only access to reconcile transactions?)

TIA

PleaseNoL01

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9:23p, 3/19/25

I do the books for several non profits and use Quickbooks online. You can integrate Venmo and PayPal for sure into quickbooks using their apps (not sure on cash app). We log the donations made through those apps into a donor management system, just like you would do for a check or other online payment. You can also download their statements each month to use to reconcile in QB.

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gigemhilo

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7:59a, 3/20/25

AG

Quickbooks may not be the cheapest, but it's AI (downloading transactions, auto categorization, and bank rec features) make it worth the cost. You can also use it to easily generate donation receipts, and integrated applications make it easy to generate donation statements to donors. Just my 2 cents.

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Husky Boy Jr.

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8:33a, 3/20/25

AG

I am the treasurer for my local ISD education foundation. I spent many hours this last year cleaning up some messy accounting. Check out tech soup for discounted QB online subscription. I use QB in my day job so I am biased, but I highly suggest you go this route and your tax preparer will thank you later. They have a non profit specific chart of accounts and financials.

Do you issue tax receipts as a 501c3 to your donors? Consider a payment platform that facilitates this like one cause or bloomerang. QB may do this as well - not sure. We have a fairly large budget - unsure of yours.

Make sure to track any donor restrictions that may exist on your receipts and understand how the buckets on expense work on the statement of functional expense.

Side note - our foundation had a rough year fundraising due to a number of factors including what I perceive as a negative sentiment and distrust towards public schools among some.

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5StarShield

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8:51p, 3/21/25

AG

Thanks all for the input. I'm sure we'll eventually get the budget for QB, but we are still getting started. Perhaps I'll just pay for QB and consider it a donation to get us started. Xero is ~$25/mo and I believe QB is closer to $90.

khkman22

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2:39p, 3/22/25

AG

Take a look at Zoho as well. They have financial software, but they also have a lot more than that. The extra items might not be anything the nonprofit would ever need. I don't have experience with Zoho so they may not be good for nonprofits. I'm not sure they will have anything to track the donations easily and properly, but you might want a separate software for that anyway. Some of their levels are cheaper than QuickBooks, so I think it is at least worth a look.

kyledr04

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5:01p, 3/23/25

AG

Our church uses Aplos. I haven't seen it much but the folks on the finance committee like it.

I'm on board of another non-profit ministry. It uses QB but has a bookkeeping contractor that manages it and that's what they wanted to use. They offered a secondary system for donor management but I can't remember what it is. Depending on the number of donors, a spreadsheet might do.

aggiesherpa

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8:03p, 3/23/25

AG

Our church uses Quickbooks online and then our database software Elexio manages contributions and the such.

jopatura

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9:50p, 3/23/25

AG

We use MoneyMinder with our PTO. It's built for non-profits. It's on the expensive side, but basically does the job of treasurer for us once it's work-flowed correctly. The cost is well worth covering the legal bases on years we don't have a strong treasurer.