Software

RE: What accounting software do you use?

bkanders — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 14:54:00 GMT

My non-profit has a budget that ranges from $700,000 to $1M each year. Currently, we are using SAGE which was set up by a previous finance person and is difficult to use. We require software that can handle multiple funds with various fiscal years. Can you tell me if QB has that capability?

RE: What accounting software do you use?

dlane — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 02:12:00 GMT

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the free and open source system, LedgerSMB (http://ledgersmb.org) - have a look. It's fully featured and fully web based. It's perfect for geographically distributed organisations. Our company and a number of our colleagues have been using it (and its predecessor Sql-Ledger) since 2002.

RE: What accounting software do you use?

bkanders — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 19:11:00 GMT

We have been using ACCPAC by Sage for quite a few years, but it is not very user friendly for new users and difficult to obtain support. It has the capability to provide I&E for many funds and supports the many fiscal years of our funders.

RE: What accounting software do you use?

hoffberg — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 14:11:00 GMT

MAS90 Version 4.x works very well for me. However, it is not for everyone, as one must be very experienced with the MAS90 suite, including FRx. One can even duplicate the functionality of Sage's MIPS with MAS90 if you have the know-how, with integration into Word, Access, and Excel for your other production/reporting needs, such as membership reports, notices, and solicitations.

By utilizing FRx (now a Mircosoft product and included in the MAS90 suite) for customized reporting, one can design and produce reports for copying the data line by line and column by column into a 990 (or even an 1120 or 1040), provided one has appropriately designed the chart of accounts.

Version 4.x provides for four different roll-ups for each G/L account. I assign a form line number (and section) number to each G/L account as one roll-up, and I use a G/L suffix to indicate Program, Management, or Fundraising functionality.

During data entry, each voucher or invoice is allocated to one or more (ledger accounts) and functionalities.

I also use FRx to produce customized financial reports, which are much more suitable for the reporting units than the standard MAS90 reports.

Alan M. Hoffberg, CPA
alan@irmusa.com

RE: What accounting software do you use?

jbbeam — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 13:05:00 GMT

I am not sure the unique or tricky part of that. Most anyone that does fund accounting has to combine multiple sources to fund projects. The issue is that you are attempting to tie the expendature to the source at a level lower than the project. That is, at the voucher or bill level. I've worked with lots of people attempting to do that. Unless you have boxes with cash sitting around the office that you pull bills from and hand to people, there really no no way to do that effectively. (Although if someone has figured that out I would love to hear it.)
You really have no way or saying "Pay the electric bill with $10 from the gov't and $5 from Donor-A." Unless you keep the money in seperate accounts and send two checks. You can do this but you will burn through alot of Accounts Payable people.

Your best bet is to do a few recurring journal entries from your unrestricted to restricted funds (or visa versa) to cover X expenses and show the movement that way.

Academic institutions do this with scholarships. Say Billy gets $500 from the "A foundation" and $200 from the "B Scholarship fund" but that is an entirely differnt system outside of the accounting.

RE: What accounting software do you use?

OHGALLATIN — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 19:33:00 GMT

Please read my reply below. I think MYOB would work for you.

RE: What accounting software do you use?

OHGALLATIN — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 19:31:00 GMT

I've used MYOB for 8 years for our 2 M budgeted agency. It tracks "jobs" very well for needing to split between funding sources (we have about 13). We have an outside payroll provider, I use an excel spreadsheet to split pay and generate the general ledger entries needed every pay period. I've looked at the pricier softwares available; I haven't been sold on any of them yet.

RE: What accounting software do you use?

salemkeizermeals — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 14:22:00 GMT

We use QuickBooks for accounts receivable and payable, but mainly to do payroll. And we're getting nickel and dimed to death with the updates to keep the payroll files accurate. Fund Raising is tracked with some "home grown" code written for MS Access.

Tom

RE: What accounting software do you use?

skillsnt — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 23:49:00 GMT

I read the article "A Few Good Accounting Packages" and found it helpful. However, I'm still not sure which programs do what I need because what I need is a bit unorthodox - even my accountant doesn't have any immediate ideas, although he is also going to make some inquiries.

I'm hoping that, if I can accurately describe what I'm trying to do, people can tell me if they know software that does it - preferably for a good price, since we are operating at just under $500K per year so we're not that big. I'm in Canada, if that changes anything.

Here's my situation:

-we get funds from various sources - some federal govt, some territorial govt, and some private industry
-we run a variety of programs including youth conferences, competitions, skills clubs, and fun promo events for youth

So far, nothing unusual. Here's where it gets tricky:

-a given event/program is often not wholly funded by a single source. For example, our territorial competition is about 75% funded through a contribution agreement with the federal government, but the rest comes from our other funds (which are mostly unconstrained at this point)

We want to be able to do budgets and reports that allow us to show our finances by source of funds sorted by expense code (because this is needed for reporting to the federal govt). That's what we've been doing up until now.

We ALSO want to be able to do budgets and reports by program/event and possibly even by community so we can easily say "This event costs X and this community has received Y dollars." However, one event can be funded by multiple funding sources (as mentioned above) and the expenses are coded to different expense accounts.

Example:

Program/Event A - Territorial event:
Travel - code 5170: $10,000 from Source 1
Travel - code 5170: $2500 from Source 2
Supplies - code 5115: $4000 from Source 1
Supplies - code 5115: $3000 from Source 2
Marketing - code 5070: $2500 from Source 1
Marketing - code 5070: $3000 from Source 2

Program/Event B - regional program:
Supplies (5115): $20,000 from Source 1
Supplies (5115): $6000 from Source 2

Of this, $4000 is spent in Community X, $2500 in Community Y, etc. The money spent in a community may not all come from a single source, as we provide periodic funding during the year for new materials and supplies.

Can Sage MIP Fund Accounting handle this and at what possible cost? Can another program do this for us?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

Jan

RE: What accounting software do you use?

strood — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 22:30:00 GMT

I have some questions about about MIP and Quickbooks... Can you send an email to me at jstrood9@yahoo.com

Thanks

RE: What accounting software do you use?

BrooksK — Tue, 30 May 2006 22:04:00 GMT

Our $3.0 Million uses Solomon. Our agency is big on grant funding so the Project Controller which we use for grants is very important for us. I was really disappointed that we had to pay for customized reports on reports that I would have expected to be standardized as I believed they would be useful to anyone with grant reporting. We last updated 3 years ago. I am considering going across to Blackbaud Financial Edge since our Fund Raising uses that program and we thus do some double data entry but I was surprised at the cost being more than Solomon with conversion costs even though Solomon is not inexpensive.

RE: What accounting software do you use?

jcavila — Wed, 24 May 2006 16:19:00 GMT

Current agency uses MIP and is needed due to required reporting to State funded programs. Software is very good, but not easy to develop into. As noted on prior comments, MIP requires reasonable knowledge of accounting, but more so, it requires systems knowledge to properly develop the many options that are available on MIP. Great system, not easy to develop, unless as stated before, you have both accounting and systems background.

For smaller non-profits, I think QBooks is an excellent option. Personally I think it is flexible a system as you can get. Even in comparison with the more expensive systems. I have set up QBooks in a number of organizations and all have done well by it. You can modify QB in many areas and export data to Excel for other report formats.

As stated by others, "it requires only a basic understanding of accounting." I believe anyone can be taught QB accounting for small business, non-profits, or churches.

RE: What accounting software do you use?

compass — Wed, 24 May 2006 00:02:00 GMT

We are a 1.5 mil budget non-profit and use MIP Sage Fund Accounting Package. We are looking to find a cheaper option. My maintenance renewal this year for a three user system is $6000.00.

Looking through the internet, it seems to me that B2P's Nonprofit Accounting Office does more than the system I have.

Can anyone offer suggestions?

Thanks!

RE: What accounting software do you use?

dawarpo — Tue, 23 May 2006 20:35:00 GMT

Now that Tech Soup Stock carried Microsoft Accounting, does anybody have any reviews on that?

We're actually moving from Quicken. We're leaning toward Quickbooks, but the Simple Start edtion doesn't allow imports of other data.

RE: What accounting software do you use?

RockofUtica — Sat, 20 May 2006 12:11:00 GMT

I use Peachtree for the non-profit for which I'm the treasurer. It works, but doing donor acknowledgements and end-of-year giving statements requires a lot of hand munging.

I'm looking into Quickbooks for non-profits because it claims to support easy generation of donor acknowledgements and giving statements. It also looks to be easier to train someone else on, which would make it easier for me to transfer the job of treasurer to someone else.

For a number of years, I was the assistant treasurer at a small church. We used a package called ChurchWindows. One advantage of this package was that giving could be completely separate from financials. It also supports multiple separate funds.

Keith Hare