Thanks all for the advice. QuickBooks is on order.

The best thing about QuickBooks is that you can program your 990 tax lines right into it and print out all the information to fill out the tax return. Now I found that the accountants that prepared the tax returns didn't like trying to help do this, so had to learn it myself, but it was invaluable!

If you set up your membership as "Employees" for those volunteer organizations, then you can keep your membership names and addresses in the system too.

I do recommend getting a book to refer to as it is helpful, then only then, if you get stuck you can call on QuickBooks, but I've usually called on the accountants because they have people within their organization that use it all the time. Most accounting firms all recommend QuickBooks because you can integrate an "Accountant's copy" to them and still work on your copy. Again, get a reputable accountant, and you probably will get your answers answered a lot quicker than paying to go to QB.

Consulting with a CPA before you start a project like this is good advice, but not all CPA firms will be Q'books shops and they may not know about Tech soup.

Bob H

No apology necessary, you’re in the right spot. Like a lot of organizations, we use Quickbooks for non-profits. To make sure everything stays correct, we have a CPA trained in Quickbooks review/audit our books. It certainly makes doing the 990 easier, too.

I also use Quickbooks for my personal business. You don’t need to be a genius to use it but a refresher in basic accounting certainly helps. My CPA appreciates that I can hand her the reports she needs at tax time and not a shoebox full of scraps of paper with stuff scribbled on them. Not a joke. I laughed. She didn’t.

If you register your non profit with Techsoup, you can get Quickbooks and other software at greatly discounted prices.

To find a CPA proficient in Quickbooks try:

https://quickbooks.intuit.com/find-an-accountant/

You also might want to get a copy of a book like "Quickbooks for Dummies" which is readily available on Amazon and major book stores.

Bob H

I was the one who resurrected this topic five years ago, yesterday. After reading the recommendations I converted our books to Quickbooks and have no regrets. It has simplified maintaining the books as well as preparing reports from the way I had done for several years prior to making the change. There is a learning curve, but working within its confines guided me towards maintaining the books in a manner that is consistent with accounting principles. Techsoup made it very affordable.

There are a few things about it that that still drive me batty, but I've learned to tolerate them. One is that it was designed for for-profit users and sometimes its obvious that the non-profit adaptations that they made were afterthoughts.

Something I did after using if for a couple of years, but wish I had done from the start, was to be familiar with the Form 990 expense and income categories and follow the same names when setting up accounts Quickbooks. When tax time comes you will be glad that you did.

I imagine you are involved with some kind of heritage rail operation.

If you are a museum or a historical society, chances are you are a non-profit and an IRS 501(c)3 organization. Make sure you download and read the current IRS handbooks for 501(c)3 organizations and file the necessary and required reports to maintain that that status.

When selecting a CPA to do an annual review and help with the filings, try to use one who is familiar with working with non-profits and especially 501(c)3 ones.

I despise Intuit, they’re greedy beyond belief. The program will only work for 3 years, then you have to upgrade. They offer “special” upgrade pricing. It’s cheaper to buy the full version on Amazon. You have to use their checks and envelopes and they’re expensive. Payroll updates are expensive. They constantly pester you about other stuff they sell.
But... QuickBooks is the Windows Software of accounting. It’s the standard. Most accountants are familiar with. Any bookkeeper you’re likely to hire will almost certainly be familiar with it. It works and works well. So I use it despite disliking the constant money grab by Intuit.

I agree that Intuit's attempts sell stuff are irritating.

For a couple of years I used Quickbooks to print Deluxe three-per-page business checks (also expensive) and printed them individually with no problem. (After a computer crash a while back, I haven't figured out which preference setting I got wrong when reloading the software and can't get them to print correctly, but regular business checks will work.) Another of my objections to Quickbooks is that for a mature program, the instructions aren't always user friendly or intuitive and the help function isn't that good - possibly because they want to sell their advisory services.

I normally cut and paste the address to Word to print envelopes, but I think I've printed an envelope directly from Quickbooks a time or two.

One feature that has saved me a lot of time was to make a custom thank you letter within Quickbooks that automatically includes the information that IRS requires on a receipt. It automatically populates the date, address, and amount of the contribution.

We also track our in-kind contributions with Quickbooks. Come tax time it's relatively easy to get the in-kind numbers to include on the 990.

I can't speak to payroll, we don't have any employees.

One independent vendor of Quickbook support has posted several of helpful videos on using Quickbooks for non-profits called Quickbooks Made Easy.

I am my church's treasurer and have used Quick Books non profit version for several years. The learning curve wasn't to steep and it does a good job writing checks, keeping track of contributions, and producing needed reports. Like many railroad museums we have restricted funds and Quick Books is a bit clunky in that it requires a few extra steps at the end of a reporting period to true up the restricted fund accounts.

The YouTube videos and online help / tutorials are another good reason to use the 800# gorilla that is QuickBooks. Intuit will try and sell you services, but google the issue and you can almost always find the answer you need. The huge installed user base means a lot of content is available.
As for labels, we buy the QuickBooks window envelopes. As with all things QB, they’re overpriced. But they are decent quality and you’ll never put the wrong label on the check. You can put the check in backwards, but if you do it correctly, the address is visible and no chance of it being mislabeled.

Unfortunately the necro poster above is a spammer.

After asking a reasonable (but generic) question initially, and getting some answers, the spammer edited their post, wholly replacing their original post with a spamvert for some third party service.

Dig into your old Quickbooks disks for an earlier version. Quickbooks 2012 doesn't expire, and doesn't nag you constantly.

Further, if you have a dedicated accounting system, unplug it from the Internet. It doesn't need to be on the Internet for doing accounting, it's a security risk to have it on the Internet, and it *shouldn't* be used for other things again for security reasons.

For awhile, one group I was involved in was paying 2% of their budget to maintain an Internet connection for the accounting system because the manager thought that was necessary. Soon after, we discovered games, Netflix, and all manner of general web browsing being done. Someone (who had been given access solely to update the books) had decided to make it their general use and recreational PC. Removing Internet access puts the kibbosh on this kind of use.

I agree that there isn't a need to constantly update QuickBooks, but isn't there a problem with the older version of QuickBooks working with Windows 10?

Quickbooks, purchased from TechSoup is very affordable. You can also shop at Tech Soup to buy non-profit licensing for MS Windows and a variety of other software including some versions of Adobe.

I have learned to upgrade every three years to maintain help and service features. i.e. I was using QB 2017 through 2019 before I bought QB 2020.

Wesley

I run QB 2013 on Windows 10 with no problems. Don’t know about earlier versions.