Nonprofits, small businesses, associations, and other organizations that maintain an account balance sheet need reliable software to efficiently manage their accounts. Finding the right software, however, can be tricky. As a nonprofit or similar entity managed by a board or committee of fiduciaries or people in similar positions of responsibility, you have to be careful about which software you choose. As a nonprofit, you need the right tools to help you manage your budget, track donations, report taxes, and more. There are some great free accounting software options available on the web that work just as well as some premium accounting software.
Free online accounting software for nonprofits is a software program that is specifically targeted to nonprofit organizations, non-profit foundations, trusts, and other non-profit organizations.
NonProfitPlus
NonProfitPlus’s accounting package includes donor management, board management, and unlimited users for easier delegation. It also offers both fund-based and encumbrance accounting, which makes for easier budget tracking. With so many features, NonProfitPlus is super scalable: as your organization grows, more NonProfitPlus features (for instance, delegation and time tracking) become relevant.
Unlike most software for nonprofits, NonProfitPlus includes inventory management, which is crucial if you stock merchandise (like T-shirts and mugs) to raise money or reward donors. On the other hand, NonProfitPlus doesn’t list any pricing on its site—as with Sage Intacct, you have to get in touch with a representative for a quote. Customers report paying more than $600 a month for NonProfitPlus’s full suite of features, so if you’re looking for affordable nonprofit software, NonProfitPlus probably isn’t it.
Billhighway
Billhighway is an chapter management solution that helps united chapter’s finances and data for large organizations and groups that have multiple components. Billhighway helps these associations bring all of their data together to keep their properly structure finance flow and keep organizations working. What types of organizations can Billhighway help? Billhighway is focused towards three types of organizations that are marketed to with slightly different modules; associations, labor unions and fraternities. What are Billhighway’s features Billhighway has three main features in their platform. Harnessing user data, growing your association’s membe-base and turning manual fundraising and data collection into an automatic work flow. These features all associations and organizations to learn about trends and patterns among their entire association member-base on a national level by sharing user data across different branches, identify the best times to ask potential new members to sign up for their association, use best practices to retain current members and transfer fundraiser and other funds across chapters automatically. Billhighway Summary Overall, Billhighway provides a solution for associations to keep all of their chapters updated on what is happening through all of the associations and at a national level. This transparency allows different branches to adopt strategies that are adopted and successful at sibling branches. It also provides automation in key revenue points that allows organizations to save money and allot their resources and employees in more important areas of their association, fraternity or labor union. This allows for organizations to focus on their main mission and goals, instead of time-consuming administrative and financial tasks.
Sage Intacct
Sage Intacct sets a high standard for what nonprofit organizers should expect from their fund accounting software. Along with typical accounting features like bank reconciliation, the software has a host of nonprofit-specific tools:
- Donation tracking
- Fundraising, membership, and dues management
- Multi-currency support (for international donations)
- Nonprofit-specific financial reports, including budgeting and forecasting
- Task automation to reduce redundant data entry
Sage Intacct also offers free seminars to help nonprofit organizers get off the ground, which is particularly useful for nonprofits struggling to make ends meet after COVID-19. And on the review site TrustRadius, Sage Intacct gets 8.6 stars out of 101 with customers indicating they’re happy with Sage’s fast customer service response time.
However, Sage Intacct is definitely on the pricy end of the nonprofit software spectrum. (Pricing isn’t listed on the site, so you’ll need to contact Sage Intacct for a quote.) If you’re just launching a nonprofit, Sage Intacct probably isn’t right for you—it works better for established national or international nonprofits with multiple locations and a large staff.
Aplos
Aplos is a cloud-based system designed specially to serve the needs of nonprofit and church organizations. The Aplos platform includes fund accounting, online donation management, reporting functionalities, fundraising tools, event management, and custom communications. Aplos offers features that allow organizations to manage their fund accounting (including report transactions, manage finances, track cash flows, and create journal entries for direct double-entry accounting), fundraise more effectively and efficiently (through the use of online donation tools, custom communication, donor database reports, and event registration), and is the all-in-one solution for users who would like to manage all of their financial, donation, and donor information in one place.
Araize FastFund Accounting
Araize FastFund Accounting software was specifically designed for nonprofits by CPAs that specialize in auditing nonprofits. The company offers free and paid online training modules and free weekly training webinars for registered users, as well as additional private training for $100 an hour.
The standard version of the online software includes:
- Cash receipts
- Cash disbursements
- Check printing
- Bank reconciliations
- Budgeting
- Project accounting
- Financial statements
- Customizable compliant reports
- Custom filters
- Audit trails
The premium version offers accounts receivable, accounts payable, and cost allocations. The company also offers fundraising and payroll software for an additional cost.
MIP Fund Accounting
MIP Fund Accounting is a configurable fund accounting solution that allows you to report and track information that is most important to you, your board, and your supporters. According to the vendor, the solution can change and grow with you through your most difficult fund accounting, human capital management, and payroll decisions alike. MIP Fund Accounting exclusively serves the financial management and fund accounting needs of thousands of nonprofits and government agencies. MIP has received the Campbell Award for several years in a row. The company focuses on your long-term needs and allows you to custom design your system to enable you to manage effectively, get timely information, streamline processes and provide strong controls. MIP is a fully integrated system with comprehensive functionality including fund accounting, procurement, budgeting, payroll, human resources, timekeeping, fixed asset management, grant management, dashboards, and more. The flexible structure enables you to manage and report on multiple cost centers at the general ledger level including multiple organizations, funds, projects, grants, programs, departments, locations, etc. The product can be deployed on-premise, in the cloud, or self-hosted. Separately, you choose whether you would like to purchase/own the system or if you would like to pay by subscription.
Accounts
Accounts is Windows-based software with a small set of features designed specifically for small nonprofit organizations. The software offers basic bookkeeping and easy, automated fund accounting that does not require journal entries to keep an accurate balance.
New nonprofits can create their own chart of accounts or choose from one of many samples. The single-user version of Accounts can be used on multiple computers, but the database will have to be copied between computers. The network version supports up to five users with simultaneous access to the database. Accounts recently released a cloud-based program that runs on some Mac systems.
The software includes:
- Income and expense tracking
- Fund balance tracking
- It allows you to export reports in various file formats, such as PDF, Excel, and CSV files
- Annual budgeting
- Accounts payable
- Check printing
- Support for multiple organizations on one computer
- Deposit importing from Donation software
- Simple data backup with reminders
Conclusion: Accounting software for nonprofits has become a required financial tool to keep single nonprofits, churches, charities, government agencies, and schools. A nonprofit accounting software is used to track the finances by organizations that are not required to pay taxes.