As a nonprofit, minimizing your overhead expenses is essential. And while you may have very specialized accounting needs, a full-time bookkeeper might not be in your budget.

If your organization has a computer and an internet connection, you can use Intuit’s QuickBooks Online for your accounting - it was designed to be both user-friendly and budget-friendly. It can also be modified to meet the specific needs of a variety of company types.

One of these special types is for nonprofit organizations. By changing a few internal settings, you can alter QuickBooks Online in several ways to make it “fit” your special bookkeeping style. For example, you can:

• Change the Company Type. You need to tell QuickBooks what type of entity your organization is structured as, and it will accommodate the tax return you need to file. You have the ability to structure your QuickBooks as a nonprofit organization (Form 990) which will also create reporting options suited for a nonprofit.
• Create new accounts. QuickBooks Online uses a standard Chart of Accounts to assign each transaction to an account type (bank, income, expense, asset, liability, etc.). You can add and customize your chart of account(s) to track your organization’s various donation and contribution revenue streams, for example, or any specialized expenses.
• Maintain a donor database. Your donor contact information needs to be recorded and safely saved, yet easy to access. QuickBooks Online provides ready-to-use templates for entering all of the details you need to track to create your donor/donation database. You can then select individual records when you record donations.
• Generate item records for pledges, donations, and grants. When you record income or an expense in QuickBooks Online, you can indicate which “item or service” the transaction was related to. You can set up customized items to use in transactions and generate reports that describe your own types of financial activities. You can track pledges and donations with certain categories, such as restricted or unrestricted.
• Run Financial and Management Reports. QuickBooks Online comes with dozens of reporting options for financial statements and management purposes. There are canned, standard reports for a nonprofit, such as the “Statement of Activity” and “Statement of Financial Position.” There are also other reports you can customize for pledges receivable, etc.

QuickBooks Online was designed to be used by non-accountants, so this is a fairly user-friendly program. Still, QuickBooks needs to be setup correctly to ensure or your records will be correct. Contact us for assistance in setting up QuickBooks Online so you can save time and money on your accounting tasks and produce comprehensive, accurate records.