Say Goodbye to Quickbooks: Tips for Upgrading Your Nonprofit Accounting Solution

Accounting has never been more important for today’s nonprofits. Donors and funders expect complete financial transparency, and they hold nonprofit accountants to high standards for consistency and quality. At the same time, the Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted the financial situation at many nonprofits, creating new costs while putting funding forecasts in jeopardy. All this makes effective money management a huge priority for nonprofits. Their future depends on it.

So their future also depends on the accounting software in place. If that solution is QuickBooks, it’s worth taking a hard look at whether this tool – which is popular and accessible but also basic and limiting – can handle accounting on the level nonprofits need. Here are some common signs it’s time to switch to something better:

Spreadsheet Fatigue
If people are spending endless hours inside spreadsheets, it’s a clear indicator the accounting system isn’t meeting their needs. Spreadsheets may be an effective workaround, but they are not a sustainable solution.

Endless Errors
QuickBooks requires extensive manual entries. Not only are these a boring distraction for accountants, they cause keystroke errors to compromise the accounting data and throw the accuracy of anything into question.

Slow Results
Having to workaround the limitations of the accounting system makes it hard to meet deadlines. Decision makers either have to wait for updated financial insights or move ahead without enough information.

Poor Visibility
The accounting team struggles to get a comprehensive view of the financial situation and spends significant time trying to piece that perspective together. Like the previous point, poor financial visibility can only compromise decision making.

Absent Integration
When QuickBooks does not integrate with other software at the nonprofit, it forces people to move data between systems manually. Dual entries waste time and lead to incomplete, inconsistent data inside important systems – not to mention the errors.

Audit Uncertainty
An under-powered accounting system makes it hard to feel confident headed into the audit process. The software will either take extra work to extract and organize the data. Or it will supply incomplete or unreliable data that calls the entire audit into question.

Performance Blindness
While QuickBooks may be able to handle basic accounting tasks, it’s very restricted in terms of analyzing data and reporting on performance. This can result in an incomplete – or wildly inaccurate – understanding of nonprofit performance.

Future Fit
The right time to switch software is before it’s absolutely necessary. Based on the future forecast for the nonprofit, can QuickBooks handle the scale, speed, and complexity of the accounting requirements? If not, it’s a disaster waiting to happen.

The hardest part about upgrading a nonprofit accounting solution is recognizing the need for change. After that, the upgrade happens quite easily with the help of a partner like Dean Dorton. Let our team help you select, implement, and optimize a system that takes nonprofit accounting to new heights. Contact us before you outgrow QuickBooks any further.