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Nurit Sonnenschein's headshot
Nurit Sonnenschein General Manager

Non-Profit Accounting – QuickBooks & More

Asked on July 30, 2013

Non-Profit Accounting

Hi,

We are a non profit organization operating like a YMCA.  Our front end customer list, class registrations, and all AR are run through a program called E-finesstri.  E-finesstri can produce a notepad JE that is automatically entered into our accounting system, which is Sage MIP.  We are looking to move to Quickbooks NP edition.  2 questions:
1.  Does anyone have experience with their non profit accounting edition?  I'm very familiar with the for-profit version, but not at all with the non profit version.  Comments on it?

2.  Does anyone know if QB can be set up to automatically upload a notepad file/excel file from another program for all AR?  we would have no interest in it if we need to either bog the program down with our entire membership database, or if we need to manually enter the daily cash receipts.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thank you!

Answers

John Kogan's headshot
John Kogan CEO/CFO • Oct. 3, 2010

The non-profit accounting functionality in the NFP edition is not all that different or significantly different, with the exception of canned reports for NFPs and some different terminology. The core functionality of the products is the same.

To my knowledge, QB Pro and Premier do not have the ability to automatically merge in, import, or otherwise get info in the file without human intervention. And I don’t believe there is any significant functionality difference between Pro and Premier which would include QB NFP Edition in this respect. We use a tool to transfer in excel based info called TransactionPro Importer 4.0 http://www.baystateconsulting.com/products/01TxnWizard.htm

This is a phenomenal tool that allows importing from Excel or Text files – it is cheap and very good and easy to use, but the process is still a manual process. Depending on how much detail needs to go into QB from the E-finessti program, this tool should be able to get it done. If it is just cash receipt and revenue info, there won’t be much to enter, if there is customer record info it may be a little more involved but should also work.

QB Pro and Premier NFP Edition also don’t have true fund accounting functionality (although QB 2011 is now going to introduce basic balance sheet by class functionality which will allow a move toward true or better at least fund accounting), so the interest party may need to weigh that option in the decision process as MIP is a true fund accounting package.

My 2 cents

This answer comes from Paul Smit of Paul Smit & Associates who commented via another channel. Thank you, Paul!

Mark Schauwecker's headshot
Mark Schauwecker Financial Manager • Oct. 15, 2010

Thanks for your input on Quick Books NFP. As the revenue for the non for profit that I'm associated with is less than $100K, the cost of a new NFP version over an older Pro system (that works just fine) doesn't seem worthwhile.

Arlene Lefkoe's headshot
Arlene Lefkoe CONSULTANT • Oct. 15, 2010

What I have my Quickbooks clients do is make a summary journal entry as needed -daily, weekly or monthly. The E-finesstri program has the details, so you don't need it in Quickbooks.

comment-icon 1
Nurit Sonnenschein's headshot
Nurit Sonnenschein General Manager • Oct. 18, 2010

Hi Arlene,
Sounds like you are familiar with both E-Fin and QB NP. Perhaps you can comment on how you have your clients handle unearned income in those journal entries, especially if they are not bringing in the customer data. We use an accrual system for accounting. Say I have a customer that pays in full through e-fin; but each month only 1/12th is revenue -- coming out against unearned income -- how would we handle that if we don't bring the customer data over to QB?

For the record, we are not looking at updating to a newer version or to NP from Pro or premier; we don't currently use QB at all and are debating whether we go for the NP version or the Pro/Premier versions. Revenues are around $4M.

Bryan Frey's headshot
Bryan Frey VP Finance/Corp Controller • Oct. 15, 2010

At such a low dollar volume I would definitely not bother. I think every penny counts in that position and you won't get meaningful new functionality or efficiencies in a newer version or the NFP version.

Nurit Sonnenschein's headshot
Nurit Sonnenschein General Manager • Jan. 13, 2011

Thank you all for your comments -- we decided to go with Pro over NP edition based on your unanimous responses on that question. Now we are struggling to enter just the JE with amounts, leaving the customer data in E-Fin, as Arlene suggested; but QB does not allow you to JE accounts receivables without entering customer data -- does anyone know a way of getting around that?

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