Sheri Meister and I led a webinar on using QuickBooks for your church. I’m not against accounting software specifically designed for churches (e.g. Icon, Church Windows, Power Church, Church Managements Solutions, Shepherd’s Staff, etc). Church accounting software often does a great job…but it’s usually kind of spendy…and it’s hard to find someone that knows how to use it or is willing to learn. QuickBooks you can get for less than $100/year. In pretty much any size of community, you will find that at least 1 in a 100 have QuickBooks experience. For church accounting software, that number is closer to 1 in 10,000.
The downside of QuickBooks is that it’s not a perfect fit for churches. It was designed around meeting the needs of small or medium-sized for profit businesses. They’ve been making it more and more church-friendly over the years, but it still needs a number of tweaks to make it work well. Here’s what Sherit and I cover:
- Where to get QuickBooks for cheap
- Settings to adjust to make it more church-friendly
- How to setup funds, donors, and pledges
- How to setup a budget and fix the Budget to Actuals report
- How to send out donor statements
Useful Links
- TechSoup.org (cheap software for nonprofits): https://www.techsoup.org/
- Related QuickBooks Videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLy3_Fkz8_LMr6QTGMvolFG5i6Vn2WaMor
- Webinar on Chart of Accounts: https://jctaccounting.com/2019/12/04/charting-your-churchs-success-or-failure-with-the-chart-of-accounts/
- Paying a Lay Employee Manually: https://jctaccounting.com/2020/01/31/paying-a-lay-employee-manually/
JCT Accounting Co 