Top 10 Features of QuickBooks Enterprise for Nonprofit & Charity Organizations

Proper accounting is essential to the survival of any charity or nonprofit organization. Nonprofit accounting involves many of the same accounting tasks required of for-profit organizations: recording transactions, performing bank reconciliations, budgeting, and reporting.

But they also need an accounting solution that can handle fund accounting and recording in-kind donations. Only a few accounting software packages are designed with the features that charities and nonprofit organizations need. One that does is QuickBooks Enterprise for Nonprofits.

Here are ten of the top features of QuickBooks Enterprise for Nonprofits that you need to know about.

1. Easy-to-Use Interface

Whether you’ve been using QuickBooks for years or you’re new to Intuit products, QuickBooks Enterprise for Nonprofits has an easy-to-use interface that helps you intuitively tackle standard functions and tasks.

The home page includes a workflow view that shows how those tasks are interrelated, and every function can be accessed with just a click of the mouse.

If you need more assistance, QuickBooks has a number of training videos and how-to articles available on its website. Plus, every QuickBooks Enterprise account comes with QuickBooks Priority Circle support.

This gives customers access to guidance from knowledgeable customer support representatives, as well as a dedicated account manager who can assist with anything from product setup to creating workflows.

2. Industry-Specific Reporting

Every organization needs basic reports like balance sheets and income statements, but decision-makers in a nonprofit need to see things in more detail.

QuickBooks Enterprise for Nonprofits includes Advanced Reporting, a powerful reporting tool that lets you build customized reports based on your specific needs. However, you don’t need to be a report-writing wizard to benefit from Advanced Reporting.

QuickBooks Enterprise for Nonprofits comes with a bundle of reports that nonprofit customers find useful.

Some of the industry-specific reports that come with QuickBooks Enterprise for Nonprofits include:

• Budget by Programs. Users can compare the projected budget versus actual results for each program or project to see how the organization is hitting its goals.
• Statement of Financial Position. The Statement of Financial Position is the nonprofit equivalent of a balance sheet. It shows the organization’s financial position (what it owns and owes) at any point in time. The organization can also compare current numbers to the prior year.
• Statement of Financial Income & Expense. This report allows the organization to show how much money came in by project or program, and how the money was spent.
• Statement of Functional Expenses. This report provides users with more details on the costs incurred for each functional area of the charity or nonprofit organization. Functional classifications can include programs, management, general, and fundraising. This is an essential report for nonprofit boards, major donors, and other important funders.
• Donors and Grants. The Donors and Grants report shows contributions by donor or by grant program. This helps users see who the biggest supporters of the organization were, based on total contributions.

3. Electronic Invoicing

Nonprofit organizations need to keep on top of invoices to ensure they have adequate cash flow for their operations.

QuickBooks Enterprise Solution for Nonprofits makes invoicing donors and collect payments easy with its enhanced electronic invoicing features. If you choose, you can email invoices to donors or customers with a convenient Pay Now link. Once payment is made, it’s automatically applied to the correct invoice. This saves your finance team’s time that would otherwise be spent reconciling payments and invoices.

For those chronically late payers, you can also automate payment reminders. QuickBooks Enterprise for Nonprofits 2020 allows users to create a reminder email template and schedule those emails for late payments. This can significantly reduce the time your employees spend following up on outstanding balances while ensuring the organization’s cash flow stays healthy.

4. Integrates with Microsoft Office

Many nonprofit organizations use Microsoft Word and Excel for sending correspondence to donors, performing accounting reconciliations, and more. QuickBooks Enterprise for Nonprofits includes prepared letters built on Word templates. The software can pre-populate the templates with your data.

It also allows you to export any report to Excel or import templates from Word. This gives you the flexibility to work with familiar applications without wasting time retyping information already contained within your accounting application.

You can also customize the built-in templates, reports, and donor forms to change fields, add your logo, and even add your mission statement. This customization enhances your organization’s brand and helps donors remember you.

5. Unified Chart of Accounts

The Unified Chart of Accounts (UCOA) was created by a number of major nonprofit support organizations. It’s a methodology for the chart of accounts in the nonprofit industry based on financial line items on IRS Form 990. The goal is to consistently classify transactions across an organization and across the nonprofit sector. This makes it easier for nonprofit organizations to complete IRS forms and makes it easier for government agencies, board members, and donors to interpret financial reports.

QuickBooks Enterprise for Nonprofits incorporates the UCOA in its default chart of accounts. While the default accounts may not be perfect for every nonprofit organization, customizing the chart of accounts is easy. You can change and manipulate the accounts included in your QuickBooks file at any time to reflect the activities and programs that are essential to your organization.

6. Integrates with Salesforce CRM

Fundraising is a mission-critical component of any nonprofit organization. If your organization uses Salesforce for donor relationship management, integrating Salesforce with QuickBooks allows you to share your financial data with the sales team.

This integration reduces wasted time on duplicate data entry. With one source of information shared by your fundraising and accounting teams, you’ll be able to serve donors better and focus on growing your organization.

7. Scheduling Tasks, Appointments, and More

The to-do list for nonprofit employees can seem never-ending. However, with QuickBooks Enterprise for Nonprofits, you don’t have to worry about missing necessary appointments or forgetting critical tasks thanks to the built-in calendar.

Once you open the calendar within QuickBooks Enterprise for Nonprofits, it automatically displays past due tasks as well as upcoming to-dos and transactions for the next week. You can easily add new meetings, tasks, appointments, calls, and emails, prioritize them, and even link them to a donor, employee, or vendor. You can also add any useful notes in the details box.

By customizing your user preferences, you can have QuickBooks Enterprise for Nonprofits open these reminders every time you open your company file. This helps to ensure you never miss an important task, call, or appointment again.

8. Mileage Tracking

Many nonprofit organizations ask employees to use their own vehicles for work and reimburse those employees for mileage. These reimbursements typically require the employee to maintain a log of miles driven for the organization – a requirement that tends to get neglected until it’s time to submit an expense report.

QuickBooks Enterprise for Nonprofits allows organizations to track mileage for multiple vehicles. You can even assign mileage to specific projects or programs and mark them as billable if the costs are passed on to a donor or grant program.

9. Budgeting

The annual budgeting process is vital for every nonprofit because it can help ensure the organization is financially sustainable. QuickBooks Enterprise for Nonprofits includes budgeting and forecasting that make it easy to plan out the year and make mission-critical decisions.

Using these tools, you can plan your budget from scratch, use last year’s numbers as a starting point for the current year, or import an existing budget. Once your budget is set up, you can track the organization’s performance against the budget using a number of reports, including the Statement of Financial Income and Expense and Budget vs. Actual.

10. Scalability

QuickBooks Enterprise for Nonprofits offers three tiers, so your organization can select the features and price that best meet your needs.

• Silver. Every tier offers a powerful accounting solution that can scale from one to 30 individual users, Advanced Reporting, the ability to integrate with nearly 200 apps, and QuickBooks Priority Circle support.
• Gold. The most popular QuickBooks Enterprise subscription level also includes QuickBooks Desktop Enhanced Payroll, which allows you to create paychecks, direct deposit payroll, file payroll taxes, and issue W-2s, all from your QuickBooks company file.
• Platinum. The Platinum package adds Advanced Inventory, allowing organizations with inventory needs to track items across multiple locations and quickly fulfill orders. It also features Advanced Pricing, which gives users tools for customizing and automating pricing.

Final Word

It’s easy to see why so many charities and nonprofit organizations choose QuickBooks Enterprise for Nonprofits for their accounting solution. With its easy-to-use interface and wealth of features designed for nonprofits, taking care of your organization’s finances won’t stand in the way of fulfilling your mission.

Your charity or nonprofit organizations needs an accounting software package that fits your needs now and can grow with you as you tap into additional resources. QuickBooks Enterprise for Nonprofits is an excellent choice for ensuring your organization can grow in an organizing and well-managed way.

If you think QuickBooks Enterprise for Nonprofits might be the right fit for your organization or you want to host QuickBooks Enterprise on the cloud, reach out to one of our Solutions Consultants at +1 855-270-6252.