Some observations:
>> Quicken will do just fine -- but as Critter indicates above , you may want to use Excel to personalize, etc.
>> QuickBooks Pro is even better in my view --- PLEASE NOTE -- it is NOT necessary to have the current edition; suggest you go to eBay and buy even the QBPro editions as far back as 2002 for a very small fee.
Quicken and Quickbooks are both easy to use. They were designed for use by non-accountants who wouldn't know a debit from a credit, but who would understand payment vs deposit, spend vs receive.
The main thing to do, read first. Read the guide and if you still don't get it, invest in buying a book on using Quicken / Quickbooks. The most important thing is you want to determine how you will classify your expenses. It will make your life as treasurer a breeze.
The great thing is that you can import your Excel spreadsheets into Quickbooks (and Quicken), saving you a lot of time entering data and avoiding data entry errors.
I have an accounting background (college courses and several years of work experience). I think Quickbooks can be overkill for most PTAs (based on budgets, income and expenses). You can start with Quicken, which is easier to use and import your Quicken file into Quickbooks when the PTA has outgrown Quicken.
When I became treasurer, I want given plastic bags with a jumble of about 5 years of receipts and notes, bank statements and cancelled checks. I AM SO GLAD THEY HAD THE BANK STATEMENTS. Your bank statements and cancelled checks are your starting point. Everything ties into them.
We have been using Quicken for years, but when I looked into upgrading to Quickbooks, I found it cost over $200. Is the non-profit version cheaper? We can't really justify that much for the software. I have been happy with Quicken, but hear Quickbooks has better reporting capabilities. Good luck - sorry I have no experience to share.
Hi, Alcina--welcome to the boards! I'd never even heard of Quickbook until tonight, when our treasurer stopped by my house to show me how she set up our books using, you got it, Quickbook! The next time I catch her I'll ask her about it, but from what I saw it looks pretty simple (though for us it would be because we just started). It looked like she started with our current balance, then worked backwords using our receipts and deposit slips to separate everything into the correct category. She's very methodical (she's a CPA so I guess that goes with the territory) so she stapled all our deposit slips and receipts to each page in the book and divided those sections by category. Being one of those people who is always yelled at for having my purse unzipped with bills and receipts jammed in there, I was all impressed with her tidiness!
As someone who is not known for my mathematical accumen nor bookeeping savvy, I was surprised I could look at it and understand what was going on--usually when I see our PTA's expenses at a meeting my mind goes numb and I can't follow a train of thought on how they got point A to reconcile with point B, but Quickbook was well labeled and gave space for explanations.
I've signed up to be a Treasurer for the 2004-2005 school year. Our current Treasurer has being doing the budget, income and expenses in Excel. They did purchase QuickBooks for Nonprofits - however - they did not figure out how to use it.
I would like to use Quickbooks providing it is implemented in a straight forward way and will save me time.
My request for assistance is this:
Are you using Quickbooks to manage your budget, income & expenses? If so, how did you get started?
Does anyone have a sample nonprofit company already set up in Quickbooks that I could use to get started?
I know thousands before me have been on this road and have figured this out.
