QuickBooks Premier Nonprofit 2010
- on 12.18.09
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- QuickBooks Premier Nonprofit 2010 helps you easily organize and maintain your business finances all in one place
- Demonstrate financial accountability to your Board of Directors with the Statement of Financial Income & Expense
- Customize communications and correspondence with contributors; ready to use templates allow you to easily track pledges and donations
- Make it easy for you or your accountant to prepare the IRS Form 990 by letting QuickBooks total and organize all your finances according to IRS requirements
- Use industry specific tools to manage program budgets, expenses and bill payments
Product Description
QuickBooks Premier Nonprofit is designed for religious organizations, charities and more. With just a few clicks, you can track program budgets, donations and pledges. You can also customize donor communications and manage them from within your QuickBooks. Plus, get all the advantages of QuickBooks Pro.Amazon.com Product Description
The #1 small business financial management software, tailored for your industry to help make your business more profitabl… More >>
QuickBooks Premier Nonprofit 2010
I use QuickBooks Nonprofit to manage both the business accounts as well as track donations for the nonprofit that I work for. I’ve been using QBs for over 3 years, largely because our outside accounting service also uses it and for data interpolation it’s important for us to be using the same software. If it wasn’t for that reason, it’s unlikely that I would continue to use it.
The primary reason that I find QBs to be inferior for nonprofit use in particular is QuickBook’s inability to print a meaningful year end giving summary for a list of donors. Sure, you can print a donor summary, but it doesn’t format the letter into something easily printed and put into a standard windowed envelope, nor is it possible to print a large set of letters for every donor–something virtually every nonprofit needs to do if they receive private donations! This is such a disastrous failure on Intuit’s part that it blows the mind that they market this software as a ‘premium’ option for non-profits! A program lacking basic functionality that virtually all non-profits require is at its core FLAWED. This functionality has been missing for the last 3 years and even Intuits site acknowledges its absence–but with no indication if it will (ever?) be added.
I’ve used many versions of software to track donations (Membership Plus for example) and even the poorest of them had the ability to print simple donor giving summaries in a letter format. The total absence of this functionality in QBs is inexcusable. There is a way to generate donor letters but it requires buying a separate piece of software from Beyond The Ledgers (google it), a third party software company, at an additional cost. At the ‘premium’ price Intuit sells QBs for, that should NOT be necessary!
Another major problem with QBs is that the database model is built off something from the early nineties. You cannot custom edit fields or remove fields you don’t use, so expect to do A LOT of clicking around or repetitious use of the TAB key to navigate. They erred on the side of including EVERY possible data field, but with no way to police them down to something manageable, it just feels like bloat. Seriously, in 2010 WHY can’t I make/edit/remove fields? The answer is the underlying architecture of QBs in general which is sadly dated and makes Microsoft Access look amazing.
That said, other than missing a pretty key feature, QBs works very well for tracking expenses, generating checks, managing payroll, and virtually all other financial reporting and accounting. The interface is great (and even better in this 2010 release) and easy to navigate even if it is dated in a lot of other ways. Generating reports is simple enough, as is memorizing them and running multiple reports on a weekly or monthly basis. QBs is a workhorse at a great number of tasks, it is just too slow on it’s feet and has really started to show it’s age. Throw whatever GUI (graphic user interface) or skin on it you want, but it’s still old and missing many of the simplifications that would really make it shine.
There are better options out there in my opinion. Primarily Access ACS which is what I would be using if not for the aforementioned limitation of needing to run the same software as our accountant. With the aid of the MACRO excel sheet purchased from Beyond the Ledgers, getting donor letters printed every December 31st isn’t impossible, just more difficult than it needs to be, especially at the price of this software.
2.5./5 stars. Cannot custom control fields. Cannot police or remove fields. Cannot easily generate and print donor giving statements. Inferior at this price and not acceptable for something marketed as ‘premier.’
Rating: 3 / 5