QuickBooks Online: A Non-Profit Executive Director's Perspective
November 30, 2018

QuickBooks Online: A Non-Profit Executive Director's Perspective

Dylan DeClerck | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with QuickBooks Online

We are using QuickBooks Online to manage our expenses and fundraising efforts across our entire non-profit organization. Previously we used simple spreadsheets to organize our financial data, but the QuickBooks functionality and ability to connect directly to our bank account was going to save us tons of time per month so we decided to switch to the online version. We also looked into the desktop version, but the bank connection functionality was greatly underdeveloped, so we decided that the online version would fit our organization the best even though it is not specific for non-profit organizations.
  • Bank Connection - it's so nice to be able to pull expenses and deposits directly from our bank account into QuickBooks for categorization, this was the primary reason we chose the online version.
  • Categorization of Expenses - easy to categorize expenses and assign them to a certain vendor (same for sales and customers).
  • Reporting - Statement of Activity, Financial Position and Revenue by Customer are the most used reports.
  • Non-profit functionality for fundraising - I have to categorize accounts receivable as sales, and instead of being able to show collection of the sale and put the funds into our fundraising (income) account upon collection, I have to delete the sale and recategorize the expense as a fundraising
  • Reports could be more clearly labeled so I could find what I need better (e.g. being able to pull how much I paid a contractor by name).
  • Reconciliation of errors between bank and QuickBooks accounts - I make mistakes, I need to know there's an easy way to reset the account to zero our minor errors, but have not yet found the means to do so.
  • QuickBooks Online has saved us tons of time each month categorizing expenses and income, allowing us to focus on more important tasks at hand. It was also a huge savior for compiling our next year's budget and projections.
  • It took a long time to set up QuickBooks Online and the desktop version when we did a trial of that product.
  • Product support is not great while setting up QuickBooks, especially when we had a lot of problems with our account.
QuickBooks Online was much easier to use across a non-profit where we needed people in multiple locations working on different servers to access the financial data at once, it also allowed us to connect our bank accounts to the software which was a huge benefit of the program, these were main differentiators between the online product and the desktop version that we trialed. We have also used Wave in the past for accounting and still use it for it's invoicing features because of the nice invoices it creates for our organization at no cost. Microsoft Excel is what we used before Online version so QuickBooks is much more advanced than that.
Small businesses or medium-sized companies could definitely use QuickBooks Online, especially if they are not currently using any accounting software or are transitioning from a free or low-cost product alternative. I would also recommend the online version for non-profits if they can go in with the knowledge that they'll have to categorize income more similarly to a for-profit organization.

QuickBooks Online Feature Ratings

Accounts payable
Not Rated
Accounts receivable
5
Cash management
7
Bank reconciliation
10
Expense management
10
Time tracking
Not Rated
Fixed asset management
Not Rated
Multi-currency support
Not Rated
Multi-division support
9
Regulations compliance
Not Rated
Electronic tax filing
Not Rated
Self-service portal
Not Rated
Global Financial Support
Not Rated
Primary and Secondary Ledgers
10
Intercompany Accounting
Not Rated
Localizations
Not Rated
Journals and Reconciliations
10
Enterprise Accounting
10
Configurable Accounting
Not Rated
Centralized Rules Framework
Not Rated
Standardized Processes
Not Rated
Inventory tracking
Not Rated
Automatic reordering
Not Rated
Location management
Not Rated
Manufacturing module
Not Rated
Pricing
Not Rated
Order entry
Not Rated
Credit card processing
Not Rated
Cost of goods sold
10
Order Orchestration
Not Rated
End-to-end order visibility
Not Rated
Order exception Resolution
Not Rated
Pay calculation
6
Benefit plan administration
Not Rated
Direct deposit files
Not Rated
Salary revision and increment management
Not Rated
Reimbursement management
8
Dashboards
9
Standard reports
10
Custom reports
5
Not Rated
API for custom integration
Not Rated
Plug-ins
Not Rated
Role-based user permissions
Not Rated
Single sign-on capability
10