Nonprofit accounting software for Macs

TidBITS Talk
1

Does anyone know of a good Mac accounting software program that could be used for a new small nonprofit?

Not sure if Quickbooks for Mac has that capability.

Thanks folks!

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Hello, Rick,

Sadly, no, I don’t. I’m the Treasurer for our local library board, and I have to run Quickbooks Non-Profit Edition in a Windows 10 virtual machine on my macbook.

TechSoup does have Quickbooks for Mac for $50, which is a steep discount. (If you haven’t heard of TechSoup, you really should check out their website - https://www.techsoup.org/ . They have shedloads of heavily discounted software from major vendors (Adobe, Microsoft, etc., etc.), as well as programs that teach how to best use technology for your non-profit.)

They also have discounted access to QuickBooks Online. Have you looked to see if the online edition has non-profit features?

Yours,
Jason

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Thanks very much, Jason.

I was directed to Techsoup first. Sent them a question if there Mac version supports nonprofits, but haven’t heard back. Haven’t looked into the subscription online versions yet. Don’t know how much our board wants to spend. Just getting ideas.

I have a fairly new iMac (2020) with 64Gig memory. So, I could probably do a Windows virtual (is that from Parallels?). I had a DOS card in a mac 20 years ago!!!

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@randy2 maintains a list of Mac billing, time, and accounting software. Regarding accounting software specifically, he says:

There are a huge number of stand-alone business accounting programs, and personal finance programs, for the Macintosh. By my count about 70 in all. That’s too many to list here. I can send a complete list to anyone who wants it.

See his site for the few he lists, but it might be worth contacting him for the full list – maybe there’s something that will work for you.

http://www.macattorney.com/timebillacnt.html

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I need to write a full article about this, but for TidBITS, we recently switched from AccountEdge to Xero. It’s been a breath of fresh air—so much faster and easier to use. We only need the least expensive account, which I think is $11 per month, and it came with a 30-day free trial so we could migrate our books first. We also looked at Zoho Books, but liked Xero just a little more for its ability to create rules that automatically split payroll payments into all the necessary chunks. Zoho Books couldn’t do that.

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I have an updated Web page listing all of the accounting software for the Macintosh that I know of, here:

Macintosh Accounting Software
http://www.macattorney.com/accounting.html

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Have a look at:

Accounts On-Demand from Software4Nonprofits
($220 first year, $110/yr each succeeding year)
https://www.software4nonprofits.com/accounts/ondemand.htm

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Thank you very much for this reply!!!

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Thank you very much for this reply, Randy. I look at your suggestion.

And, I have come across your name and site a couple of times over the years, I want to say starting maybe 15 years ago or longer.

So, thanks again!

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Thanks, Adam, for this tip. I have some research to do now and will get back to the board.

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I have the same question and haven’t really found anything that is good for a small nonprofit. There is a book called Running QuickBooks in Nonprofits (Kindle version) that goes into a lot of detail explaining why QuickBooks (even the non-profit version) and other accounting software is not quite right for most nonprofits. It is worth a look before you make your decision. And I hope that whatever you decide, you’ll share the solution here.

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Thanks for this info! As a volunteer treasurer with no professional accounting experience, I’m looking for something to use that will have good support also. So, I’m a little leary of Quickbooks at this point especially because it’s NFP version is only made for PC’s. And, looking at the info on the book “Running QuickBooks in Nonprofits”, all versions are from April 2011 - quite outdated.

I’m checking out Aplos right now:

Online Nonprofit & Church Software | Aplos: https://www.aplos.com

Pricey, but …

Need to make a decision within a month or two.

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I used MYOB for 40 odd years right from the beginning and it served me well but after it had been bought and sold a few times, the owners stopped tax codes imports, and you had to by an upgrade if you had staff. the new upgrade was basically the same as before, with very small alterations , when I retired last year I asked around for something that did a similar job without the complications, as I don’t have any staff but still run a small publishing business, and do a few fine art prints, I was suggested the program Manager, which did everything I needed and it was free as long as I used it on my computer, but to use the cloud it was charge job… Great simple interactive help, and all the things that I need, invoices, purchase orders, tax codes etc. Go to (https://www.manager.io/) for more information

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Thanks for this info!