QUICKBOOKS PRO VS ONLINE

[Hats Off]

It is interesting to note that American accountants prefer QuickBooks; in Canada accountants frown on QB and prefer Sage. My experience with EBMS is that not only do you need to invest more money but also more time. I had a bad experience attempting to set up Eagle (due to the business owner only) and never did get to see it properly at work but then any system that wants to use inventory well takes more time.

[knotdust]

I would be interested also if anyone is more familiar or uses the gnucash program. If we could make it work at a reasonable cost it might be a replacement for QB. I've looked at Sage but the evaluations say steer clear for nonprofits. It evidently worked when it was called Peachtree but when they changed to Sage(new owner?) they made some changes that the evaluator didn't think it was a wise purchase for non-profits.

Just got the news that QB online is going up in price again. It will now be $150/month. I am not interested in continuing for $1,800/year. We would be better off switching to something else if Desktop every becomes available.
I have a few checks left then I am going to roll it back to Desktop 2015. I know that works fine and has worked well for what we did. I already have it on my lap top ready to go. That will probably be this upcoming weekend.

It seems they think everyone is made of money or something. They keep raising the price and they will price themselves right out of the market.

[Hats Off]

I use Sage 50 for a charity - if you are just doing record keeping, there should be no problem.

[knotdust]

Thanks Hats Off. I may look at Sage 50 a bit more. Some of the reviews did not recommend it for non-profits.
Eagle Business Systems would work I think, but the cost would be a prohibitive factor and it seems much more extensive than what we really need. I've looked at Desktop Enterprise, which would allow me to do everything in Quickbooks, but it seems to be much more extensive than we really need.

However, our small church does not have the resources for spending close to $2k/year for accounting software. I am in the process of rolling back to Desktop 2015. It has worked fine in the past, gives me the reports I need in a format that I can pull the information from for the various committees, allows me to record transactions by class and even has 3 employees included. I do all the filing with the Federal Government. It is going to involve a bunch of re-keying transactions but that is something I can do. I'm semi retired so I know what I will be doing over the next number of months. I have all the paper work and bank statements so it just means some screen time on rainy days and evening hours.

If necessary, in the future, we may move to a system that doesn't include payroll and record the withholding in an excel spreadsheet. If I understood Excel better I would set everything up in Excel, but that would involve writing the checks manually and I don't want to go back to that.

Again thanks for the practical advice from someone who has had 1st had experience in several different accounting packages. I've said it before that it is my opinion(mine only) that online was not a well thought out program. It works similar to Desktop but seems to be a me too program. The continual raising of the price gives me the feeling that they don't have the numbers using it they need to support it and are using it as a beta test platform. I'm probably wrong but that's my gut feel.

[knotdust]

For those who are using Quickbooks Desktop and maybe Online for non-profit/charitable uses; but the cost is becoming prohibitive, check out techsoup.org.

They offer reduced prices for Quickbooks and other software, subsidized by industry and the software companies themselves. Sometimes as much as half the cost of the retail price. I think you have to upgrade yearly.

Many thanks to a fellow out of the blue on another forum I read occasionally. There was thread lamenting the high costs of software for the small business and I commented about my issues with Quickbooks Online. I received a PM from a gentleman who clued me in to techsoup.org.

I will pursue it once I have everything brought up to date in Quickbooks Desktop. The prices are very attractive for non-profits/charities. I had heard about some of this but was never able to find a web site that offered it so thought I was stuck paying full price.

[Neto]

For those who are using Quickbooks Desktop and maybe Online for non-profit/charitable uses; but the cost is becoming prohibitive, check out techsoup.org.

They offer reduced prices for Quickbooks and other software, subsidized by industry and the software companies themselves. Sometimes as much as half the cost of the retail price. I think you have to upgrade yearly.

Many thanks to a fellow out of the blue on another forum I read occasionally. There was thread lamenting the high costs of software for the small business and I commented about my issues with Quickbooks Online. I received a PM from a gentleman who clued me in to techsoup.org.

I will pursue it once I have everything brought up to date in Quickbooks Desktop. The prices are very attractive for non-profits/charities. I had heard about some of this but was never able to find a web site that offered it so thought I was stuck paying full price.

I looked into something like this once for an Amish health care facility that was starting up, and there were lots of conditions involved, and they did not qualify. I can't remember the particulars anymore.

[knotdust]

And that may be my case as well. I did not explore it in depth and I may be better served with purchasing the package from some other source at full price. I did see there were hoops you have to jump through but since I was not ready for that yet, I didn't explore further. Thanks for that cautionary advice Neto.

The practical experience you all shared has been very helpful in formulating my decisions.

[JoshScott]

I'm months late to this conversation but I just wanted to say that I have used GnuCash some and it is a clean, stable, mature double-entry accounting application with a large user base that is easy to use and has nice clear reports. It is well suited to small business or non-profit. It doesn't do payroll like Quickbooks would though.

[Neto]

I'm months late to this conversation but I just wanted to say that I have used GnuCash some and it is a clean, stable, mature double-entry accounting application with a large user base that is easy to use and has nice clear reports. It is well suited to small business or non-profit. It doesn't do payroll like Quickbooks would though.

Have they added inventory tracking to GnuCash? (That's another biggie for a lot of businesses.)

[JoshScott]

Have they added inventory tracking to GnuCash? (That's another biggie for a lot of businesses.)

Doesn't look like it.