Streamline Your Billing with Construction Invoice Software for NPOs

Construction invoice software for NPOs

as a non-profit organization I know you have a lot on your plate and managing finances absolutely doesn't have to be one of those stressful things so I want you to know that having the right accounting software can absolutely impact you um and really two key ways the first way is that Financial records are easier to maintain and more accurate when you're using a solid accounting software and the second thing is really more importantly your financial reporting see we want Financial reports that will help guide the financial decisions or maybe you could say we want Financial reports that help us not just look back in the rearview mirror but also be able to see on the horizon of opportunities the decisions that we need to make and the finances that support those decisions I'm Theresa Clark and I'm a CPA with over 25 years worth of experience helping non-profits 501c3 organizations I worked inside the organization as a CFO and I've also worked outside the organizations as an external auditor so my mission is to help non-profits answer money questions so that they can Achieve Financial strength I want to see nonprofits accomplish their mission and not be held back by money so you can think of me as a strategic partner you can learn more about me and see more about what I have to offer on my website Teresa clark.com I have a little comparison today that I'd like to share with you this is a little um it's a little bit about just a comparison of QuickBooks to some other accounting softwares and just some feature things that I'd like to share with you so here's a quick little um just to highlight of the kind of starter accounting software decisions and then the um growth level so if we're looking at a starter package which I'm talking about today QuickBooks um these softwares typically they they do something really well in that they're plug and play and they go um that's really the one thing and the other thing is their cost so QuickBooks is a great low-cost plug-and-play built-in get it going very much can make it easy to entry well there are a few things that it doesn't offer so I want to share with you a little bit about as you're moving as a non-profit to the growth um you know through growth and into meeting a new accounting software a couple of you know examples I've used in the past are blackbauds Financial Edge and then the MIP fund accounting software several else others on the market not endorsing any products that I just you know I have experience with both of those so that's to say the thing about those softwares is that now you get to the place where your non-profit financial reporting is built in so in QuickBooks you have to do a workaround I've posted another video about one of the workarounds I use but when you move to that growth standpoint and you've got a you know a better more robust really non-profit software um that nonprofit reporting is built in and makes those decision making tools much more at your fingertips even including dashboards and financial analytics that those tools can start to build in for you the other thing is that they also provide an audit Trail so QuickBooks one of the things I do not like about it as a CPA who has absolutely worked as an auditor is that you can change historical records I mean you can change anything you want um I recently had a situation where a bank account syncing happened got out of sync and when we resynced it it duplicated transactions for a long period of time we had to go back through and and that accounting period wasn't closed so we had to go back and detect which records went in and get them back out so and I don't like that QuickBooks doesn't have an audit Trail where's these other tools they do they start to track everything that's happening the financial records and allows things you know counting periods to be closed and entries to be you know monitored and and kept from being um you know put in the wrong period at that point that you've already done Financial reports um a couple other things they have a great these other tools have really good accounts payable sub-ledgers they also have opportunities for donor solutions that can be integrated so a lot of times non-profits have a separate um donor management tool where all their donations go into and then they double entry that into their accounting records well these other growth kind of level platforms they integrate those two records They communicate so that you know that everything happening your donation software is happening in your financial records and that the coding of any restrictions or categories are also kept um well and then query capabilities so the ability like we were talking about we want to move our data from just data entry and done to use the information to forward our decision making and so these other softwares get to a place really where there's incredible capabilities um so those are some of the reasons that I think you get to a point where Gap QuickBooks is great I mean hear me out great look at that cost starter package last time I checked of a QuickBooks software I mean two thousand dollars a year that's phenomenal it's Plug and Play it's easy to use it gets the job done I'm a huge fan it does work great you just hit a point where you might want to start moving on to and meaning to think about um a different level of accounting software and those ones I mentioned they're at least going to start with four thousand depending on the size of your organization the pricing model changes but they start to get expensive fast so you can't just run out and start there sometimes you've got to start with what you have okay so that's a little bit about the features that I wanted to share and then the last component I really want to talk about is that cost management um you need to manage your costs and there'll come a point where you're probably going to need to think about an account Advanced accounting software where but it's just at the point where you know it's going to make it worth it for you to increase your cost for the reward that you're going to get out um okay lastly I want to make a quick note and that's security when you're dealing with financial information security has to be a top concern and so you want to make sure when you're looking at softwares that you understand what they're doing to encrypt your data and to create secure logon environments and then kind of a related note what are their Disaster Recovery or backup plans and what happens in an unexpected event so those are some things to keep in mind I also want to say you know finding the right accounting software really will help you to focus on your mission and allowing you to make a greater impact to do the things that you're called and positioned to do you um oh I have a resource on my website if this topic is of interest to you you're probably also trying to figure out how to manage all of the financial tasks each you know month and and week and year so I have a free checklist of financial tasks that I wanted to share with you it's available on my website up at the home toolbar or you can go to teresaclark.com forward slash checklist and I hope that that will be a helpful tool for you