Create the Perfect Invoice Book Design for NPOs to Streamline Your Donations

Invoice book design for NPOs

so we are back with another face off and this time it is between Apples and QuickBooks online if you have been thinking ruminating trying to determine which one of these softwares is going to be best for your organization then keep watching let's jump in [Music] so first we're going to talk about pricing right because that tends to be right where the research begins so both of these are cloud-based tools so they operate off of the subscription model based off of where you fall in the subscription prices determines what features you get access to right so if we talk about Applause they have the 39 50 69 50 and then 189 a month subscription again if you start off with the most basic subscription right you know some of your features are going to be limited As you move up you get more with QuickBooks Online it's a little bit different because you can purchase through soup where you are able to get a discounted rate for the software so you can purchase QuickBooks Online advance for a hundred and sixty dollars and you get 25 users right and so you don't have to worry about this whole subscription breakdown or where you fall into you can just go ahead and get QuickBooks Online Advance which we usually do suggest for most organizations and then you can start there now if we want to lean in a little bit about what is making these softwares different initially especially considering price right is that QuickBooks Online does market and promote itself as a accounting software for you know small business owners right so we know immediately that typically does not include non-profits however we know in recent years there's been a lot of changes to the software there are a lot of things that you now can do that you couldn't before and there are a whole host of non-profits that use it right and so we know that nonprofits can use it they can use it well no hiccups there apples on the other hand does promote itself more on uh being Church accounting software I think even more recently it says like non-profit and church accounting software and so as you can imagine there are some a bit differences between non-profit accounting and church accounting and what those different uh users or management may want to see as it relates to accounting and financial reports however that is the difference in how they Market themselves so right off the bat immediately you might be drawn to Apples because it is a bit more geared specifically to the nonprofit Community another thing though that I do want to point out about apples is that although it is specifically geared toward the nonprofit Community there are a lot more things that they offer and so you have to be clear on what you want your software to be known for and what you want it to be able to do right so an example might be you know with apples you also get a fundraising platform um you get some marketing features uh you get a donor management tool and so you have to ask yourself you know do you want a lot of these things housed in the same software or are you looking to create some separation around like maybe where you do your accounting versus where you do your donor management versus when you do your marketing right so let's move on to design here I don't find that there are major differences just because these are both cloud-based tools they are also considered more um modern tech and if you are you know tech savvy then you know a lot of these Tech based or cloud-based tools rather that are more modern a lot of them tend to have that Chic uh really friendly easy going setup right what I will say though is that QuickBooks Online to me has a simpler approach to the user interface with apples because it does a lot of different things you are having to navigate through a lot more than just Accounting in QuickBooks it has the main menu on the left hand side apples is across the top right but you also are having things like marketing right right at the top that you're looking at when you really might be in there to reconcile your books for the month so something to think about when you are thinking about design now my main issue as it relates to the design is that with Apple's it feels like the software includes accounting but is not a about or based on accounting if that makes sense whereas with QuickBooks it's all surrounding the numbers right it is accounting based and any additional um tools software or things that they provide it's usually an add-on and it's usually in addition to the accounting software and I actually like that it's kept separate because it can begin to feel confusing and muddled in in a lot of ways depending on the size of your organization you begin to segregate duties and so for example the person that is managing your accountant accounting is also nine times out of ten not the person that's following your name your 990 so I don't need to see e-file up at the top right um my marketing team my marketing team doesn't need to be in my accounting software and so how does that work when I want to separate that out right you know do I have to manage permissions and things like that and so you might want to think about that when you're thinking about you know access um privacy internal controls who actually needs access and where you are managing things in each software that you use and lastly we're going to talk about ease of use coupled with support so again as it refers to ease of use I do find that the two softwares are on par but that is coming from an accountant if you are in a space where you are still managing your accounting um in like a DIY or someone who's not in accounting your operations person you know you're you have an assistant that's going in and reconciling on a monthly basis I will say they can get a bit overwhelmed with the different options in apples but as with anything you want to be able to uh access support you know blog forums videos on how to best use it as an accountant I find that I can easily make my way around but I do feel like with apples there is just a lot more options and a lot more um when you click on right some of those options a lot more included as far as the drop down so you can easily be overwhelmed with the information now as it relates to support here they both have really good support tools but I think Qbo Reigns here because of how large the community aspect is so with QuickBooks Online I mean there's videos on videos on videos there's forums there's blogs right there's a lot of information out there that you can self research you can go after on your own before actually reaching out to them with apples the information seems a little bit scarce some of the videos on YouTube are very outdated very old and for the ones that are up it seems like it's a lot about um accounting principles and Basics which kind of says to me that some of the people or the majority of the people that use their software aren't accountants but it's more so like the executive director or someone who doesn't have an accounting background and also needs to learn about accounting if that makes sense and so that's also something to think about the other thing that I noticed is that with apples it's not so much that there's a shortage of content but it is gated so you typically have to provide you know your email or your contact information in order to get access to that that information is a bit more up to date but to me once it's gated it kind of speaks to being more for like your clients and customers versus um someone who's kind of just trying to do a comparison and see how it is um and like test it out so again I think when we get to the end of these types of videos the question is always so which do I use so if you're thinking about which one is going to be best for you um here are some questions that you want to ask yourself do you want a software that caters only or specifically to non-profit organizations do you want a software that also has other pieces involved like donor management fundraising platform um text giving and other marketing right aspects or do you want a software that is only surrounding the accounting function right so you want to think think about also who is going to be doing the accounting because the software matters in that case too now what I will say is once you have hit the threshold to the point that you are being audited you really need to separate your functions and you really need to have a dedicated accounting team that is supporting your non-profit operations and so that is something to consider there as well now I hope those questions do help if you are thinking about apples and QuickBooks online if there are any other things that you want me to dive into specifically just leave it in the comments below like subscribe hope you like this video and I'll see you guys in the next one [Music] thank you [Music]