What To Look For In Nonprofit Accounting Software
An accounting platform for nonprofits should be customizable, versatile, generate reports, show key information at a glance, and automate your most repetitive processes. Here are the most important things to look for in a nonprofit accounting program:
- Customizable to meet the unique needs of nonprofit accounting.
- Able to account for different business processes like grant or endowment management, nonprofit budgeting, and nonprofit financial management.
- Generate reports that can be used internally and shared with donors, perspective donors, and board members for increased accountability.
- Provide data-driven information for key stakeholders involved in the decision-making process.
- Automate various nonprofit workflows to improve staff productivity. See our guide to the benefits of automating accounting processes for more info.
Key Features Of The Best Nonprofit Accounting Software
Accounting software for nonprofits should be easy to set up, easy to run, and should handle fund accounting, cash receipts, and grants. It should also generate reports and insight-driving information at a glance through clear, easy-to-use dashboards.
Here are the key features you should expect:
Easy To Set Up and Run
The last thing you need on your plate is a piece of software that eats up more time than it saves. Financial software for nonprofits should be easy to set up, easy to train your team to use, easy to run, and easy to get customer support for in a pinch.
Your tool should also help you manage donors and volunteers, and it should natively handle your fund accounting without the need for workarounds and tweaks. It should also connect seamlessly with Salesforce, so you don’t have to waste precious time importing and validating data.
Accounting Seed is native to Salesforce and connects seamlessly with the Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP). Accounting Seed delivers key features like volunteer and donor management, fund accounting, and audit trails in managing nonprofit workflows. Thanks to the direct connection with Salesforce NPSP, you’ll get a 360-degree view of volunteers and donors, all within the same platform.
Fund Accounting
Nonprofits use fund accounting to allocate money to various groups and funds. It’s imperative that organizations use this fund money only for its stated purpose, meticulously tracking all donations and outlays.
To keep pace, accounting software for nonprofits has to track donations you receive for each particular fund, and every expenditure of cash or other monies you pay out.
Accounting Seed helps track account details for specific, project-based initiatives, to identify where donations are coming from and how they’re allocated. The platform can also help assess whether the organization’s targets are within reach.
Cash Receipt Management
Cash receipt management is crucial for nonprofits. Your organization needs to track all cash donations received from donors, and allocate it to the designated funds. Your accounting software should make it easy for you to record cash transactions not only in each fund ledger, but also simultaneously in the general ledger.
Accounting Seed automatically records donations to the appropriate funds and programs in the general ledger. This saves valuable time and energy for your accounting team and increases their productivity.
Grant Management
Most organizations that offer grants require evidence of how those grants are used. To become eligible for a grant, nonprofits must perform rigorous administrative work to fulfill the grant’s requirements. This can include generating reports, performing continuous tracking, and conducting regular evaluations. Managing all these administrative tasks without the right tool can be a nightmare.
Your accounting software for nonprofits should automatically collate all the information you need for your grant applications and grant management. Completing these repetitive tasks should be relatively easy when you choose the right accounting software.
Accounting Seed lets you track and organize grant amounts consistently, in real time, to see where you are along the path to reaching target funding goals. It takes the pain out of managing complex details for grant seeking and gives time back to your organization’s staff they can focus on more important tasks.
Robust Reports And Nonprofit Financial Dashboards
For nonprofits, transparency is key. Since nonprofits need donations to operate, faithful stewardship of donated funds is crucial. To build trust with various key stakeholders, it’s vital for the organization to share accurate quarterly, annual, and other reports about all monies received and how they’re used.
The right nonprofit accounting software makes it easy to set up nonprofit financial dashboards that let you aggregate transactions and activities across your entire organization. The software should have the functionality to create different types of reports for different stakeholders on a regular basis.
Native To Salesforce
Accounting Seed is native to Salesforce and therefore it lets you generate powerful reports and dashboards right out of the box. When connected with the Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP), the platform can create multiple report types customized to nonprofit needs.
Setting up these custom reports and dashboards is easy and requires only a few clicks. You can easily increase employee productivity without the need for coding, and automating your reports to show the data you need based on your Salesforce NPSP account.
