I have spent a considerable amount of time in my previous
life as a business manager evaluating fund accounting
software for two museums from 1-2.2 million dollar budgets.
My advice is twofold. First: don't use the software
developed by various companies designed for hospital,
university, school, large museum not for profits. They are
cumbersome, expensive, and lacking in the refinements of
more widely used commercial products. They also have
features which are not particularly useful for a
small-medium sized not for profit. Without getting too
technical, from an accounting point of view, full-fledged
fund accounting is almost always overkill unless you have
ten or so special accounts, and lots of restricted project
grants.
Therefore, I would recommend that you use a regular small
business commercial accounting program. These can be made to
be perfectly serviceable for your size organization by using
cost-center accounting rather than fund accounting. There
are obviously dozens of programs to choose from in the small
business accounting market.
The best approach to choosing from among these packages is
to let your auditor do the selecting and installing.
Assuming that the firm that does your regular audit has
experience with computers, they are best positioned to help
you decide what to use. Then they will also be able to get
you up on your chart of accounts, and train your staff to
produce the information that they will need for your audit,
and you will need internally. In addition, they will then
have the responsibility of assuring that the system you use
will be in compliance with generally accepted accounting
principles for a company your size.
You probably will have to pay some additional consulting fee
to them to help you define your needs, select the software,
and get you up and running. In my previous job, that was
about $2,500 (in NYC, which is always more expensive).
Usually, they have a package that they recommend to all of
their clients, and will recommend to you. Again, most
not-for-profits of your size should do perfectly well with a
regular accounting program, which will be 1/10th the price
of a specialized program, with better support, and better
features.
Sorry to go on so long, and all of the above is "IMHO". If
you need more advice feel free to contact me off the list.
Eric Siegel
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