PowerChurch vs Quick Books

[secretary]

Our chuch purchased PowerChurch 2 years ago--almost nothing had been done until I was employed this year. I have loaded all members, non-members (active), skills and activities. Now, I am questioning setting up the accounting sys when QuickBooks is not broken! Can I not post contributions, and still use QB for accounting?

[NeilZ]

Our chuch purchased PowerChurch 2 years ago--almost nothing had been done until I was employed this year. I have loaded all members, non-members (active), skills and activities. Now, I am questioning setting up the accounting sys when QuickBooks is not broken! Can I not post contributions, and still use QB for accounting?

Sure .. but where would you post them to ?? The only thing posting does, in your case, is finalize the data in the contributions system, and get a report showing where money should be allocated.

You will have to manually enter each and every different fund based on the Sunday contributions. Yes Quickbooks is easy, but Powerchurch allows you to maintain one database that needs backing up, in a central place, and everything is integrated into the system.

In the end, it all depends on how you or your church treasurer want to spend your time.

[secretary]

I do not want to be laborious about this issue, but the limited knowledge of the accounting part of PowerChurch that I have says to me that we would all have to adapt new thinking. I am questioning the need to do this when I can post the composit (I hope) of contributions at one time. Our old contribution program is MembershipPlus, and that is exactly how I have been handling it.

I guess I would have to have some limited accounts in PC in order to come out with deposit totals. Is that right?"

[Zaphod]

Yours is actually a fairly common situation. Lots of churches use many of the features of PowerChurch and use Quickbooks (or in some cases Quicken!) to handle their finances. Quicken is a bad idea, because it's my understanding that it's not a true double entry system as required by the IRS for non-profits. A lot of people choose Quickbooks because it's something that's already familiar to them, and it does a lot of hand-holding. The accounting features in PowerChurch are based on the same accounting standards, it just handles things differently. Some people like the integration with things like Contributions, and some people don't mind using two different software programs. That's one reason we don't sell the different modules separately - PowerChurch is just one big package, and you can use as much or as little of it as appropriate to fulfill your church's needs. If you're happy with Quickbooks, then there's nothing wrong with continuing to use it for your accounting, and using PowerChurch for your membership and contributions tracking. Neil is correct in pointing out that you'll have to generate a report in Contributions and use that to help manually enter the transactions into Quickbooks, since there isn't an export for that.

A lot of people will choose to go with PowerChurch exclusively because it's usually less expensive to keep up to date with one piece of software rather than two. Also, there are benefits to streamlining everything by making use of the integration. Still, it all comes down to your personal choice, and the choice of the decision makers at your church.

[peabodyumc]

I used QB for years. We owned the grocery store in town and I implemented it there for my bookkeeping and reporting. Since I was also church treasurer I just took my church checkbook and kept it on the computer at the store and did the church books on QB as well.

It worked for us but I didn't like it. I could never get the reports that my Ad Council needed/wanted to see. QB is built for a business and a church isn't quite the same thing.

We sold our grocery store almost three years ago so i had to find something else that would keep the books -- I certainly had no intention of the church paying the yearly increasing tax fee to get the tax information (when I started QB it was like $49 and by the time we stopped it was $150 or more!! Ridiculous when you think that some years not a thing changed!). I "interviewed" a few programs and decided on PC+.

I can say without a doubt that it was the best thing I ever did as church treasurer!! I get the reports that are meaningful to the council and to the different committees. Tonight the Finance Comm. meets and I am getting ready to print the budget worksheets. This will be so much easier. In years past I have had to build spreadsheets to capture what we had budgeted, what we had spent, what we were budgeting for next year, etc. I can't wait to throw the budget worksheets at them tonight. And then next year I can show them reports comparing next year's expenses/income versus this year's.

I admit that it was work getting it set up. And even though I have had 3 college semesters of accounting and was the store bookeeper for 15 years I had never built a system from the ground floor. It has been interesting and a learning experience but I have understood things here and at my full time job a lot better because of it. I still find things I have to fix (we went live January 1) but it really works well regardless.

Definitely go with PC+!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Laurie

[SBCTrustee]

Hello Everyone,
We computerized our manual records to Quickbooks Pro (QB) in 1999. We used both Membership + also, until this year. (I have several posts on this forum detailing our transitional problems).

QB does have many nice features & many bad features:
1. You can double click on any number of a report and a quick view report comes up showing the detail of the number that you selected.
2. You can not close a month, so transactions can be changed. (this is a no no).
3. It is expensive, especially if you run a network.
4. The QB payroll does no understand church payroll.

I really wish that you would consider moving completely to PC+.

The big thing about moving to PC+ (V9) is that you must design your chart of accounts carefully. I actually created a spreadsheet to crosswalk me to PC+'s account numbers. I entered for years of accounting data from my monthly QB P & L so that I had all of my history in PC+. You might regret it if you decide to run both systems, Membership + & PC+.

I would not use that combination. It would be better to keep QB & membership +, way too much trouble.

I am not saying that PC+ v9. is all perfect. I have not been able to master its payroll function completely, after 9 months of use. My item set-up just does not want to work. I have PC+ to do it manually. ( I use a spreadsheet to double check PC+'s payroll. I am still working on it.

The best thing about PC+ is the support & this forum.

Tom

[Matt]

I am not saying that PC+ v9. is all perfect. I have not been able to master its payroll function completely, after 9 months of use. My item set-up just does not want to work.

Tom--what kind of problems are you having getting your item set up in payroll to work properly? You should be able to get it to work. However, I do know that if you live in certain states (Iowa and Kentucky, for example) you will not be able to get PC+ to calculate the state withholding correctly because the state withholding formula takes into consideration how much Federal tax was withheld. PC+ currently doesn't have a way to factor this into the state withholding calculation.