The Best Fund Accounting Software

What Is Fund Accounting Software?

Fund accounting software is designed to enable improved allocation management of resources which have been designated for specific uses. A common application found within nonprofit accounting software, funds are a special type of accounting entity which provides a self-balancing set of accounts allowing the reservation of cash and non-cash assets for specific purposes or activities.

Fund accounting is most commonly used by nonprofits and government entities because these organizations need to track expenditures and balances across multiple funds and have them appropriated at certain times.

What are the Features of Fund Accounting Software?

• Fund management: Gain a complete overview of your organizations finances, from cash flow to incoming donations and grants
• Donation tracking and management: Keep tabs of donations and manage how those funds are allocated
• Financial reporting: Create comprehensive reports on all company spending and analyze patterns on a quarterly or annual basis
• Accounts payable: Accounts payable software provides the ledger and related functionality for managing money owed by an organization
• Accounts receivable: Accounts receivable software provides the ledger and related functionality for managing money owed to an organization
• General ledger: General ledger software functionality provides the ledger and related functionality for providing a complete record of the financial activity of an organization, including transactional records and account structures

Best Fund Accounting Software Benefits

A few of the most common benefits companies experience when utilizing fund accounting software include:

• The ability to demonstrate responsible financial stewardship and application of funds to their intended purpose is often a prerequisite for accessing or continuing to access grants or endowments.
• A way to track restrictions on the usage of funds, saving considerable time and labor costs compared to for-profit oriented software which may require another layer of reporting to simulate these kinds of accounting controls.
• Time reductions enabled by fund accounting software usage can be turned into either payroll cost reductions or labor resources can be reapplied to tasks related to raising funds or delivering services.

Track Expenditures to Fund Sources

To start, a fund is a unit of financial organization with a self-balancing set of accounts designed to record cash and other assets together with related balances and liabilities. Fund accounting software provides the automated ability to create financial statements and balance sheets for each fund.

Organizations providing funds often require clear reports detailing how the money has been spent. Fund accounting software can create detailed reports designed for this purpose. By improving your ability to document the impact of previous expenditures, you can help promote your ability to receive future funding.

Industry-Specific Applications for NPO Operations

Just as there are accounting packages designed with manufacturers or retailers in mind, software developers have created fund accounting software to meet the specific accounting requirements of nonprofit and government organizations. Using software geared for commercial for-profit operations can lead to a number of issues for nonprofits and government entities.

While the profit motive may not be behind it in the case of nonprofits and government entities, every organization is looking to maximize their efficiency. Fund accounting software provides an accounting approach designed to eliminate time-intensive workarounds necessary to make standard commercial packages work.

Tighten Your Financial Management

Fund accounting software modules provide a number of inherent benefits. Donations, grants, and endowments are frequently provided to the non-profit organization with specific instructions on the usage of the funding. Tracking these financial assets in funds allows the non-profit organization to easily see how each dollar was spent. The results of failing to meet specific spending restrictions can have negative consequences, including discontinued funding.

The first step of meeting spending restrictions is knowing where every penny is allocated. For any government entity, GASB standards actually require that accounts are kept on a fund basis. Fund accounting software allows governments to track a variety of different funds including general/operations, special revenues, capital projects, debt services, permanent, fiduciary, and proprietary funds.

What Does Your Organization Need?

Which type of fund accounting does your organization need? You may just need a solution that can handle the management of funds/grants, or you may need a complete accounting system that includes other back-end accounting functionalities like accounts payable and a general ledger.

New Buyers and Small Organizations

However, most end-users of entry-level fund accounting solutions will be start-up nonprofits, churches, and very small municipalities or local government organizations who are just trying to track a particular grant or comply with strict reporting guidelines for auditing.

For very small organizations, a complete accounting software may cover all the fund accounting functionality necessary, though a separate software may be best suited to fit the specific needs of a growing nonprofit organization.

Existing Users Desiring Expanded Functionality

Current users of fund accounting solutions may start looking to expand upon existing functionality as they grow. As you deal with more and more funds, you'll need strong IT support and security, which may not be offered with a basic package. These are all great reasons to take a deeper look into your software solution and see if it's meeting not just today's needs, but also tomorrows.

Large Organizations

Finally, larger organizations may have a handful of legal entities they are recording within their systems, or perhaps have dozens of programs, projects, locations, etc. all with their own funds for various causes that need to be managed. Simply put, organizations with a lot of funds likely will have even more as they continue to operate and will need a scalable solution to handle them.

Does QuickBooks Do Fund Accounting?

QuickBooks is one of the most popular solutions for organizations with tight budgets, which rings true for many nonprofits and government organizations. QuickBooks does have nonprofit versions of their Desktop Enterprise solution, automating of fund and program accounting, and customization to create lists of members/donors and track budget by programs or funds.

Yet in a recent study conducted by our company, we found companies looking to replace QuickBooks and find a new nonprofit accounting solution were more likely to review the options listed above than any other nonprofit accounting solution.

The reason? QuickBooks falls short when it comes to "true" fund accounting, as what QuickBooks consists of is:

1. Preparing an income statement for each fund
2. Preparing a balance sheet for each fund

Trends in Fund Accounting Software

• Replace outdated systems. Many government and nonprofit organizations operate with strict budgets and adopt "make do with what you have" ideologies, resulting in aged/dated systems. Yet 37% of potential buyers wanted to "replace a dated" system with new fund accounting software.
• Differentiate between fund and grant management. Most for-profit businesses may use the terms "fund" and "grant" interchangeably, but it's not as simple as that for nonprofits. A grant is what a business would receive from the government while a fund is other money which has been set aside for a specific expenditure. Fund accounting software can keep the two types of funding separate.
• Provide transparency. Most millennial donors want complete transparency of where their charitable funds are going. A nonprofit with software can effectively show where donated funds have been allocated to attract and retain more contributors.
• Make decision making easier. An Aberdeen study found that 28% of business managers need data to make decisions in under an hour, and 42% of managers need data to make a decision within a day. In order to provide visibility among the vast amount of reports separate employees may be dealing with, dashboards become the way to shift ad hoc reporting to real-time reporting.