The Best Accounting Software for Nonprofit Organizations – Top 10 Reviewed for 2024

• Business Expense Management: Import financial statements directly from most financial institutions, automatically turn the data into detailed reports, and show your stakeholders exactly what the money is used for.
• Team and Volunteer Management: Invite employees, volunteers, and even contractors to your account, assign specific tasks to team members, and manage and track their time.
• Generate Accounting Reports: Create reports on donations collected, expense reports, time entry data, account aging, and more.
• Payment Reminders: Remind volunteers or donors about their pledged donation, even when you’re busy with other activities.
• Integration with Fundraising Services: Integrate with tools that help nonprofits connect donor data, track donor contributions, and monitor financial activities between fundraising and accounting records.

FreshBooks offers monthly and yearly plans with four price offers to suit different nonprofits’ needs.

• Lite: This plan suits small nonprofits and small businesses with minimal invoicing and expense tracking needs.
• Plus: This plan is for small to medium-sized nonprofits with basic project management needs.
• Premium: This plan is suitable for medium-sized nonprofits that need more features besides invoicing, expense tracking, and bank reconciliation.
• Custom plan: This plan is suitable for large nonprofits with complex financial needs such as grant management, advanced payments, and branding.

FreshBooks offers a 30-day free trial, which allows you to test the product before making any financial commitment.

It also offers 50% off a Lite, Plus, or Premium Plan for 6 months, which you can take advantage of. After that, you’ll be billed at full price for the plan you have chosen.

Add-ons are available, such as extra team members costing $11/user/month, payroll is charged at a customized rate for all subscription tiers, and advanced payments are $20/month.

FreshBooks is the leading accounting software for small—to medium-sized nonprofits that need affordable accounting software to manage their finances, monitor donations, and facilitate compliance with grant requirements.

• Financial Reports: Generate actual reports easily, maintain financial transparency, and show donors, board members, and other stakeholders what every dollar has been invested in.
• Project Management: Create a separate card for each project, assign individual tasks, allocate budgets and associate expenses to specific projects, and track time spent.
• Donation Management: Track donations worldwide and send payment receipts to donors as a form of appreciation, eliminating manual processes and ensuring accurate donation tracking.
• Easy Collaboration: You can collaborate with your employees and volunteers regardless of location differences. You can also provide role-based access and permissions.
• Multiple Currency Support: Zoho Books’ support for multiple currencies is a stand-out feature that helps your nonprofit work without location restrictions. Currencies will be automatically converted based on a fixed exchange rate.

Zoho is a generous platform with a forever-free, feature-rich plan. It also offers paid plans for users who need advanced features.

• Free: This plan is suitable for small nonprofit organizations with less than 50K USD annual revenue.
• Standard: This plan is suitable for small nonprofits with basic accounting needs and a small team of up to three users.
• Professional: Suitable for medium-sized nonprofits that need extra features like project management, inventory management, and custom workflows.
• Premium: For medium to large nonprofits needing more features and user support.
• Elite: This plan is for large nonprofits that need more flexibility with the number of custom reports.
• Ultimate: This plan is for large nonprofits, as it includes analysis and tracking of key financial metrics, customized reports and dashboards, and collaboration features.

To top it all off, Zoho offers a 15% discount on all pricing plans to registered charities, trusts, and societies.

A 14-day free trial allows you to test and decide if it’s a good fit for you. Zoho add-ons like extra users, branches, and advanced auto scans are available at an additional fee.

Zoho is suitable for any international nonprofit organization needing a scalable and user-friendly finance management tool thanks to its multiple-currency support.

• Expense and Income Tracking: You’ll be able to track expenses and income, generate financial reports, share them with stakeholders, and pay employees using online payroll.
• Project Tracking: Track projects in Xero, organize employees’ and volunteers’ work, and keep a record of costs related to each program, event, or initiative.
• Donor Management Tools: Track and accept donations via credit and debit cards. You can add a donation button directly to your website and set up payment services for free, so collecting donations from your charitable patrons will be much easier.
• Advanced Reporting and Compliance: Collate documents that will help you comply with regulations and reporting standards. You can also customize the reports to suit your needs.

Xero offers a discount for 6 months for its new users, helping them save more. This offer is available for all three of Xero’s plans.

Starter: This plan is for small nonprofits that only need basic accounting needs, such as income and expense tracking.

Standard: This plan is designed for small to medium-sized nonprofits needing advanced features like bulk reconciliation.

Premium: This plan is for large nonprofits. It features everything in the Standard plan, plus the ability to use multiple currencies.

With Xero’s 30-day free trial, you may test and explore its features before you commit.

Xero is suitable for nonprofits that need in-depth reporting features and advanced integration features.

• Donor Information: Drectly add all your donors and vendors to your account, easily manage them, and share information, progress reports, and financial reports with them.
• Team Management: Give permission-based access to up to 40 team members to your account, ensuring that everyone is on the same page and knows exactly what they should be working on to help successfully execute programs.
• Donor and Grant Management: Sync your bank account with the platform and accept donations via credit card, debit card, direct bank transfer, cash, and check. If you’re already using apps such as Fundly or DonorPerfect to keep track of your donations, simply import transactions into QuickBooks to have all the data available to you in one place.
• Data Accessibility: As a cloud-based accounting software, data is accessible from any device and anywhere with an internet connection. This feature supports team collaboration on real-time financial tasks and other business processes.

Similarly to Xero, QuickBooks Online offers a pay-as-you-go monthly plan at different tiers to support many businesses.

• Simple Start: This plan is for small nonprofits as it supports only one user and one sales channel connection.
• Essentials: This plan is for a growing nonprofit with up to three team members.
• Plus: This plan allows you to add five users and includes all the Essential plan features, plus inventory management, project profitability, and financial planning.
• Advanced: This is for medium-sized nonprofits and supports twenty-five users. Additional features include fixed asset auto-tracking, data sync with Excel, workflow automation, data restoration, and custom access controls.

QuickBooks Online includes free mobile apps, QuickBooks support, and app integrations.

While it doesn’t offer a free plan, it offers a 30-day free trial and 30 days of free Live Assisted Bookkeeping.

QuickBooks is suitable for medium-sized nonprofits that need software to streamline accounting tasks such as cash flow.

• Financial Performance: Set up rules for expense categorization if you need to tie them to a particular program, project, or fund. This not only helps you stay organized but also allows you to generate financial reports and share them with your stakeholders quickly.
• Unlimited Accounting: Export reports such as profit/loss, sales tax, cash flow, comparative, and more with visual graphs that make the information easy to comprehend.
• In-Depth Expense Tracking: Comprehensive expense tracking that is easy to understand for anyone in the team. View accounts payable, categorize expenses, and find out where most of your nonprofit’s money is going.
• Cost-Effectiveness: Nonprofits with limited budgets can enjoy Wave’s free plan to track the inflow of donations and how the funds are being spent.‍

Wave only offers a free and a paid plan.

Starter – This plan supports nonprofits that are just starting up and only need basic accounting solutions. It features unlimited invoicing, bookkeeping, bills, on-the-go invoicing via the Wave app, and cash flow management.

Pro – This advanced plan caters to small startups with needs for advanced accounting. It offers the option to accept online payments at a discounted rate, auto-import bank transactions, digitally capture unlimited receipts, track expenses, and automate late payment reminders.

For both the free and paid plan, accepting online payment incurs charges starting at 2.9% + $0.60 per credit card transaction.

You can also get the Payroll add-on at $20 per month.

Wave is a suitable charity accounting software for nonprofits that only need basic accounting solutions at a no-cost or low cost.

• Cash Flow and Payments: In addition to direct, no-fee bank transfers, you’ll also be able to pay using your business credit card, even with vendors who don’t accept credit card payments.
• Integrations: Seamless integration with accounting software like Xero and QuickBooks, as well as the fact that it’s completely free if you rely solely on ACH Bank Transfer for paying your expenses and accepting donations.
• Easy Bill Capture: Pay bills by capturing them with your phone and uploading to Melio. You can also forward bills and invoices through email directly to Melio Pay Inbox. This process simplifies bill capturing.
• Bills Management: Real-time bill tracking that notifies you about bill statuses, upcoming ones, and completed payments. As a nonprofit, you can easily keep track of donations and their statuses.
• Approval Workflows: Invite team members to your Melio account, including your accountant. The approval workflow allows you to set up roles, permissions, and approval amounts to stay in control at all times.

Melio offers free online payments for nonprofits. It provides a no-subscription plan that allows for flexible payment options. However, Melio charges you for each transaction, depending on the transaction option.

See the list below for Melio’s transaction charges.

• Mail check — $1.50 (first two are free)
• Pay by card — $2.9%
• Instant transfer — 1.5% (up to $50)
• Fast ACH bank transfer — $1% (up to $30)
• Fast check — $20
• International payments — $20 (flat fee)

With Melio, you can pay all your vendors and business bills with ACH bank transfers for free. Plus, there’s no subscription fee.

Melio is suitable for any nonprofit that needs an efficient, user-friendly, and cost-effective way to manage bills and payments.

• Create and Share Reports: Blackbaud facilitates tracking and reporting on transactions by net assets, ensuring FASB compliance. It also streamlines the management of unique financial report requirements, making it one of the best fund accounting software solutions for nonprofits.
• Custom Solution: Fully customized solutions for nonprofits, education institutions, healthcare organizations, arts and culture organizations, foundations, and charities.
• Comprehensive Fund Accounting: Track and report multiple funds, different projects separately, and grants. This feature is specifically tailored to nonprofits.
• Robust Grant Management: Grant management solution that allows organizations to track the complete grant lifecycle from application to reporting seamlessly.
• Gift Insights and Prospect Research: This feature helps you to research and discover major donors that can support your good cause.

Blackbaud price plans are not publicly available but are quote-based. However, you can fill out a form on the website to request a personalized quote.

Blackbaud is specifically designed for nonprofit organizations and is suitable for large nonprofits and charitable organizations that have the budget for nonprofit-specific software to handle all of their accounting.

• Payment Options and Donation Tracking: Set up credit cards, ACH Bank Transfers, and online payment processing services like PayPal. Bonsai enables you to offer more options for donors, ensures transaction security, and lets you keep track of funds from multiple sources.
• Project Management: Invite donors, stakeholders, vendors, and volunteers working on a particular project to join the platform. This makes it easier to manage project-related tasks, track expenses, provide project updates, and share information.
• Time Tracking: As a nonprofit, you can use built-in time tracking to track the time required to complete different stages of your projects so you can plan future ones with more accuracy and confidence.
• Client and Donor Management: Bonsai offers a CRM feature that helps businesses manage clients and collaborate effectively. Nonprofits can leverage this feature to manage relationships with donors, clients, and stakeholders.
• Workflow Automation: Automation helps manage recurring activities such as invoicing, scheduling, follow-ups, and more. As a nonprofit with recurring donors, you can automate recurring invoices to ensure consistent cash flow.

Bonsai does not offer a free plan but makes its paid plans flexible enough to support different organizational needs.

• Starter: For nonprofits that are just starting out and only need basic accounting features.
• Professional: Designed for a growing nonprofit organization that needs more flexibility with its financial management.
• Business: Suited for small-sized nonprofits with advanced functionality.

Optional add-ons:

• As a nonprofit that needs to manage your organization’s taxes, you may pay $10/month for tax management.
• Likewise, adding extra team members to Bonsai costs $10/month.

While Bonsai does not offer a forever free plan, there are two ways to use Bonsai for free. You can use its 7-day free trial or take advantage of Bonsai’s first two months of free service when you sign up for a yearly subscription.

Bonsai is suitable for nonprofits that want affordable and user-friendly accounting software that will cater to their project management, time tracking, financial management, and administrative automation.

• Nonprofit Accounting Features: Your finance team can streamline your nonprofit with features such as expense tracking and reporting, grant tracking and billing, revenue recognition, and financial reporting.
• General Ledger: Sage offers a detailed general ledger (GL) powered by artificial intelligence, so you can streamline your processes, track net income by location, and easily monitor net income and expenses across your entire organization.
• Budget Tracking: Have full control over fund spending as you’ll be able to easily track budgets, apply limits to all departments and locations, compare and adjust budget allocation methods, and see every single expense using real-time dashboards.
• Custom Reports: Custom solutions and reporting for niche-specific nonprofit organizations, such as educational nonprofits, human services organizations, faith-based organizations, foundations, nonprofit healthcare organizations, and more.
• Advanced Functionality: Sage allows you to automate accounts payable, spend management, and nonprofit revenue recognition.

Sage offers two price plans based on the number of users and features:

Accounting Start – This plan is suitable for nonprofits with one or a limited number of employees.

Accounting Standard – This plan is best for growing nonprofits that need more advanced accounting features and up to five users.

Sage pricing, together with its features, is scalability-focused. However, growing businesses may pay more extra fees to access advanced features as their team members increase.

Sage is our pick for multinational nonprofits thanks to its multiple currency support, location consolidation, and user support.

• Automation: Automate the bulk of your admin work, including purchasing orders and vendor billing, saving you lots of valuable time when executing projects, which is ideal if you’re hosting events for targets, donors, and stakeholders.
• Comprehensive Donation Options: Manage diverse revenue streams for your nonprofit, including donations from various sources and grants, as well as managing fund restrictions and grant requirements easily.
• Reporting: Oracle NetSuite automates Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) reporting, letting you configure and automatically generate compliance reports for executive leadership, board members, auditors, and your accounting team or accounting firm.
• Monitoring: Leverage scorecards to monitor functional expenses, demonstrate commitment to funding programs and services, and keep track of metrics like fundraising efficiency, program efficiency, cash flow to total debt, and contributions ratio.
• Improving Fundraising Efficiency: NetSuite supports fundraising campaigns and donation processing through its inbuilt flexible payment options. This makes it easier for nonprofits to accept and manage contributions from multiple channels.

Oracle NetSuite’s price offer is quote-based and not publicly disclosed. It tailors its service to different service needs.

Your total annual subscription includes the platform, optional modules, and the number of users.

NetSuite is a good option for large enterprises with complex financial and operational needs.

Nonprofits in need of accounting solutions that will cater to their finances, omnichannel commerce, customer relationship management, and human resources may consider using NetSuite.