Help! I'm trying to start the books for our new nonprofit theater (we just had our first show that we charged for). Does anyone have suggestions for accounting software that is easy to use? I have accounting experience, but it has been MANY years since I've done anything in it.

Also, has anyone used TechSoup Stock (online) for software donations? It seems very inexpensive to go through them, but I want to hear from others that they have used it.

Thanks so much!

I'll second that motion!

Quickbooks was a superb tool to use when I was Treasurer of my local community theatre a few years ago. I introduced this software package in to the theatre, and found it to be inexpensive to buy and very easy to use. Just buy the basic version (no payroll or international/ multi-currency functions) and you will have a very good accounting system.

You need to spend a bit of time first planning the structure of your Account Codes (types of income and expenditure), Item Codes (the things you buy and sell) and Classes (one class for each production).

If anybody is interested I have exported the Account, Item and Class lists from the Quickbooks 2001 version that we used to use, which hopefully will import OK into a 2008 version, and should give you an idea of how we set up and ran (still run in fact!) the theatre buildings, productions and social activities.

If you'd like me to e-mail you a copy of this and try to answer questions thereafter, I'd be happy to do so (up to my level of knowledge of course - I am after all, in that respect, just a 'gifted' amateur). You can contact me through the 'Contact Us' form on my website below - guess what software package we use to run the business!

Sept 1st 2008 - AMENDMENT TO THE ORIGINAL POST
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The offer is probably not much good now as most people will be using Quickbooks 2006 or later versions which (as I now find out) are not compatible with the 2001 version. Sorry!

Quicks Books is the way to go!  We got the not for profit version this year, but our treasurer hasn't used it long enough to determine if it's more advantageous than the Pro.  Either one though provides great reports and is very flexible and customizable.

And we have used Tech Soup for several years.  It's a great deal on software we couldn't afford otherwise.   If I remember correctly if you want to order any Microsoft products you are limited to one order per year, so get them all at once.

If anyone reading this thread has a good chart of accounts and items and such (I did send an email to David, though I don't know if I did it right), I'd love to take a look at it. Our theater doesn't have a board to look at the accounts but I'd like to get the accounting right anyway because it's...well...good to know exactly how much you're spending where and how that compares to what was budgeted.

I'm wondering now about printing: there's non ad related printing (programs, copies of plays/information, etc) and there's ad related printing, printing that is in relation to a production and general company printing. How do you have this set up? I'm running into problems where I want to have one sub account be the child of several parent accounts. I'm sure there's an easier way to do it.

Brian

Sorry - I've been away at a conference with our exhibition stand since the end of last week. I got both your e-mails and I'll respond asap. TTFN!