Small non profit question

Jerefrank

Hello we have a small non profit and we are looking at using quicken but we had a few questions.

First I am assuming we would need the Business Personal Quicken classic account?

Second with this account can multiple users have access. We have two people that would need access to use the account does this operate on licenses and permissions or how does it work?

I there a Spanish version of this or can you change languages?

I probably will have more questions but for now that is it. Thanks in advance for any help given.

Jeremy

Using windows

splasher

#1 Since I don't know what your needs are, I can't answer that questions. Some users do the strangest things with even the Starter Edition.

#2 The information is stored in a data file, not the program. Only one person can access a Quicken data file at a time. While it is possible to pass the data file back and forth between computers for multiple people to access, if two people make changes to their copy of the data file at the same time, the changes in one of the data files will be lost since there are no provisions in Quicken to merge the changes in two files back into one file. You might consider running Quicken on just one computer and have the two users access that computer via remote access software to run Quicken., kind of like in the old days when software ran on a central computer and you accessed it via a terminal, but it would still only be one user at a time.

English is the only version of US Quicken for Windows, I'm not sure about Canadian Quicken or Quicken for Mac, but I believe they are English only also.

jacobs

You could also have one user with Quicken and the data file on their computer, and enable syncing the data to Quicken's cloud servers. The other person could then use the web interface to view or enter data.

In theory, this works great for people in a situation like yours, but in practice people sometimes run into problems with syncing that overwrites the latest data and causes grief with messed up data. For that reason, I and many of the longtime Quicken users here steer clear of using Quicken cloud and the web interface or mobile app. I wish they could make this foolproof, because it would be truly useful in the setting you've described, or for users who want to access their data when traveling.

Jerefrank

First of all thanks for the responses. So what do companies do when they have multiple people that have to access one account? We are smaller but we have a treasurer / finance person that will be the one that most of the time is running the account but the computers may change ie her desktop when at home but laptop when away but also the director will need to have access to monitor and also be able to print any reports he needs etc. If quicken cannot do this what other software would work? Quickbooks?

splasher

Quicken is just not setup well to handle companies that are more than a single person/family. I know that a lot of users have used it for much larger setups, but that doesn't mean it was the best tool for the job, it was probably the cheapest or the one they had the most experience with. The need for more than one person to have access to the data file in a convenient process is not built into Quicken.

Quickbooks is a possibility, but I'm sure there are many others available.

jacobs

@Jerefrank It sounds like you probably need multi-user business accounting software, rather than trying to jump through hoops to make Quicken work. And if the nonprofit has an outside accountant for audits, a true general ledger double-entry bookkeeping system is probably better than Quicken's personal finance methodology (which has unlocked transactions and no audit trails). Quickbooks is certainly the most known and widely-used small business accounting software, but there are others. (One example: for many years, I used Connected Accounting from Accountek, a system which can be run on both Macs and PCs as either desktop software for multiple users in an office, or as cloud-based software, which is ideal if you have someone working from home. And there are other small business accounting systems out there — although none will be as cheap as Quicken.)

Boatnmaniac

Do a Google search for "alternatives to QuickBooks". You will see there are a fair number of lower cost options to QuickBooks that you can investigate to see if one of them might meet your needs.

Jerefrank

Thanks so much to all for you help on this. It does look like Quicken is not what we are looking for. Appreciate the ideas and suggestions