Please comment on Experience w/Churches

You're ideas are on track! Kathy Ivens wrote a great book 'QuickBooks for Non-Profits' that has proved very helpful for a lot of NPOs. It is well work the money (about $25).

Michelle L. Long, CPA, MBA
Author of: Successful QuickBooks Consulting: The Complete Guide to Starting and Growing a QuickBooks Consulting Business

The big downfall with QB for Non-Profits is that you CAN"T print year-end statements. I'm surprised they can sell it to churches without that feature. I found out after I had recommended it to a non-profit. They were NOT happy to find out they would have to find a "work-around" or a third party software to run year end statements.

How can you provide a software package and not print statements?

I currently do the bookkeeping for a local church. What they have is a Church Management software, called CCIS. It holds all their membership information.

The money counters log the donations in the CCIS software. That software has the ability to turn that deposit into an IIF file. I import that file into quickbooks and it itemizes all the deposits nicely into the correct chart of accounts.

CCIS holds all the details of what each member gave and for what purpose. Quickbooks only keeps track of the actual income and expenses for the church. These products work together nicely.