Fund Accounting in Quickbooks

by Maria
(Rogersville, MO, USA)

Question regarding class tracking in Quickbooks:

Which method do you recommend for a small church to use that has Quickbooks software? I'm trying to set it up by class tracking, but I'm confused as how I tie together the income/expenses that I already have set up to the classes. Or is the classes separate from the chart of accounts?

Vickey's Reply

Class tracking is definitely the easiest method.

Yes, classes are separate from the chart of accounts.

After you have set up all the income and expense accounts in the chart of accounts….

Go to Edit, Preferences, on left side of window…click Accounting…click Company tab. Click little boxes next to ”use class tracking” and ”prompt to assign classes”.

Now go to List, Class List…in little window…click on classes and the New.

Set up your classes. Some people set up 3 classes for income: Unrestricted, Temporary Restricted, and Permanently Restricted. Then set up individual funds as subclasses under one of the 3 classes.

Whenever you enter a transaction you will be need to assign a class to it.

You might want to consider purchasing Running QuickBooks in Nonprofits: The Only Comprehensive Guide for Nonprofits Using QuickBooks. It was written in 2005 so some things are different in the new QB and a lot of it pertains to nonprofit revenue such as grants; however, it still contains some great information for setting up and maintaining QB for a church.