QuickBooks for Nonprofits: Price, Setup, and What It Cannot Do

QuickBooks for nonprofits usually means QuickBooks Online, obtained through TechSoup. Eligible 501(c)(3)s with budgets under $10 million pay an $80 annual admin fee for QuickBooks Online Plus, with 5 users, against a list price of $140 a month. Advanced, with 25 users, is $170 a year. Intuit stopped selling QuickBooks Desktop Pro, Premier and Mac to new US customers on 30 September 2024, so a new charity cannot buy the old Premier Nonprofit edition. QuickBooks Online is not fund accounting, but with one settings change and class tracking it works well for most small charities.

Several of the pages ranking for this are out of date, with old prices and the claim that Desktop is still for sale. We read TechSoup’s listings and Intuit’s own pricing and help articles on 7 November 2026. How QuickBooks compares with Aplos, Sage Intacct and others is on our nonprofit accounting software page; this guide is about getting and setting up QuickBooks itself.

What QuickBooks Online costs a nonprofit

List prices from Intuit’s pricing page, before its introductory promotion; TechSoup fees from TechSoup’s Intuit listing. Intuit also lists a free tier for one user with no accountant access. Its own nonprofit page answers the discount question directly: “QuickBooks offers discounted products for nonprofits through TechSoup.” Intuit has no separate direct discount. By our arithmetic, the TechSoup fee for Plus is about 5% of the list price, a saving of $1,600 a year.

The TechSoup offer, and its rules

The Plus listing and Advanced listing set the same terms:

• Who qualifies: organizations with 501(c)(3) designation and public libraries, with annual operating budgets of less than $10 million.
• Who does not: certain health services organizations, legislative and political activity organizations (except voter registration), and advocacy organizations. If your charity does significant lobbying, check before you plan around this.
• One for life: “one subscription product within the lifetime of the organization”, and one product per fiscal year, July to June. So pick Plus or Advanced carefully.
• Renew every year: TechSoup says you must renew every 12 months and pay the fee again to reconfirm eligibility. It sends reminders at 30, 15 and 5 days, and says Intuit charges nothing extra.
• Do not let billing lapse: its renewal article says that once nonprofit billing is removed, “it cannot be re-added”, and you must migrate to a new donated subscription.
• Not for an existing account: if you already pay for QuickBooks Online, you copy your company into a new donated subscription rather than converting.
• Payroll and payments are extra, bought directly from Intuit. Compare options in nonprofit payroll software.
• The year starts on approval, not when you set the account up, and the fee is not refundable.
• Two outside accountants can work in your file, on either plan.

Programs and departments are typically not eligible for their own subscription, though separate branch locations may be, per TechSoup’s QuickBooks page. How TechSoup verification works in general is in our software discounts guide; have your IRS determination letter ready.

Plus or Advanced?

Plus is enough for most charities: 5 users and up to 40 classes and locations. Advanced adds users, unlimited classes and locations, and priority support, for $90 a year more. Because you get one donated subscription for life, a charity growing fast or running many grants should consider Advanced from the start. TechSoup describes Advanced as “a general small business edition, not a custom nonprofit edition”, while Intuit’s Advanced nonprofit page lists nonprofit financials and restricted fund features as “coming soon”. Buy for what exists today.

QuickBooks Desktop, Premier Nonprofit and Mac

From Intuit’s stop-sell article, its Desktop 2024 article and Enterprise pricing. “QuickBooks Desktop isn’t available to new subscribers in the United States,” Intuit says, and the change “applies to the U.S. only.” If you already run Premier, you can keep renewing, but you are on a product that new US customers cannot buy, so plan a move while it suits you rather than when it is forced. TechSoup’s Plus listing says a Desktop import must be done in the first 60 days of a new subscription, from Pro or Premier 2008 or later, or Mac 2013 or later.

Desktop Enterprise still has a nonprofit edition, with what Intuit calls 9 reports built for nonprofits and a chart of accounts based on the unified chart of accounts, but at $2,210 a year and up it is for larger organizations. On a Mac, QuickBooks Online runs in the browser, so the Mac question is effectively answered by moving online.

Setting up QuickBooks Online for a nonprofit

1. Tell it you are a nonprofit

Intuit’s configuration article gives the path: Settings, Account and settings, Advanced, Company type, then set the tax form to “Nonprofit organization (Form 990)”. That changes reports to a Statement of Activity and a Statement of Financial Position, and per the same article, Invoice becomes Pledge. Under Other preferences, change the Customer label to Donors. Intuit warns that some labels may not change, and its donations article says dropdown menus still show Invoice and Sales receipt, so expect a mix.

2. Build the chart of accounts around Form 990

Map income and expense accounts to the lines of the Form 990 you file, so year end is a matter of running a report. Our chart of accounts template is built for this. Set up income accounts for contributions, grants, program fees and events separately, using Intuit’s “Non-Profit Income” detail type for donations.

3. Use classes and locations for funds and functions

Intuit’s fund accounting article recommends a class for each fund, then the Profit and Loss by Class report; class tracking needs Plus or Advanced. The difficulty is that a charity usually needs to track three things at once: restriction, function (program, management and general, fundraising) and the individual grant. QuickBooks gives you two dimensions. One workable approach, which is ours rather than Intuit’s: use classes for function and program, since that is what the 990 asks for, and locations for restriction, such as Unrestricted and each restricted grant. Agree the design with your accountant before the first transaction, because changing it later means recoding history.

4. Record gifts the same way every time

Intuit’s donations article gives three routes: a pledge followed by Receive payment, a sales receipt, or a bank deposit. Choose one for each kind of income and write it down. If you use a donor database, decide which system is the record for gifts and which for money; see donor management software. Receipts still come from you: see our donation receipt template.

5. Handle in-kind gifts correctly

Intuit’s in-kind article uses an “In-kind donations” income account and an “In-kind Clearing” account: a sales receipt at fair value, a bill to the donor as a vendor, then payment from the clearing account so the two cancel. It tells you to check with your accountant on fixed assets. Background on what counts and how it is valued is in in-kind donations.

6. Lock it down

Give each user their own login and the narrowest role that works, keep the treasurer as a reviewer, connect bank and card feeds, and close each month. The internal controls checklist lists the separations that matter, and our nonprofit bookkeeping guide sets out the monthly routine.

What QuickBooks Online will not do

• No statement of functional expenses. An Intuit staff reply in its community forum says this report is unavailable and suggests classes plus a customized report. You build the 990’s Part IX split yourself, which is why class design matters.
• Not true fund accounting. Intuit’s own article describes fund accounting as a system that stops spending when a fund is empty. QuickBooks classes do not do that; they label transactions.
• No automatic release of restrictions. You record releases from restriction yourself, as explained in net assets.
• Check the marketing claims. Intuit’s nonprofit page says QuickBooks “automatically allocates overhead” across functions. We found no help article describing such a feature, and the Advanced page lists nonprofit features as coming soon. Ask Intuit to show it before relying on it.

If your charity has many restricted grants, federal awards or an annual audit, these gaps cost accountant time every year. That is when fund accounting software becomes worth its price; the options are on our accounting software page.

Is QuickBooks right for your charity?

• Yes, usually: small to midsize charities with a handful of restricted grants, a bookkeeper who knows QuickBooks, and a budget under $10 million. The TechSoup price is hard to beat, and almost every accountant can work in it.
• Think twice: advocacy organizations and some health organizations, which TechSoup excludes; charities expecting to exceed $10 million; and organizations with many funds that must be balanced separately.
• Probably not: charities with substantial federal grants and audit requirements, who will spend more on workarounds than on fund accounting software.

What it does well matters as much as what it does not. Bank feeds and reconciliation are good, and that is most of small-charity bookkeeping. Nearly every donation platform, payroll provider and expense tool connects to it. And you can hire for it: any bookkeeper knows QuickBooks, which is not true of most fund accounting products.

Moving on to QuickBooks, or off it

Most charities arrive at QuickBooks from a spreadsheet and leave it for fund accounting software. Both moves have the same trap: opening balances.

• From a spreadsheet: start on the first day of a fiscal year if you can. Starting mid-year means entering an opening balance for every account plus the year’s activity so far, and any mistake becomes a reconciliation you chase for months. If you must start mid-year, have an accountant check the opening trial balance before you enter anything after it.
• From an existing QuickBooks file to the TechSoup price: TechSoup says the offer cannot be applied to an existing account, so you copy the company into the new donated subscription. Do it at a month end, after reconciling.
• Off QuickBooks, to fund accounting software: the restricted fund balances are the hard part, because in QuickBooks they existed as class tags rather than as balances. Rebuilding what each fund held on the switch date is the work, and the cleaner your class discipline was, the less of it there is.

Whichever way you move, keep the old file readable for as long as your records rules require. Auditors and funders will ask for something from it.

Whatever you choose, budget for the year with our budget template, produce statements in the format funders expect with the financial statements template, confirm which Form 990 you file, and connect the account to a bank that suits nonprofits.

Where these figures come from

We read TechSoup’s Intuit listing, product pages and support articles, and Intuit’s pricing, nonprofit pages and help articles on 7 November 2026. Intuit served its US pages and prices. List prices exclude Intuit’s three-month introductory promotion and tax. Where Intuit’s own articles disagree, as on the Invoice and Pledge labels, we say so. Intuit and TechSoup have no commercial relationship with this site and we take no referral fees.

This is reference information, not legal or tax advice. Rules vary by state and change over time. For a decision that carries real consequences, check the current text at irs.gov or your state registry, and talk to a nonprofit attorney or CPA.