How much does charity accounting software cost?
You’ve built your case for change, you know your current accounting process needs updating; it's too slow, it’s no longer compliant, it’s outdated. However, confidently working through the proposed project costs can be challenging.
It’s often not as simple as searching “how much does charity accounting software cost” online. Some providers don’t publish this information and costs can vary widely depending on many factors.
What’s more, these factors aren’t independent of each other; you must be able to pick an accounting solution that works for your individual charity.
This article explains how much charity accounting software costs and the things you need to consider when choosing your charity accounting software.
Understanding your charity accounting requirements
As a first step, it’s important that you set out clearly what you are you trying to achieve with your new charity accounting software.
Think about:
- What are you changing/improving?
- Do you need the software to be hosted in the cloud?
- Do you just need legers or are you growing your income; being smarter and more streamlined in how you use your funds?
- Are you setting out to be advisors to your organisation or simply looking at software for your purchase ledger nominals?
Understanding these points above will mean you are well armed with the key indicators for the type of package you need and therefore, how much it will cost. Then you can look at other key factors that affect cost:
Factors that affect charity accounting software cost
Turnover
The size/turnover of your charity can affect the cost of your new accounting software due to the amount of users you’ll need licenses for.
Typically, we find that a charity with a turnover of above £2million will tend to have more finance users and more people that need to see the reporting, including funders for example, and this will have cost implications.
Smaller charities with less stakeholders can stick to an entry level system which will be cheaper. However, you might be a “small” charity that has complex requirements, so the size/turnover of your charity may not influence the accounting system you need, it’s simply a factor to consider.
Functionality requirements
Your functionality requirements will likely influence the charity accounting system you purchase as each software has slightly different features. Whilst you’re looking at different options, think about:
- Do you need fund accounting? Partial VAT?
- Do you want to enable staff and volunteers to process their own expenses and create purchase order online?
- Do you need integrations so it ties in with other applications to cut down interventions?
- Do you need a fast and easy system for processing funding requests?
Ultimately, the more advanced features you need, the more expensive your accounting software will be. It might be best to look for software that allows you to add on features as your charity grows, such as our charity accounting software, so that you’re only paying for the features you need right now. This ensures that you’re future-proofing your charity accounting software and you won’t outgrow the software you buy now.
Reporting requirements
A big part of your new charity accounting software will be the reporting elements. Your self-serve requirements may affect the cost of charity accounting software. Think about:
- Are you looking to create an environment where people outside of finance can self-serve? Allowing them to slice and dice data to their own requirements - saving your finance team time.
- Or do you/your team have time to provide your stakeholders with reports rather than asking them to self-serve?
Support requirements
Would you like a provider who can provide on hand support, training, and advice throughout the implementation process and beyond? If you do, this may increase the cost of your charity accounting software. At The Access group we offer support throughout the process so you can be confident in your new solution.
Whether you already have an accounting software solution in place
Another cost consideration is if you’re buying a new charity accounting system for the first time or if you’re migrating from an old one.
If you’re using an existing system but it's running slow and can’t cope with the volume of data you now need to process, you need to move to a supplier who can help transfer your existing data quickly and accurately, like we do at The Access Group.
If you're moving to a pure charity accounting system for the first time, you might be looking for basic purchase ledger and nominals but not reporting. Often you can find this with a cheaper, scaled back system as you don’t require some of the additional functionality.
The size of your finance team
The number of people in you finance team that need to access the system will have cost implications as mentioned earlier. The more users you need, the higher the cost may be.
Number of company entities
If you have multiple company entities or organisations, you will require more users. There will also be additional setup, or configuration required, which all impacts the cost.
How much does charity accounting software cost?
We understand that you need to be able to identify potential systems that don’t suit your organisation and budget quickly, so our pricing and the functionality we provide in our packages is transparent.
Our charity accounting software package is typically purchased by medium-sized charities with a turnover above £2million with 5 finance users.
Core functionalities include:
- Single Organisation and Single Currency
- Core Ledgers
- Fund Accounting
- Statement of Financial Activities
- Partial VAT
- Making Tax Digital (MTD)
- Audit and Security
- Corrections
- Up to 5GB document storage
- Microsoft Office Integration
Our core package can be purchased from £139 per user per month, based on a minimum of 5 users.
This is a typical package, we also work with smaller charities where their requirements fit with our solution; if you would like to know more please contact us.
You can choose to add more options such as purchase order and expense management if that suits your charity's needs. See the full price and package options on our charity accounting page.
Other providers who offer charity accounting software, such as Sage and Xero, cost from as little as £7 per month however this price is typically for charities at the smaller end of the market requiring less users and functionality.
Switching finance software? Get the answers to questions a Not-For-Profit CFO might ask
How do you know when it’s the right time to switch your charity accounting software?
The thought of switching your software can be daunting. If you have reached a point that you know you need to upgrade, you know the functionality required, and have secured appropriate budget, you may be surprised to find yourself worried about making the actual switch.
But it doesn’t have to be as terrifying as it sounds. Taking the leap to new charity accounting software can help you:
- Streamline and automate financial processes
- Ensure the integrity of financial information
- Keep control and visibility of income and costs
- Run timely management statutory and fund reporting
- Meet legal obligations including Making Tax Digital and Partial Vat
Read more about how you can make switching software feel easy.
How Friends of the Elderly have benefited from making the switch
Friends of the Elderly save time and money using the powerful reporting tools in our financial management software.
Friends of the elderly were challenged by:
- manual reporting
- out of date information
- rekeying leading to human error
- lack of automation in reconciliation
After implementing an Access Group solution, they:
- reduced management reporting time from two weeks to three days
- had access to accurate and live financial information
- reduced complexity and re-keying
- improved data reliability
Read the full case study.
Next steps towards your new charity accounting software
Having researched the options, found out which ones align with your budget, functionality and capability requirements, it’s time to arrange a demonstration with your chosen provider.
Set yourself some key questions to ask:
- what are the basic and advanced features?
- what database is the platform built on?
- how easy is it to access?
- will the software grow with my organisation?
All of this will help you align how much the financial management software costs with your requirements and realistic budget expectations.
Lastly, make sure all your requirements are set out in detail in your final agreement with the provider you choose.
How can we help?
When you are ready to take the next step, The Access Group will give you the advice, tools, and clarity you need to make effective decisions with certainty. Even if you don't choose our charity finance software, we can advise you on the right one for your charity so get in touch.
As both a business focused consultancy and a specialist software developer, we combine our innovative software with practical experience to deliver a solution that’s exactly right for you and your organisation.
