QuickBooks Online vs. Aplos for New Church Plants

Starting a church involves dozens of decisions about systems, processes, and software. Your accounting system may not feel like one of the most exciting decisions, but choosing the right platform early can save a lot of frustration later.

Two platforms church plants commonly consider are QuickBooks Online and Aplos. (If you are launching a ministry here in our home state, you can also download our complete Legal & Financial Setup Guide for Colorado Church Plants to make sure you aren’t missing any state-specific steps).

Both can work for churches, but they approach accounting differently. Aplos was designed specifically for churches and nonprofits and has fund accounting built into the platform. QuickBooks Online is a broader accounting platform that was not designed specifically for fund accounting, but it can be structured very effectively for churches.

At Western Slope Bookkeeping, we generally recommend QuickBooks Online for most churches, including most new church plants. While Aplos has some advantages as a native fund-accounting platform, we typically find that QuickBooks Online’s ease of use, flexibility, integrations, reporting options, large pool of experienced bookkeepers, and ability to grow with the church outweigh that limitation.

There are situations where Aplos or another native fund-accounting platform may be a better fit. But for most churches, we believe QuickBooks Online provides the stronger long-term foundation.

The Short Answer

For most church plants, we would start with QuickBooks Online. It is widely used, relatively easy to learn, works well with the other financial systems churches commonly use, and makes it much easier to find bookkeeping and accounting help as the church grows.

Aplos becomes more attractive when a church has financial reporting needs that begin to push beyond what QuickBooks handles comfortably, particularly churches with many separate funds or more complicated multi-campus reporting.

That distinction is important. The fact that Aplos was designed specifically for nonprofits does not automatically make it the better accounting system for every church. In our experience, most churches do not need a native fund-accounting platform badly enough to give up the broader advantages that come with QuickBooks.

QuickBooks Can Handle Church Fund Accounting

The biggest concern churches often have about QuickBooks is that it is not a native fund-accounting system. That is true. But that does not mean QuickBooks cannot properly track restricted and designated funds.

Churches can use a combination of the chart of accounts, net asset accounts, and class tracking to create a fund-accounting structure inside QuickBooks.

The key is setting it up correctly. A church needs to be able to answer two questions:

• What activity occurred within each fund?
• What is the remaining balance of each restricted or board-designated fund?

When QuickBooks is structured properly, it can provide both. Simply creating income accounts called “Missions,” “Building Fund,” or “Benevolence” is not enough. The accounting system should also maintain the corresponding fund balances so leadership can see how much restricted or designated money remains available.

For the majority of churches we work with, QuickBooks can handle this very well.

Where Aplos Has an Advantage

Aplos was designed specifically around nonprofit and fund accounting. That means concepts like funds are built directly into the system instead of being adapted from a more traditional accounting platform.

That can be useful, especially as the number of funds or reporting dimensions becomes large. But for most churches, we generally do not see this advantage as enough by itself to outweigh QuickBooks’ broader benefits.

If a church has five, ten, or even twenty funds that are structured correctly in QuickBooks, there may be little practical reason to move to a specialized accounting platform simply because it calls those categories “funds.” The difference becomes more important as the church’s complexity increases.

QuickBooks is Generally Easier to Use

One of the biggest practical advantages of QuickBooks is simply that it is approachable. We sometimes compare QuickBooks to Apple. It is designed for a broad audience, so a lot of attention has gone into making the software relatively intuitive and familiar.

That does not mean church accounting itself is simple. You still need to understand restricted funds, reconciliations, payroll, and proper financial reporting. But the actual software is generally easier for people to learn and navigate.

That matters in a church environment where the person working in the accounting system might be a staff administrator, a volunteer treasurer, a bookkeeper, an executive pastor, or an outside accounting firm.

The easier the software is to navigate, the less dependent the church becomes on one individual who knows a specialized system.

It is Much Easier to Find a QuickBooks Bookkeeper

This may be an even bigger advantage than usability. QuickBooks is one of the most widely used accounting platforms in the country. That means there is a much larger pool of bookkeepers, accountants, and finance professionals who already know how to use it.

We have seen the opposite become a real issue for churches using more specialized platforms. A church may have an employee or volunteer who knows Aplos very well. Everything works while that person is there. Then that person leaves.

Suddenly, the church needs to find someone who understands church accounting and knows a relatively specialized accounting platform. That can significantly narrow the pool of available candidates. With QuickBooks, the church is much less likely to face that problem. A new bookkeeper may still need to learn how your church has structured its books, but they usually do not also have to learn the accounting software from scratch.

Your accounting system should belong to the church, not depend entirely on one person who happens to know how to operate it.

QuickBooks Has a Much Larger Ecosystem

QuickBooks also connects with a huge number of other financial tools. Churches commonly use separate platforms for:

• Online giving & Church management
• Payroll workflows
• Accounts payable & Receipt management
• Credit cards & Expense management
• Financial reporting

QuickBooks can serve as the accounting hub while those other systems handle the functions they were specifically designed for. For example, a church might use Planning Center or Pushpay for donor management, a payroll provider for payroll, and another platform for bill payment while QuickBooks remains the central accounting system.

As a church grows, specialized systems often become better at their individual jobs than an all-in-one system trying to handle accounting, donor management, payroll, and church administration together.

You Do Not Necessarily Need Donor Management Inside Your Accounting Software

Aplos’s built-in donor functionality can sound like a major advantage for a small church plant. And for some churches, it may be convenient.

But many churches are already using a church management or giving platform to maintain donor records and contribution information. In that situation, we generally do not see a strong reason to duplicate that functionality inside the accounting system. The giving platform can maintain donor-level information; QuickBooks can maintain the church’s accounting records. Keeping those responsibilities separate can actually make the system cleaner.

Think Beyond What Your Church Needs Today

A new church plant might currently have one bank account, one pastor, a small number of expenses, a few dozen donors, and a handful of restricted funds. Almost any accounting platform can handle that.

The more important question is what happens next. A growing church may eventually have:

• Multiple employees and credit cards
• More restricted funds and online giving sources
• Accounts payable workflows
• Department or ministry budgets
• More sophisticated board reporting

That is where we tend to prefer QuickBooks. It gives the church room to build a broader financial ecosystem without forcing the accounting system itself to handle every function.

QuickBooks Can Also Be Very Inexpensive for Eligible Churches

Another significant advantage for some churches is cost. Eligible 501(c)(3) public charities may be able to obtain QuickBooks Online at a substantial discount through TechSoup.

For churches that qualify, this can make QuickBooks considerably less expensive than purchasing a normal subscription directly from Intuit. (Eligibility, available plans, and pricing can change, so churches should confirm the current options directly with TechSoup).

When Would We Recommend Aplos Instead?

There are situations where we believe a native fund-accounting platform such as Aplos deserves serious consideration. Two stand out:

1. A church has multiple campuses with complicated reporting

As a church grows into multiple campuses and wants increasingly customized reports across campuses, ministries, funds, departments, and other categories, the reporting structure can become complicated. A platform built specifically around nonprofit fund accounting can sometimes handle those reporting dimensions more naturally.

2. A church has a very large number of funds

Our general rule of thumb is that once a church is tracking around 30 or more separate funds, it is worth considering whether a native fund-accounting system would provide a better experience. For a church with 5, 10, or 20 funds, we would not generally choose Aplos solely because it is a fund-accounting platform. For a church with 30, 40, or 50 funds, the conversation begins to change.

Our Recommendation for Most Church Plants

For most new church plants, we recommend starting with QuickBooks Online and setting it up correctly from the beginning. We typically find that the benefits outweigh the fact that QuickBooks is not a native fund-accounting platform.

Those benefits include an easier-to-use interface, a much larger pool of bookkeepers who know the software, broad familiarity among financial professionals, extensive integrations, flexibility as the church grows, and potential nonprofit pricing through TechSoup.

Aplos is a legitimate option and may be a better fit for certain churches, especially those with unusually complex fund or multi-campus reporting. But those are the exceptions rather than the starting point we would recommend for most church plants.

The Software Still Has to Be Set Up Correctly

Choosing QuickBooks does not automatically give a church a good accounting system. A church still needs:

• A thoughtful chart of accounts
• A clear method for restricted and designated fund accounting
• Proper net asset tracking
• Consistent donation and deposit procedures
• Regular bank and credit card reconciliations
• Appropriate internal controls and accurate payroll setup

This is especially important because QuickBooks is flexible. That flexibility is one of its greatest strengths, but it also means there are many ways to set it up poorly. For a new church plant, getting the structure right at the beginning is much easier than trying to clean up or rebuild the accounting system several years later.

Before You Choose

Before deciding on an accounting platform, ask:

• Who will handle the bookkeeping today, and who might handle it three years from now?
• What happens if that person leaves?
• How many funds do you expect to track, and will you eventually have multiple campuses?
• What giving platform and other financial systems will need to connect with the accounting software?

For most new church plants, we believe QuickBooks Online gives the church the best combination of simplicity today and flexibility for the future. You do not need an overly complicated financial system when the church is just getting started, but you do want to build on a foundation that can continue working as the church grows.