Intuit has instituted a 54% price increase for its annual subscription price for QB Desktop. What cost churches and other non-profit organizations $75 for three years of access in 2021, now costs $999 per year as of spring 2025. Aside from the questionable business ethics demonstrated once again, is it worth it? For most churches, the answer is yes for four main reasons:
- PAYROLL COST — One possible alternative is QuickBooks Online, which is available via TechSoup for $170. However, once you add payroll (at $50 plus $6/employee per month), the annual cost for a church with four employees is $1,058 per year. Continuing with QB Desktop and our payroll service costs less overall.
- LACK OF EASY REPORTING — QuickBooks Online does not have the ability to create a crucial report necessary for non-profit organizations to instantaneously track their restricted fund balances. It is possible — but requires producing a multi-column report and hand-entering the net income from each fund into a spreadsheet in order to calculate the current fund balances. Most of our churches track 20-50 funds, and this quickly becomes more expensive, either in staff or volunteer time.
- STAFF/VOLUNTEER COST — the data entry time for QB is noticeably more than for QB Desktop. Even for a tiny church with only one employee, the QBO/QBD difference works out to $20/month, and the increased staff time is likely to be significantly more than 15 minutes per week!
- OWNING YOUR DATA — Remember that with QB online, you do not own your data. If you ever cancel your subscription, you will lose access to all of your historical data. Also, if the internet is down, you cannot access it to run payroll, print checks, or run a report.
In the future, there may be a better alternative, perhaps an open source program that includes the features essential for efficient fund accounting, but until then, we recommend renewing your subscription, so that you can download the updates for the latest version, which is currently QuickBooks Plus Pro 2024.
IF YOU DECIDE TO CANCEL YOUR QUICKBOOKS DESKTOP SUBSCRIPTION, PLEASE CONTACT US. WE HAVE CHURCHES ON A WAIT LIST TO WHOM YOU CAN TRANSFER YOUR SUBSCRIPTION, SINCE INTUIT IS CLAIMING TO NO LONGER SELL NEW SUBSCRIPTIONS.
If you do renew, make sure the price is $999, or $1199 for two users. If Intuit does not have your sales tax exemption on file, please refer to last year’s post.