By Ray Bechtold, Chief Operations Officer, MIP Print this article Send this article to a friend Commercial organizations have accounting systems that measure product, division and company performance by profit and loss.
Nonprofits have social and legal responsibilities that extend beyond spending their money wisely.
Once nonprofits reach a certain size and have multiple funding sources, most of them find that commercial accounting software will not meet these special tracking and reporting requirements. Nonprofits find that attempting to use commercial accounting systems to perform these unique nonprofit accounting functions is impractical and difficult, as well as expensive to maintain. Also, custom modifications or overlays to commercial software pose high up-front costs and are very expensive to maintain and support. Nonprofits find that the only effective way to fulfill their unique accounting requirements is with a good Fund Accounting System, because it is developed specifically for their specialized tracking and reporting needs.