What are the capabilities of using Simply Pro 2011 for a small church?

SOLVED

Hello:

I am working in a small church that uses Simply Pro 2011 for journal entries and not much else.  We have a budget of under 100,000 and use the cash basis method of accounting.  We have four part time employees that are paid using a manual process including figuring out vacation, EI, CPP and so on.  Our donations are done through Excel along with our receipts.  Finally our invoices for rentals are done manually and time consuming.  From what I can see our Simply Pro version should be able to do:

Invoices including emailing them (our treasurer is worried that this will credit the account rather than wait for me to enter the receipt of the money)  With 5 renters I need this.

Payroll which if set up properly will track what gets withheld and sent to the government.

Donors - I think that a donor could be entered as a customer and the donations entered and tracked with a receipt coming out at the end of the year built to match CRA requirements.  this would the last process to bring on board and I'm not sure I would invest the time in it since we have something that already works with minimal effort.

I have read a tons of stuff and played with Sage50 as a trial version and am eager.   It seems that current volunteers are a little afraid of the software so i would likely hire someone to help ensure that the additional pieces are set up correctly.  Does anyone have any advice?  Am I expecting too much?  We will move to new software if needed but I would like to use what we have for now and introduce new processes next year and then migrate to a new system.  Thanks!  Victoria

  • +1
    verified answer

    I have used Sage 50 (Simply Accounting) since many versions before 2011 and currently have at least a dozen churches on Sage 50 Canadian. They are using versions 2012 to 2017.2. If set up correctly 2011 should work for you. It is not wise to use your Accounts Receivable for both renters and donors so I would suggest using a program called Donation by Software4Nonprofits for the donations. Sage 50 can handle all the rest of your requirements with the exception of Payroll.

    To have payroll doing the automatic deduction calculations you have to have a current version with payroll. For five employees you can set up 2011 payroll and manually calculate the deductions and enter them before producing the pay cheques. At year end you will have to do the processing for T4s manually as well. Also, there would be no ROE available automatically. But all this can be worked.

    The Donation program has a cost of $100 approx. and then $50 each year to keep it current with Receipts for Income Tax Purposes and other areas where you might want to use your donor base. There are many reports available. Once the weekly offering is counted and entered there is a simple report that can be used as the source for entering into Sage 50. It gives totals by fund so your entry would only be a few lines each week.

    If you need more specific help please message me directly.

  • 0 in reply to Alwyn

    Thanks so much!  I will look into  Software4Nonprofits and see if we can plan to move into using a more current version of Sage to handle payroll in the future.  At the moment we are writing manual cheques so I don't want to introduce too much at once.  I have been using the online form at the CRA for the calculations (vacation pay has to be done by the user)  and to print off a report to put with the cheque.   

    Thanks again, Victoria

  • 0 in reply to VictoriaS

    You can still write manual cheques after you have started to use Sage 50. I agree, move in small steps. Going to Donation would be good as a start at the beginning of the year. Start using your Sage 50 2011 for record keeping and process payroll the same way you have been. Then plan your next steps when the other officials are more comfortable with the digital world.