We track money using computers. This mail is kind of long and rambling on that topic, so skip it if that doesn't sound interesting.
Caveat: I had a career as a software engineer. None of what I describe here involved writing code, but I did spend considerable time configuring hardware and software. Read on if that doesn't scare you off.
Last year Bici Centro acquired a departmentalized cash register, on our accountant's advice. I set it up and everybody pretty much dove right in and used it. Departments are:
- New Parts (taxable. We get from J&B, a distributer)
- Used Parts (taxable. We strip bikes for these. Some will argue
these are not taxable. Consult your accountant.)
- Bikes (taxable. Bikes could be "Used Parts", but we wanted to keep
more accurate statistics on them.)
- Cash donations (non-taxable)
About once a week, I would generate a Z report which totals sales by department since last report. I then would manually enter that info into QuickBooks (QB) accounting software and deposit the cash register money in the bank. Once a quarter, QB tells me how much sales tax to pay to the government. The hard part is setting up QB. I had help with that. You could forego QB and keep your books by some simpler and/or cheaper method of your choosing. We inherited QB because we're fiscally sponsored by the Santa Barbara Bicycle Coalition, a nonprofit advocacy group that already keeps its books that way.
I can recommend this approach to most community bike shops.
We would handle credit cards by PayPal. This requires a few hours of hacking to set up, and it is generally a pain to use. Customers who don't have a PayPal account (almost all of them) have to type in their detailed CC billing info into a web form on a PC. It takes a few minutes. This sucks, but some people will only buy stuff if they can charge it. As a minus, this system is separate from the cash register and requires separate accounting. PayPal does not make this easy, does not integrate well with QB or any popular accounting software, to my knowledge.
Then I recently replaced all that (except QB)...
I went off the deep end, and Bici Centro acquired the QuickBooks Point of Sale system. This basically turns a PC into a cash register on steroids, connecting to a cash drawer, receipt printer, credit card reader, and barcode scanner. This system keeps very detailed records of our sales, tracks inventory, handles credit cards simply, and automatically sends all the info to QB for accounting. I hope the time and money invested up front in this thing will lead to less drudgery later. I hope the level of sales detail recorded will allow us to manage our business better and write more persuasive grant applications. I hope it will be easy for our volunteers to use. Time will tell if I am overly hopeful. It is certainly possible.
How much does all of this cost?
Departmentalized cash register: ~$250. PayPal: ~3% transaction fees QuickBooks accounting software from TechSoup: $45 QuickBooks Point of Sale system:
- Donated PC & monitor: free
- QuickBooks POS 6.0 from TechSoup: $80
- QuickBooks POS hardware bundle (cash drawer, credit card reader,
etc) with 501(c)3 discount: ~$500
- credit card processing: ~$30/mo + ~1-2% transaction fees
I would have used open source software, but nothing I evaluated promised to do the trick as well as what we bought. I'd love to hear of your successes that prove me wrong.
If your nonprofit purchases software, consider joining TechSoup. They act as a low-cost middleman, connecting companies that donate software with nonprofits that receive it. The only trick is to place yourself carefully in a category, as we don't fit neatly into their existing ones, and registering in the wrong category will disqualify you from receiving useful donations. As a bike education and repair center, we are categorized as "Other Instructions and Training Activities".
I could provide more detail, if anybody is interested. I would also be happy to share data files if anybody wants to emulate our setup.
Dave Bourgeois Treasurer, Bici Centro of Santa Barbara
On Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 2:55 PM, veganboyjosh@gmail.com wrote:
at Community Cycles, we've had a cash register for a while, but no one ever knew how to use it except to hit the "cash" button, and use it as a glorified cash box. over the course of the 6 months after we bought the thing, several people read through the manual, took it home to play with, and no one could ever figure it out. one week, two people decided to take on the project of figuring it out. they worked on it for about 1 hour each day, and finally figured out how to enter sales, how to specify that some sales were taxed and others not, and most of the workings of the thing, so that we now run all transactions through the register. we even run sales reports at end of day, which zeroes out the drawer. we have yet to have a day where our sales number from the register matches the amount of cash in the drawer, but we're getting closer. the register we got also allows us to check during the day to see how much cash/check/charge we should have in the drawer. this is helpful for super busy days, or days when there's a lot of people in the office...if we find a lot of cash in the drawer, we'll take it out, just to make sure it doesn't walk away on it's own...
On Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 1:48 PM, Stuart O Anderson soa@ri.cmu.edu wrote:
At Free Ride we used a paper log for a long time, but it was never very accurate. We bought a used cash register, despite some concerns about how difficult it would be to learn to use and maintain. In retrospect, I think it was a really good decision for us - we do a much better job of tracking our cash flow now, and there's never been much of an issue learning to use it.
Stuart
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