Araize FastFund Online vs. QuickBooks Desktop Pro

I have found FastFund to be a flexible yet easy-to-use accounting and donor support software. Of course, it does not have all the power of something like SalesForce, but then again, I don't need that and my more technically challenged users would be overwhelmed with something like that. FastFund allows us to track donor support, issue receipts for tax purposes, and even record notes of interactions with donors. We create mailing lists and can easily allocate donations to the specific project as designated by the donor. We use FastFund for our accounting software. We pay bills, make deposits, cut checks, and allocate expenses to the appropriate projects. We also use the newest module of FastFund which is the Payroll module. I am not involved with using that module, but I do know that it is great to have everything in one package.

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What I think the QuickBooks Desktop Pro is well suited: 1) Easy to use and effective to navigate while satisfying our financial and accounting functions' needs 2) We upgraded the version from the QuickBooks Desktop to Desktop Pro for its advanced functions and the ability to track the different projects/programs that are essential to organization.

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• Cloud-based so all our employees have access to it from their various remote locations.
• Fund-based accounting.
• Ongoing training on updates and improvements and tech support responses are quick and useful.

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• It is easy to manage and adjust inventory on hand.
• It is easy to make reports and customize them to your needs.
• We also use it to pay our employees directly.
• It is easy to make year-to-year comparisons to see where we can make improvements and the current financial situation.

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• Initial use of the new payroll features had several hiccups that had to be addressed.

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• QuickBooks Desktop Pro has been around for a few years and after an update[,] they force you to look at the changes/updates before you can use [them] after updating.
• QuickBooks Desktop Pro does not have 2FA.
• QuickBooks Desktop Pro should offer a way to store backups to a personal cloud without having to map a local network drive.

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We are satisfied with the software and on-going costs. Moving to something else would be an investment and cost that would be difficult to justify given our satisfaction with FastFund.

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I'd love to keep using it, and do intend to - though we've not been pleased with price increases over the past several years. In fact, we used to subscribe to the payroll service, but QuickBooks priced themselves out of reach for us, so we discontinued that. Currently, pricing would be the primary reason for NOT renewing, if we didn't.

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I find FastFund to be easy to use and, for the most part, intuitive in its user interface and options. Sometimes new features are added or updates are made which causes some changes. Araize is good at holding short webinars to introduce these.

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It is a great software that does everything a small business needs it to do, but there are just a few bugs and quirks that make additional software necessary. The slowness of the software occasionally might eventually be overshadowed by the quickness of cloud-based software though.

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I haven't experienced a time when QuickBooks Pro was unavailable when I needed it in the entire 20 years of using the software

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I have always had my questions and issues responded to very quickly and addressed in a timely fashion. Araize is good at notifying us when the support desk will be closed for company holidays and the like. They are responsive to suggestions for new features and in helping when we have questions.

Incentivized

They are awful. Intuit doesn't spend real money on support. They appear to have typically said, first-level script readers who are sending messages to the senior people for anything even a little bit difficult. Many of them don't speak particularly good English. Considering that they recently doubled (or, if you are paying annually, tripled) their pricing, and touted as one of the benefits that it includes [..] support, it's a real ripoff. However, we have to use the product because it is ubiquitous. I look forward to the day a competitor comes up with something good enough, which has excellent support, that matches all the features QuickBooks Desktop Pro currently has [...] or at least gives us a way to have all the functionality we currently have without excessive sacrifice [...] so that we can switch. I was very satisfied with QuickBooks for many years. This latest [rise] in price, and their sheer gall at touting the benefit of the 100 to 200% increase as being [the] inclusion of support, is what turned me so far against them.

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Best thing I ever did was to attend a two day training seminar on QuickBooks, I learned an immense amount in a short time with hands on training by experts. I strongly recommend such training for anyone using any part of the software. It will pay for itself in the first month.

We implemented the software ourselves. The training we received on the software was done by taking a community course teaching us how to use QuickBooks. It allowed me to get started with some basics of how to use the program and have not needed much assistance since completing the course work.

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Araize FastFund was already implemented when I joined the organization so I cannot comment on how it compares to other products or why it was selected.

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Zoho had great end-user support and it was almost as simple to learn and was as easy to use. But its reports were not as [customizable] as QuickBooks Desktop Pro, and its job cost and department accounting [were] more cumbersome than QuickBooks Desktop Pro was. In addition, while I like an underdog (Zoho) the fact is that it is easier to find staff that [is] comfortable with QuickBooks Desktop Pro than anything else on the market.

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• Our main users are in three different physical locations and Araize FastFund has allowed each user to easily have access to what they need.

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• QuickBooks Desktop Pro is a no hassle accounting solution that ticks a lot of boxes. It almost never disappoints and organizations will usually keep using it for many years. If anything, the only time I've seen an organization migrate away from it is if they have specific accounting needs, or if the organization has grown to the point that they need a more robust accounting solution. Even then, QuickBooks can usually be maintained within another accounting software system for specific functions, like A/R & A/P for example.

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