Looking for suggestions for tracking income/expenses

[Golden sunsets]

DS is taking over responsibility for the finances of his HOA and has asked me what a good tool would be to track incoming dues, outgoing expenses and perhaps producing reports. He wants to download activity from the HOA checking account and tag expenses. I think he would like to send out reports to the other owners as well. I am only familiar with my own excel spreadsheet for tracking our income and expenses and Quickbooks for managing the finances of my businesses. Excel would not work for him and Quickbooks(Intuit) is more than he needs, I think and is a bit pricey.

I've heard folks talk about Quuicken. Is it a program that one buys, or a subscription based software system? Is it expensive? Are there any alternative solutions? Any that are good that are free?

Thanks for any suggestions

 

[ERD50]

.... Excel would not work for him ...
Thanks for any suggestions

Why not? It's hard to make suggestions without knowing things like why Excel (or an open source free version, like LibreOffice) would not work for him.

-ERD50

 

[OldShooter]

Since you are familiar with QB I would give the online version a hard look. It may not be "pricey" at all when your personal time coaching and teaching is considered. Features you don't need can easily be ignored and the cost will not even be a roundoff error in an HOA P&L.

One thing he might find very valuable is the ability to send statements via email. That is a huge time-saver. HOA members can also be given very limited access to the system so that they can see financials but not be able to mess with anything. Then he may not have to send reports at all.

 

[CaliKid]

One of my accountant friends loves Xero. One reason is you can provide access to other board members so they can view stuff (transparency).

 

[Senator]

I use Quicken. It's cheap and works great.

 

[Throwdownmyaceinthehole]

I'd use excel with pivot tables. Just download from bank accounts and Id the expenses and income in an adjacent column. It's easy then to make all sorts of pretty reports and graphs

 

[Gotadimple]

I'm the treasurer of my Condo association. My answer is: it depends on how big the association is and how much reporting he has to do.

I use Moneydance (google other threads on the forum for a discussion) - a check book manager/budget manager/report manager like Quickbooks. QB is probably overkill and Quicken is going through some ownership pain and change in strategy.

I manage the finances for a small 8-unit complex. Moneydance meets our needs well, produces all the needed reports in PDF format (Budget, Income/Expense, Balance Sheet), and I email them monthly to the homeowners. I don't currently use the download function, but Moneydance does support downloads for most of the banks.

HTH,
Rita