Can I Use QuickBooks for Political Campaigns?

Should you use QuickBooks for political accounting?

By Ben Katz, Political Accounting Software Chief Architect at ISPolitical. December 7, 2015

Political accounting is not the same as business or personal accounting. QuickBooks is meant for small business or personal accounting. It does that well. For political accounting, QuickBooks is a bad option.

Here are 5 reasons why off the shelf accounting tools like QuickBooks don’t work for political accounting:

1. Political Transactions:

Political accounting transactions are different. QuickBooks doesn’t support political accounting transactions like non-monetary inkind contributions, conduits, enforceable pledge, auctions, or contribution splits. Using QuickBooks means hacking their transaction types. It means you might have two different transactions saves as the same type. Legally, you must report each contribution as the right type. See an issue?

Applications like ISPolitical have every political transaction.

political accounting software | add transaction

2. Compliance Reports:

Compliance reporting is the point of political accounting. You are required to disclose your campaign’s financial history with every governing agency. That disclosure must be in exactly the format the agency says. It must include all data the agency says.

With QuickBooks, you are on your own. QuickBooks cannot generate compliance reports. Since QuickBooks doesn’t have political transactions, exports won’t be that useful. You will have to hand craft each compliance report. Some places require reports every day.

Political accounting software like ISPolitical generates your compliance reports. It checks it for errors. It shows you where to fix them. ISPolitical has the most sophisticated set of report warnings and errors. Any political accounting is better than QuickBooks when it comes to generating compliance reports.

3. Contribution Limits:

Almost every agency restricts the amount of money donors can give your campaign. You need to keep track of how much a donor gives over time. These laws can be complicated. If a husband gives $5,000, his wife may not be allowed to donate. The law may require you to designate half to each spouse. Limits usually apply per election. There is a limit for a primary. There is a limit for the general. You are responsible for keeping it straight.

QuickBooks does not track limits. You will have to keep track of them manually. Most donors give more than once. You have to add the total. In QuickBooks, you have no way to assign a donation to the primary or general election. Tracking limits is a core part of political accounting. QuickBooks has no way to do it.

Any political accounting tool worth its salt tracks donation limits. ISPolitical does, of course. ISP warns you if you try to enter a contribution that exceeds the limits and makes all functions of limit accounting simple.

4. Reconcile in System of Record

Challenger Doug Applegate was in a tight race. Then, a disclosure report showed a $400,000 drop off in cash. His campaign used an filing application that couldn’t reconcile. A few big transactions were left out of the data imported into their filing tool. A quick reconciliation before filing would have caught this. There was a clamor in the local press. Even some national press picked it up. His defeat was one of the closest in the country. It’s possible that the bad press cost him the election.

Political committees cannot file with QuickBooks. At best, you must export data from QuickBooks and import into another tool. Mistakes happen when data is exchanged like this. Errors on compliance reports are not a good political look. You can also get fined or even go to jail.

Good political accounting tools can reconcile and file in the same system. This reduces chances of costly errors. ISP’s reconciliation tool is streamlined, simple, and powerful.

5. Financial Data = Best Fundraising Data

The donor most likely to give you money is the donor that’s already given you money. Analyzing what you’ve accomplished with fundraising, keeping all your financial data in one place is critical for getting the most you can. Fundraisers need to analyze financial data to find giving patterns, know who’s already donated, who’s likely to give more, who can give more.

Treasurers would be nuts to give fundraisers and other campaign staff access to QuickBooks, which means they have to go out of their way to provide other versions of it for the campaign’s staff. When using QuickBooks, political accountants will constantly be asked for financial reports, lists of people, updates on contributions, event turn out, etc.

Using a political accounting and campaign management system like ISPolitical that has variable permission controls means a treasurer has more time to focus on their job. It also means the rest of the campaign gets what they need right away. Time is money, and political organizations must react fast to be effective.

At ISPolitical, we believe in helping you whether you become our client or not. Talk to us about your campaign or committee. If being an ISP client doesn’t make sense, we’ll tell you. There’s no pressure to use ISP, so let us help you figure things out.