We wrote the comparisons, including the parts where we lose
How to read these pages
Prices and features change on the other side of these comparisons, and we cannot always see it the day it happens. Check anything that would change your decision, and if we have something wrong, email support@futurefund.com and we will fix the page.
Pick the one you are coming from
QuickBooks
QuickBooks is built for businesses with owners, customers and profit. A PTA has a board, a membership, and bylaws. Here is where that difference shows up.
Xero
Xero does double-entry beautifully. It has no idea what a PTA council is, what your bylaws require, or which IRS form you owe in November.
Spreadsheets
Spreadsheets are free, flexible, and have no memory. No audit trail, no approvals, no reconciliation, and one formula away from a number nobody can explain.
Paper & Checkbook
Paper is honest work that cannot be searched, backed up, shared with the board, or handed to next year's treasurer in one piece.
MoneyMinder
MoneyMinder is built for volunteer groups too. The differences are in expense collection, electronic approvals, check printing and what happens when you need help.
myPTEZ
We import myPTEZ books every week — including the outstanding checks and void pairs that trip everyone up. Here is what is different once you land.
PTA accounting that runs itself
Built for school groups. Free for 30 days, no credit card required.
Eight questions to ask any vendor, including us
Most products answer yes and mean "yes, once you give them a login." Ask who administers those logins when forty new parents buy supplies each year and the board turns over in June.
Your bylaws almost certainly require two signatures. Ask to see the record six months after the fact: who approved, when, and whether an approval can be withdrawn without erasing that it happened.
A nonprofit files a 990-N, 990-EZ or 990. Ask whether the chart of accounts maps to those lines all year, or whether somebody translates business tax categories into IRS lines every January.
This is the question nobody asks and everybody regrets. Ask what the outgoing treasurer hands over, whether anything lives only in their inbox or on their laptop, and how the new person sees why a decision was made.
Not "is there support" — ask whether a person will look at your actual ledger, whether they know what a PTA council is, and what it costs. An unbalanced prior year is not a question a help article answers.
Most school groups run July to June. Ask whether that is a setting or a workaround, and what happens to last year's numbers when you close a year and later have to reopen it.
Ask whether it is read-only, whether anyone can move money through it, and who holds your online banking credentials. Then ask what happens to the feed when the bank forces a reconnect.
Ask for the export before you need it: transactions, attachments, receipts, and reports in PDF and Excel. If the answer is a screenshot or a support request, you do not own your books.
A 30-minute evaluation that actually tells you something
- 1
Make one volunteer submit one receipt
Not a demo account — a real parent, on their phone, in the parking lot. If that takes more than two minutes or requires a password, your reimbursements will keep arriving as text messages.
- 2
Take one expense all the way to a check
Submitted, approved by two officers, paid, printed, and sitting in the ledger. Every product looks the same until you follow one transaction end to end.
- 3
Print the report your council asks for
Then hand it to someone who was not in the room. If they cannot read it, or you had to rebuild it in a spreadsheet first, that is the job you just signed up for every month.