Aplos vs QuickBooks for Churches: Funds and Pricing

Aplos and QuickBooks Online can both keep a church's books, but each asks you to give something up. Aplos is a nonprofit suite with its own giving forms, so your donors would start giving through Aplos. QuickBooks Online lets you keep the giving platform you have, but it tracks funds with classes, and class tracking starts on the $140-a-month Plus plan. Grain Ledger asks for neither. It's fund accounting built for churches, it connects the giving platform you already use, and it's free for churches with up to $20,000 in monthly expenses.

Church accounting software comparison: Grain, Aplos and QuickBooks

List prices as of November 10, 2026, billed monthly, before promotions.

Fund accounting in Aplos vs QuickBooks

A church's money comes with strings. A gift to the building fund can only pay for the building, and the board report has to show it. Since FASB's ASU 2016-14, that report splits net assets into two groups: with donor restrictions and without. The typical church on Grain tracks about 6 funds, and 7 in 10 track at least one donor-restricted fund (anonymized Grain data for 2026 so far).

Grain's fund accounting tracks restricted and unrestricted funds as real funds, with the net asset classes a board report needs. Balance Sheet, Statement of Activities and Statement of Cash Flows come from the same ledger.

Aplos is built for fund accounting too: even its Lite plan has a Balance Sheet by Fund and an Income Statement by Fund.

QuickBooks Online has no funds. You tag each transaction with a class, one class per fund, and Intuit's own fund accounting guide also has you set up bank sub-accounts to keep each fund's cash apart. Intuit's church page says class tracking is "available only in QuickBooks Online Plus and Advanced". That works as long as everyone who enters a transaction tags it right. Miss one, and a building fund gift drops out of the building fund report. Nobody notices until the numbers don't add up. Our guide to QuickBooks for churches walks through the class setup.

One $500 gift to the building fund, three ways

Grain Ledger

1. Given in Planning Center Giving↓→
2. Synced to Grain; the Planning Center fund maps to your Building fund↓→
3. The batch deposit matches the bank deposit

Aplos

1. Given on an Aplos giving form (AplosPay)↓→
2. Recorded to the Building fund in Aplos↓→
3. Shows on the Balance Sheet by Fund

QuickBooks Online Plus

1. Given in Planning Center Giving↓→
2. Sent through Zapier or entered by hand↓→
3. Tagged with the Building Fund class; cash kept in a bank sub-account

Aplos vs QuickBooks pricing for a church

Here's what two churches would pay at list price.

A small church. Three people need access (the treasurer, a bookkeeper and the pastor), the church has one checking account, and it spends about $15,000 a month.

• Grain: Starter is free. It includes 3 users and 1 bank account, and the church is under the $20,000 monthly limit. One big month, like December, won't push it off Starter: the limit uses the median of the last three months.
• Aplos: Lite is $79 a month with 2 users, plus $20 for the third: $99 a month.
• QuickBooks Online: Plus is $140 a month for up to 5 users.

A mid-size church. Five people need access, the church has checking and savings, and it spends about $60,000 a month, or $720,000 a year.

• Grain: Growth is $70 a month for unlimited users, 3 bank accounts and up to $1M a year in revenue or expenses.
• Aplos: Lite with three extra users is $139 a month. Budgeting starts on Core: $129 plus the same three extra users, $189 a month.
• QuickBooks Online: Plus is still $140 a month, since 5 users fit.

Monthly list price for the two example churches

Small church: 3 users, 1 bank account, $15,000 a month in expenses

• Grain Starter$0/mo
• Aplos Lite + 1 user$99/mo
• QuickBooks Online Plus$140/mo

Mid-size church: 5 users, 2 bank accounts, $60,000 a month in expenses

• Grain Growth$70/mo
• Aplos Lite + 3 users$139/mo
• QuickBooks Online Plus$140/mo

Three things move these numbers. Aplos takes 10% off for yearly billing. An eligible church can get a year of QuickBooks Online Plus through TechSoup for an $80 admin fee. And right now Aplos and Intuit both take 50% off the first three months (Aplos's offer is for new customers and ends November 30).

Planning Center Giving integration: QuickBooks, Aplos and Grain

Where your gifts come in matters more than the price. Of the churches on Grain with a connected giving platform, 68% use Planning Center Giving (anonymized Grain data for 2026 so far).

• Grain isn't a giving platform, and it doesn't ask you to change yours: your donors give the way they always have. With Planning Center, donations sync as they come in, Planning Center funds map to your chart of accounts, and batch deposits reconcile with your bank.
• Aplos is built around its own giving forms, AplosPay. It can import gifts from PayPal and Raisely, but its help center lists no Planning Center integration.
• QuickBooks Online reaches Planning Center through Zapier, and each gift still needs its class once it lands.

Church accounting software features: reports, access and payroll

Board reports and budgets

In Grain, fund balance reports show each restricted and unrestricted balance with its net asset changes, and every report can be filtered by fund, department or dimension. Budgets work the same way: by fund, department or dimension, with budget vs actual. Starter includes one active budget, and Growth has no limit.

Who gets a login

A church's books have more readers than writers. In Grain, you can give your outside accountant read-only access, and board members can get read-only views of reports and fund balances. An executive pastor can get a login that sees budgets and reports and approves bills without posting entries. On Growth, users are unlimited, so nobody shares a password to save $20.

On Aplos Lite, every user is an Administrator with full access; roles and permissions start on Core.

Reconciling the bank

Month-end comes down to one job: making the books match the bank. A Sunday deposit can hold gifts for the general fund, missions and the building, so the bank shows one deposit while the books show many separate gifts.

Grain imports bank transactions through Plaid, sorts them, and matches each batch deposit from your giving platform to the deposit the bank shows. The fund split is already on the gifts inside it. Aplos imports bank transactions too, and its Lite plan includes bank reconciliation. In QuickBooks, the split lives in the classes on each gift, so a missed tag shows up here as a fund that's off by the amount of one gift.

Paying your pastor and staff

Church payroll has its own wrinkles, like the housing allowance. Grain's payroll add-on works on any plan: direct deposit or check, Form 941 and W-2, clergy and staff pay, housing allowance tracking, and each paycheck allocated to the right fund automatically.

Migrating from QuickBooks or Aplos

Already on one of them? Grain's free Starter plan includes one-click QuickBooks migration, and our free migration support moves you from QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop or Aplos within a few weeks.

Switch on a clean date, like the first day of your fiscal year, so the board sees the whole year in one system. List your funds first: a church on QuickBooks has them as classes, and a church on Aplos already has them as funds. Our free church chart of accounts is a good starting list.

Before you switch, pull four things from the old system: the last reconciled bank statement, each fund's balance on the switch date, any unpaid bills, and this year's giving by donor. You'll need that giving history to send year-end giving statements that cover the whole year.

Best church accounting software for your church

Grain is for church finance teams that want real fund accounting without moving their giving: the treasurer, bookkeeper or executive pastor who closes the books each month and hands the board a fund report. You can try it on the free Starter plan with your own books, no card needed. For a closer look at each one, see Grain vs Aplos and Grain vs QuickBooks Online. Realm or ChurchTrac on your list too? They're on our alternatives page.