Bookkeeping & accounting for nonprofits and associations
Our mission is simple: save your organization time and money while helping you stay financially organized and compliant.
Rationara combines nonprofit accounting experts with purpose-built technology to handle your bookkeeping, fund accounting, reconciliations, monthly close, financial reporting, and more — so you can spend less time managing your books and more time advancing your mission.
| Net assets | Without restrictions | With restrictions |
|---|---|---|
| Contributions | $412,800 | $186,500 |
| Released from restrictions | $94,200 | ($94,200) |
| Total expenses | ($389,410) | — |
| Change in net assets | $117,590 | $92,300 |
If any of this sounds familiar, that’s exactly what Rationara was built to solve.
Hiring in-house means salary, training, and turnover. Traditional outsourcing means hourly bills and variable quality. Rationara was built to be the third option.
| Hiring in-house | Traditional outsourced accounting | Rationara |
|---|---|---|
| Salary + benefits | Hourly billing | One predictable monthly fee |
| Recruiting and turnover | Variable costs | No employee to hire or manage |
| General accounting knowledge | Expertise varies by provider | U.S.-based nonprofit accounting experts |
| Training and supervision | May use offshore teams | 100% U.S.-based accounting team |
| Accounting software costs | Disconnected systems | Purpose-built technology included |
| Limited backup coverage | Staff availability varies | Dedicated accounting team |
| Month-end close depends on staff | Close process varies | Monthly close included |
| Reporting requires staff time | Limited visibility | Board-ready financial reporting |
| Higher fixed overhead | Costs grow with hours | Built for efficiency and affordability |
Generic bookkeeping treats your organization like a small business. But nonprofit money comes with strings: a donor restricts a gift to one program, a grant must be spent by a deadline, and your Form 990 needs expenses split across program, management, and fundraising. When those distinctions live in a spreadsheet on the side, they drift — and untangling them at audit time is expensive.
Rationara tracks restrictions on the ledger itself. Every transaction can carry a fund, a grant, and a program class, so your statement of activities, functional expenses, and fund balances fall out of the books automatically — not from a year-end reconstruction.
Three things happen every month, and only one of them involves you.
Transactions flow in daily from your bank and credit card feeds. Our bookkeepers categorize each one, match receipts you forward by email, and apply the rules we’ve learned about your organization. Nothing posts to the ledger until a person has reviewed it.
When something needs your judgment — “Is this $1,200 payment to Hillside Print for the gala or general outreach?” — we send a short question to your portal. You answer in a sentence, from any device. That’s your entire monthly workload.
Once your month is reconciled and closed, we publish a report package to your portal: statement of activities, balance sheet, budget vs. actual, and fund balances. Board members and your treasurer see the same numbers you do — as of a locked, reconciled period.
Read the full monthly workflow on How it works.
Bookkeeping services are easy to promise and hard to pin down. So here is the concrete list — the deliverables a month of Rationara produces, on a date you can put in your board calendar.
Reports are ready by the 10th business day on the Core plan, the 20th on Essential. If we’re ever going to miss that, you hear from us before the date — not after.
These aren’t add-ons — they’re built into the platform your books live on. The full detail is on What we handle.
Unrestricted, temporarily restricted, and permanently restricted funds, with release conditions tracked by time, use, or event.
Each grant tied to its fund and spending, so you always know what's left and what's been released.
Pledge schedules and donor giving history, connected to the actual deposits on your ledger.
Forward receipts by email; we read them, match them to bank transactions, and attach them to the entry.
Secure read-only connections to your bank and credit card accounts, so nothing gets typed in by hand.
A formal checklist-driven close that locks each period once it's reconciled, reviewed, and approved.
From statement of activities and functional expenses to fund P&L, budget vs. actual, and trial balance.
Who changed what, and when — every ledger-relevant action recorded, ready for your auditor.
Not another accounting firm using the same old tools
Rationara’s accounting platform was designed around the work our accountants actually perform — transaction review, restricted funds, grants, receipts, reconciliation, monthly close, and reporting. That means fewer spreadsheets, fewer emails, fewer handoffs, and less manual work.
Better technology makes our accountants more productive — and that makes professional accounting affordable for smaller organizations.
You and your board don’t log into accounting software. You log into a plain-language portal: current cash position, this month’s questions from your bookkeeper, and every published report package — nothing to configure, nothing to break.
Invite your treasurer, program directors, or office manager with their own logins. Everyone reads from the same closed books, so the “which version of the spreadsheet is right?” conversation disappears.
Two plans, priced flat by your annual revenue — no hourly billing, no surprise invoices, no long-term contract. Essential covers straightforward, mostly unrestricted books; Core adds custom funds, grants, and program classes, accrual accounting, and a faster monthly close.
The full fee table by revenue band is on the pricing page — most organizations can find their exact number before ever talking to us.
Cash-basis books, standard nonprofit chart of accounts, reports by the 20th business day.
Funds, grants & program classes, cash or accrual, reports by the 10th business day.
A 30-minute call with an accountant — not a salesperson. Bring your current setup, however messy. We'll tell you honestly what moving to Rationara would involve, including whether you're better served staying where you are.
