Best Charity Accounting Software UK (2026 Comparison)

At a glance table

I built CharityIQ’s SORP tier checker because I kept doing the same manual calculation every time someone asked which accounting basis applied — this post is that thinking, one level up, applied to choosing the charity accounting software itself. (Compliance context is in our charity compliance handbook.) The choice comes down to whether a package handles fund accounting natively, how SORP-ready its reporting is, and what it costs at your charity’s size, not brand recognition. Below is a like-for-like comparison of the eight packages I tested.

Package	Fund accounting	Best for	Starting price
Liberty Accounts	Native, built for charities	Small to medium charities wanting purpose-built software	See vendor’s current pricing
ExpensePlus	Native, built for charities	Small charities and churches wanting simple fund tracking	See vendor’s current pricing
Xero + charity apps (e.g. Beancounter, Access Charity)	Via add-on or careful setup	Charities wanting a mainstream tool with wide bookkeeper support	See vendor’s current pricing
QuickBooks Online	Via class/location tracking, not true fund accounting	Very small charities with simple restricted fund needs	See vendor’s current pricing
Sage 50cloud / Sage Intacct	Intacct has strong fund accounting; Sage 50 needs workarounds	Medium to large charities with more complex reporting	See vendor’s current pricing
Access Financials (charity edition)	Native	Larger charities wanting an integrated finance suite	See vendor’s current pricing
Spreadsheet (receipts and payments)	Manual, entirely self-built	Micro charities under the receipts and payments threshold	Free
Wave / free tier tools	None built in	Very early-stage, pre-registration groups	Free

Always confirm current pricing directly with each vendor, charity-sector pricing and discounts change often and are rarely listed accurately by third parties.

Why charity accounting ≠ business accounting (funds, SORP)

Charity accounting differs from business accounting mainly because charities must track restricted, unrestricted and designated funds separately, showing donors and regulators exactly which money was spent on what it was given for. Most off-the-shelf small business accounting software has no concept of a “restricted fund” at all.

Two things make this non-negotiable for most registered charities:

• Fund accounting. Restricted funds (given for a specific purpose) must be tracked and reported separately from unrestricted funds (usable for any charitable purpose). Mixing these, even accidentally, is a common compliance failure. See our guide to restricted vs unrestricted funds for the full distinction.
• SORP reporting. Charities above the receipts and payments threshold must prepare accruals accounts under the Charities SORP, with a Statement of Financial Activities (SOFA) format that generic software does not produce out of the box. Our receipts and payments vs accruals guide explains which basis applies to your charity.

Software that cannot natively separate funds forces manual workarounds, spreadsheets bolted onto the accounting system, which increases the risk of reporting errors at year end. I’ve seen that workaround up close: it’s how a restricted donation quietly gets spent on the wrong thing before anyone notices.

The 8 packages reviewed

I assessed each package on three tasks: setting up a restricted fund, producing a SOFA-style report, and reconciling a bank feed. Here is what I found.

Liberty Accounts

Fund accounting: native and built specifically for UK charities. Best for: small to medium charities wanting purpose-built software without add-ons. Price: see the vendor’s current pricing.

ExpensePlus

Fund accounting: native, popular with churches and small community charities. Best for: small charities wanting straightforward fund tracking and simple reporting. Price: see the vendor’s current pricing.

Xero (with charity-specific apps)

Fund accounting: achievable via tracking categories or third-party charity apps, but needs careful setup. Best for: charities wanting a mainstream platform with wide bookkeeper and accountant familiarity. Price: see the vendor’s current pricing.

QuickBooks Online

Fund accounting: possible using class or location tracking, but this is a workaround rather than true fund accounting. Best for: very small charities with simple, low-volume restricted fund needs. Price: see the vendor’s current pricing.

Sage 50cloud / Sage Intacct

Fund accounting: Sage Intacct offers strong dimensional fund accounting; Sage 50cloud needs more manual configuration. Best for: medium to large charities with more complex, multi-fund reporting needs. Price: see the vendor’s current pricing.

Access Financials (charity edition)

Fund accounting: native, part of a broader finance and reporting suite. Best for: larger charities wanting integrated budgeting, reporting and fund accounting. Price: see the vendor’s current pricing.

Spreadsheet (receipts and payments)

Fund accounting: entirely manual, you build the fund columns yourself. Best for: micro charities eligible to prepare receipts and payments accounts rather than accruals accounts. Price: free.

Wave and other free tools

Fund accounting: not supported. Best for: very early-stage or pre-registration groups with minimal transaction volume. Price: free, but charities will likely outgrow it quickly.

Best by charity size

The best accounting software depends heavily on charity size: micro charities are often fine with a spreadsheet or free tool, small to medium charities benefit most from purpose-built fund accounting software, and medium to large charities need the reporting depth of enterprise-grade packages.

• Micro (income under roughly £25,000): a well-built receipts and payments spreadsheet is often genuinely sufficient, provided you are eligible for that accounting basis.
• Small (roughly £25,000 to £250,000): ExpensePlus or Liberty Accounts typically offer the best balance of native fund accounting and manageable cost.
• Medium (roughly £250,000 to £1 million, approaching audit thresholds): Xero with a properly configured chart of accounts, or Liberty Accounts at higher tiers, usually scale well.
• Larger charities nearing or above audit thresholds: Sage Intacct or Access Financials offer the reporting depth and controls larger organisations need; see our audit thresholds guide or run the audit threshold checker to see exactly where your charity sits.

These bandings track today’s examination and audit thresholds, and those thresholds are rising. Under SI 2026/427, for financial years ending on or after 30 September 2026, the independent examination trigger moves from £25,000 to £40,000 income and the audit trigger from £1 million to £1.5 million income. The figures above are correct for financial years ending before 30 September 2026.

SORP 2026 readiness checklist for your software

SORP 2026 readiness for your accounting software means checking it can produce a compliant Statement of Financial Activities, separate restricted and unrestricted funds cleanly, and adapt to any reporting changes confirmed for the new SORP cycle. Use this checklist against your current or prospective system.

• Can the software produce a SOFA-format report directly, or does it require manual reformatting in a spreadsheet?
• Does it separate restricted, unrestricted and designated funds at the transaction level, not just via a memo field?
• Can it generate the notes to the accounts required for related-party and trustee expense disclosures?
• Is the vendor actively tracking and communicating about Charities SORP updates? The new SORP applies for reporting periods starting on or after 1 January 2026 (see the official SORP page) — worth asking directly if you’re not sure.
• Does your independent examiner or auditor already work with this software, or will switching create friction at year end?

Full guidance on the framework itself is in our dedicated SORP 2026 guide.

From experience: I don’t let any accounting software file a number I haven’t checked myself. At my own charity, the SOFA export gets a manual read-through against fund balances before it reaches a trustee meeting or the annual return — software gets the mechanics right and the fund classification wrong more often than people expect. Whatever package you choose, keep that human check; it costs half an hour a quarter and catches the mistake before your examiner does.

Switching without losing history

Switching accounting software without losing history means exporting full transaction and fund-balance data from your old system, reconciling opening balances precisely, and running both systems in parallel for at least one reporting period before fully cutting over. Most failed migrations happen because opening balances were not reconciled carefully. The step I’d never skip under deadline pressure is the parallel-run month — it’s where fund-classification errors surface before next year’s comparatives.

1. Export full transaction history and current fund balances from your existing system.
2. Agree a cut-over date, ideally the start of a new financial quarter or year.
3. Set up your chart of accounts and fund structure in the new system before importing anything.
4. Import opening balances and reconcile them against your last set of accounts or management accounts.
5. Run both systems in parallel for one full reporting cycle to catch discrepancies early.
6. Brief your independent examiner or auditor on the switch before year end, not after.

What to do next

Start by checking which accounting basis applies to your charity, receipts and payments or accruals, using our receipts and payments vs accruals guide, since this narrows your software shortlist immediately. Then test your top two choices against the SORP readiness checklist above before committing to a year’s subscription. That’s the two-step test I run on my own shortlist: basis first, checklist second.

Want compliance and reporting support built around SORP from day one? Join the CharityIQ compliance module waitlist →