A note before you read: this is my personal professional experience. OneAccounts is an independent product. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by WWF-Pakistan or by any donor named below, and nothing here uses confidential information from any organisation.
Most accounting software is designed by people who have never had to explain a budget variance to a donor. I have. I spent more than ten years in the finance department of WWF-Pakistan, working as Finance Coordinator and Assistant Manager Finance, and as a finance and project coordinator at the head office. OneAccounts is what I built from that experience: NGO accounting software for Pakistan, shaped by the problems a finance team really faces, not by a feature list copied from somewhere else.
This guide explains what that decade taught me, and how each lesson became part of the software. If you run finance for an NGO, you will recognise the problems. If you are choosing software, you will find questions at the end that you can put to any vendor, including us.
Who is writing this
I worked at the head office of WWF-Pakistan as Assistant Manager Finance and project coordinator. My day-to-day work covered four things:
- Monitoring projects and evaluating expenses against the organisation's own standards and against the compliance conditions of each donor agreement.
- Following how expenses move and get approved, from regions and project sites up to the head office.
- Managing and maintaining restricted and unrestricted funds.
- Preparing financial statements and reporting to major donors, including USAID, the European Union, GIZ and IKEA.
That mix is unusual for a software founder. Most accounting software starts with the books and adds NGO features later. I started with the questions a donor asks and worked backwards to the books.
What NGO finance looks like from the head office
An NGO project does not happen in the finance office. It happens in regions and at sites, sometimes far from head office. Fuel, travel, training venues, field staff, materials and contractors are all paid for close to where the work is done, and the paperwork then travels to the head office.
From the head office, every month came down to the same questions:
- Was this money spent on the right project and the right activity?
- Does it fit the donor agreement, and is it allowed under the organisation's own policy?
- Was it approved by the right person before it was spent?
- How much of the budget line is left?
- Can I show the document behind every figure?
A spreadsheet can hold the numbers. It cannot hold the questions. It will not stop a bill that pushes a budget line over its limit, and it will not remember who changed a budget and why. That is where most NGO finance teams lose time: not in entering data, but in checking it afterwards.
Restricted and unrestricted funds: the part spreadsheets cannot hold
Part of my work was managing and maintaining restricted and unrestricted funds. In general terms, a restricted fund is money a donor has given for a defined purpose. An unrestricted fund can be used for any purpose the organisation chooses. The rules differ by donor and by agreement, so this is a general explanation, not accounting or legal advice.
The difficulty is that both kinds of money sit in the same organisation, often in the same bank, handled by the same people. A team that cannot see the difference at the moment of spending finds it out at the end of the year, when it is expensive to fix. In my experience the discipline is simple to describe and hard to keep: know which fund is paying, spend only what its rules allow, and be able to prove it.
I want to be direct about where OneAccounts stands today, because this is the area where NGO finance teams are most often oversold. OneAccounts tracks spending by donor and project and checks it against the approved budget. Fund-level statements for restricted and unrestricted funds are not built into the software yet. They are in development, and until they are released they are prepared with journal entries. I would rather tell you that now than have you find out in your first audit.
What donors expect from the finance team
Reporting to donors such as USAID, the European Union, GIZ and IKEA taught me that formats and schedules differ, but the questions behind them are very similar. A donor wants to know that:
- the figures in the report agree with the ledger,
- every cost can be traced to a document,
- spending stayed within the approved budget, or the difference is explained,
- the report arrives on time and matches the one before it.
None of that is about fancy reports. It is about the quality of the data before the report is made. If every expense carries its donor, project, activity and location from the day it is entered, the report is a summary of clean records. If not, someone rebuilds the picture in Excel at the end of the quarter, under pressure.
That idea sits at the centre of OneAccounts: get the record right at entry, and the report takes care of itself.
Five lessons I carried into OneAccounts
1. Every rupee needs an address
In an NGO, "we spent Rs 80,000 on training" is not an answer. The donor wants to know which project, which activity, and where. In OneAccounts, every expense can be tagged with donor, project, activity and location, and budgets are set by activity, location and account. The address is attached when the entry is made, not worked out later from memory.
2. Check the budget before the money is spent, not after
The worst time to discover an overspend is when the donor report is due. In OneAccounts, when a bill is entered against an approved budget line and would take spending past it, the bill is refused before it posts. The budget check works against an approved budget line, so setting up budgets properly is part of using it well. Purchase orders can also go through approval before a bill is raised.
3. A budget is a decision, so it needs a history
Budgets change during a project, and each change should have an owner and a reason. OneAccounts supports annual and monthly budgets, with a submit, approve or reject step, a comment, and a record of changes. When an auditor or a donor asks why a line moved, the answer is in the system and not in someone's inbox.
4. Reports should come from the same data
Once expenses are tagged and budgets are in place, the reports follow: Budget vs Actual (in PDF and Excel), overspent projects, remaining funds, and spending detail by project, donor, activity and location. For how to use them with a donor, read donor-wise and project-wise reports for NGOs.
5. Auditors ask for controls, so build them in
Finance teams are asked the same things every year: who can post, who changed what, and can last year's figures still be altered? OneAccounts has roles and permissions, an audit log, and locked periods. Withholding tax on vendor bills, payroll and fixed assets with depreciation are available as add-ons, because they are part of everyday NGO accounting in Pakistan. See withholding tax for NGOs in Pakistan for how the vendor side works.
Designed for the three people who use it
The flow and the interface of OneAccounts were defined with three kinds of user in mind, because in an NGO each of them needs something different from the same data:
| Who | What they need |
|---|---|
| The accountant | A clear, quick way to enter and post daily work without duplicating effort |
| The finance manager | Control and review: budget status, approvals and reports without rebuilding them |
| The owner or senior management | A plain picture of what has been spent, what is left and whether anything needs attention |
Ease of doing business was the brief throughout. Software that only the accountant understands leaves management guessing, and software that only management likes leaves the accountant retyping.
What OneAccounts does not do yet
Trust is built by saying where a product stops. Today, OneAccounts does not offer:
- restricted and unrestricted fund statements (in development),
- foreign-currency accounting (in development; the books are in rupees),
- donor-specific report formats, so reports for a particular donor are prepared from the standard reports and Excel exports,
- an Urdu interface.
If any of these is essential to you today, we would rather you know before the trial than after it. Our NGO accounting software page lists what is in the product now.
Questions to ask any NGO accounting software vendor
Whether you choose OneAccounts or something else, put these questions to the vendor:
- Can every expense be tagged by donor, project, activity and location at the time of entry?
- Is a bill checked against the approved budget before it posts, or only reported afterwards?
- Does a budget change keep a history, with an approval step?
- Can I see spending by donor and by project from the same data, and export it to Excel?
- How does the system handle restricted and unrestricted funds, and what is still done by hand?
- Does it support foreign-currency donors?
- Is there an audit log, role-based access and period locking?
- Has the person who designed it worked in an NGO finance office?
For a fuller scorecard, read how to choose NGO accounting software in Pakistan, and for the wider picture of donor funds and project budgets, read NGO accounting software in Pakistan.
A note on this article
This guide describes my own experience and my own judgement. The names of organisations and donors appear only to describe where I worked and whom I reported to. They do not mean those organisations use, recommend or endorse OneAccounts. Donor rules and fund rules differ from agreement to agreement, so check yours with your donor and your auditor.
Frequently asked questions
Who built OneAccounts?
OneAccounts was built in Lahore by a finance professional with more than fifteen years of experience, including over ten years in the finance department of WWF-Pakistan as Finance Coordinator and Assistant Manager Finance.
Is OneAccounts affiliated with WWF-Pakistan?
No. OneAccounts is an independent product. WWF-Pakistan is named only to describe the founder's professional background, and it does not use, endorse or sponsor OneAccounts.
Does OneAccounts handle restricted and unrestricted funds?
Not as built-in fund statements yet. OneAccounts tracks spending by donor and project against approved budgets. Restricted and unrestricted fund statements are in development, and until then they are prepared with journal entries.
Can OneAccounts produce reports in the format my donor requires?
There are no donor-specific formats built in. You get Budget vs Actual, overspent projects, remaining funds and spending detail by project, donor, activity and location, with PDF and Excel export, and most finance teams build the donor's own format from these.
How is a budget check different from a budget report?
A report tells you about an overspend after it has happened. A budget check refuses the bill before it posts, when it would take an approved budget line over its limit.
How much does OneAccounts cost for an NGO?
NGO plans are Rs 5,000 per user per month, and every new company gets a ten-day free trial with no credit card. Start from the NGO accounting software page.