Aplos Review 2026

Last updated: May 2026

What Is Aplos?

Aplos is the accounting and donor management platform built for nonprofits and churches. Founded in 2009, Aplos serves over 40,000 organizations with fund accounting, donation tracking, grant reporting, online giving, and Form 990 preparation. The product was designed by people who worked in nonprofits, which shows in how its workflows match how nonprofit teams actually think about money.

The pitch is purpose-built for nonprofits. QuickBooks and Xero work for general accounting but treat funds as memo fields rather than true accounting dimensions. Nonprofits need fund accounting where every dollar ties to a specific fund (Operating, Building, Missions, Restricted Grants), with reports that automatically separate restricted from unrestricted assets and show how each fund is performing.

How Aplos Works

Set up your chart of accounts with funds, programs, and revenue/expense categories. Connect bank accounts and payment processors. Transactions flow in automatically and post to the appropriate fund based on categorization rules you configure.

Donor management runs alongside accounting. Each donor record tracks giving history, contact info, communication preferences, and engagement notes. When a donation comes in (online giving page, mailed check, in-person event), Aplos records both the bank deposit and the donor credit so reports stay accurate.

Form 990 reporting compiles automatically from your accounting data. Nonprofits filing the annual IRS Form 990 (or 990-EZ, 990-N) traditionally spend weeks reconciling QuickBooks data to 990 categories. Aplos's chart of accounts maps directly to 990 lines, reducing year-end work dramatically.

Online giving handles recurring donations, one-time gifts, event registrations, and donation pages embedded on your website. Customizable forms match your branding. Tax receipts generate automatically.

Grant tracking ties restricted grant revenue to specific programs and tracks spending against grant budgets. Reports show grant compliance status throughout the grant period rather than only at year-end.

Aplos Pricing in 2026

Lite: $49/month annually. Basic fund accounting, online giving, donor management.

Core: $99/month annually. Adds advanced donor CRM, recurring giving, event registration.

Advanced: $159/month annually. Adds custom reporting, multi-user permissions, payroll.

Enterprise: Custom pricing for larger nonprofits with multi-entity needs.

Compared to QuickBooks Nonprofit Edition (around $80/month) plus a separate donor CRM (Bloomerang at $99+, DonorPerfect at $99+), Aplos at $99-$159 covers both functions in one platform.

Where Aplos Wins

• Fund accounting native: not bolted onto for-profit software.
• Form 990 automation: chart of accounts maps to 990 lines.
• Donor management bundled: no separate CRM needed.
• Online giving integrated: donations flow to accounting automatically.
• Affordable for small nonprofits: cheaper than enterprise nonprofit ERP.

Where It Falls Short

• Limited general accounting depth: less powerful than QuickBooks for complex businesses.
• UI is functional, not modern: works well but visually older than newer competitors.
• Integration ecosystem is smaller: fewer third-party connectors than QuickBooks.
• Multi-entity handling on Enterprise only: multi-location church networks need top tier.

Aplos vs QuickBooks Nonprofit vs Sage Intacct vs Realm

QuickBooks Nonprofit is general accounting with class tracking. Cheaper but less fund-native.

Sage Intacct is the enterprise nonprofit option with deep multi-entity support. More expensive.

Realm targets churches specifically with strong ministry-focused features.

Aplos covers churches plus general nonprofits; pick Realm if church-only.

Who Should Use Aplos

Small to mid-size nonprofits: fund accounting plus donor management.

Churches and faith-based organizations: built for this use case.

Nonprofits filing Form 990 themselves: 990 automation saves weeks of year-end work.

Skip it if: you are a very large enterprise nonprofit (use Sage Intacct), or your org is small enough for QuickBooks plus a donor CRM.

How Aplos works

Aplos is cloud accounting software built specifically for nonprofits and churches, and its organising idea is true fund accounting: keeping restricted and unrestricted funds legally separate rather than bolting classes onto a general-ledger tool designed for businesses. Everything else follows from that. It produces nonprofit-shaped reports (balance sheet by fund, income statement by fund, Statement of Activities, Statement of Financial Position) and adds donor-facing pieces on top: donation tracking, giving statements, online giving forms, a board portal and 1099 management. Aplos is now part of Velora, alongside Raisely and Keela.

In practice you set up a chart of accounts and a fund structure first. Transactions are then posted against funds automatically, so nothing has to be manually reallocated at month end. Flexible tags let you slice income and expenses by project, program, department or campaign without inflating the chart of accounts to do it. Donations entered by hand or received through the online giving forms flow straight into the ledger. Bank reconciliation and merchant accounts are included on every tier, with payments running through Stripe and funds held at Fifth Third Bank.

Integrations are curated rather than open. In-house you get Keela for CRM and Raisely for fundraising. Externally the named partners are Ramp, PEX, Gusto, DonorElf, Church Community Builder and Bloomerang. There is a documented API, an advisor and partner network for implementation, and paid bookkeeping services if you would rather hand the work over. Adjacent modules cover bill approval, payroll and prepaid cards.

Where Aplos wins

• Fund accounting is real, not a workaround. Fund separation is enforced at the transaction level and reports come out by fund without you assembling them.
• Nonprofit and church reporting is native. GAAP-compliant Statement of Activities and Statement of Financial Position, giving statements, 1099 management and a board portal are all in the product.
• Tagging keeps the chart of accounts clean. Project, department and campaign tags give you granular reporting without adding account codes for every program.
• Support is included everywhere. Every tier gets phone and email support, MFA, bank reconciliation, merchant accounts, and live plus on-demand training. Support is the top-rated dimension in its own review aggregate at 4.6/5 across 276 reviews.
• There is an escalation path inside the product. Advanced accounting adds dimensional budgeting and reporting, income and expense allocations and fixed assets, and Aplos sells bookkeeping as a service if you outgrow doing it yourself.

Where it falls short

• There is no free tier. Entry is $79/month for Lite after a 15-day trial, well above general-purpose bookkeeping tools.
• Lite is thin for the price. No budgeting, no accounts payable or receivable, no recurring transactions, no period close and no third-party integrations. All of those start at Core ($129/month).
• Seats are tight and do not scale cheaply. 2 users on Lite and Core, 3 on Advanced, and additional users are a custom-pricing item rather than a listed add-on.
• The good reporting is at the top. Dimensional budgeting and reporting, and budgeting by fund, grant or department, require Advanced at $229/month. Allocations, fixed assets and bill approval are pushed to a custom quote.
• The integration list is short. Roughly eight named partners, all sector-specific, with no Zapier or broad app marketplace advertised. Anything outside that list means building against the API.

Who should use Aplos

Aplos is aimed at US nonprofits and churches that have outgrown using QuickBooks classes as a stand-in for funds and need genuine fund accounting with donor management in the same system. It is a particularly good fit for organisations carrying grants and restricted funds that have to be reported on separately, since that is exactly the reporting the product was shaped around. The Advanced tier at $229/month is positioned for groups above $250K in annual revenue.

Skip it if you are a small all-volunteer organisation where $79/month is real money that would otherwise go to the mission. Skip it if you need more than two or three user seats and do not want to negotiate a custom quote to get them. And skip it if your operations depend on a wide integration ecosystem, because the curated partner list plus an API is a different proposition from an app marketplace.

Frequently Asked Questions