About three years ago, I was made treasurer of our monastery. Lucky me.

I had a high-school accounting class. I even have a college degree in mathematics. But none of that prepared me for figuring out the perplexing rules of Form 990, which the Internal Revenue Service requires nonprofit corporations to file.

Fortunately, the IRS is lenient with nonprofits. When I took over “the books,” I discovered a number of glaring mistakes in our previous filings. We were never audited — probably because we don't make enough money to concern the IRS.

I know I am not alone when it comes to feeling exasperated with the IRS. My brother-in-law, for one, struggled mightily when he tried to figure out how to file his income tax after he purchased another house as rental property. At such times, some people turn to tax-preparation services, such as H&R Block, to file their forms for them. But even that requires meticulous record-keeping on the part of the taxpayer.

When we sold our Massachusetts monastery in 2001, we were forced to put the proceeds in multiple bank accounts so it would all be insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. And, being frugal monks, we

wanted to shop around for the highest interest rate we could find. So we kept moving our accounts around to different banks.

That same year, we moved to Florida. There was so much else to do that we seriously neglected our financial record-keeping. It was under those conditions that I took over the finances. It's an understatement to say I found our taxes difficult to deal with that year. I tried to make sense of multiple bank statements, credit-card statements, bookstore inventory, donations and so on.

On top of that, I knew nothing about Form 990. I actually read all those instructions at the beginning, rereading some parts many times. Here is where my theology training helped me. I turned to God in prayer to help me out of this seemingly impossible situation. It took another year, but he did answer my prayer — in stages.

Here's how it happened. I told a friend of the monastery about my difficulty keeping track of the finances. She gave me her original (not pirated) 1998 version of Quicken software, explaining that she no longer used it but found it helpful when she ran her own business. I loaded the program into our computer. It asked me several questions during setup, and then — presto! — I had an instant ledger for keeping track of all our finances.

Quicken, I quickly learned, can do much more than just ledgers. It lets you track your money by preset categories so you know exactly how much money you are spending and receiving. You can also follow where it's going and where it's coming from.

And you can customize financial reports, print out checks to pay bills and get reminded when bills are due.

I later upgraded to a newer version. It had modules for managing cash flow, investing, property and debt. There was a “planner” each for home purchasing, retirement, college and debt reduction, and even “what if?” scenarios to help with contingency planning (which, by the way, is a sensible part of good stewardship).

The newer Quicken also included the ability to download statements from the bank and credit-card companies; the latter could be automatically categorized. I was a little hesitant to use our computer for any online banking or credit-card access. To this day, I enter these statements manually. Even so, Quicken allowed me to cut in half the time it takes me to update records and fill out Form 990.

Then the next miracle happened. A maintenance man came to fix things on our rental house. I was telling him about the difficulty I still had trying to understand IRS instructions for filing income tax. He told me he used TurboTax for his business, insisting that it made filling out the forms “a snap.” Meanwhile, my brother-in-law had found that same program helpful in solving his rental-property dilemma.

TurboTax, I soon learned, downloads the proper IRS forms and walks you through the filing process. You can choose between printing out and mailing your forms or filing them online. Even better, it works hand-in-hand with your Quicken records since both programs were developed by the same company, Intuit (intuit. com). To top it off, they even guarantee your filing correctly, or they will pay any IRS fees. Hallelujah!

Unfortunately, my enthusiasm was a little premature. It turns out they don't support nonprofits yet. Still, even though TurboTax didn't help me, it got me searching for help with Form 990 on the Internet. I found the National Center for Charitable Statistics at form990.org. They offered free Desktop990, the equivalent of TurboTax for nonprofits. I downloaded it and said a “Thanks be to God” prayer as I worked my way through it. The software helped me fill out the form properly, making sure figures balanced correctly throughout. Instructions were readily available from both the IRS and their experts on each section. It even had a “verify” option, going through my return and pointing out any errors it discovered.

Now there are other software programs out there to help with accounting records. But for financial rookies like me, I believe these two programs are the best.

The bottom line: It's never too soon to start preparing for April 15 — or to start letting your computer do the heavy lifting on filing taxes and satisfying the IRS.

Brother John Raymond, co-founder of the Monks of Adoration, writes from Venice, Florida.