We used a standard spreadsheet for years for our budget - it worked just fine and let us change the report order if we wanted to know something - for example, we usually report by project (play, training, donations, etc.) but we can also sort the spreadsheet to find out how much we spent on space rental or costumes or sets.

At the start of each year, the proposed projects are listed across the top of the columns with the expense categories (roayalties, sets, advertising, costumes, etc) down the columns. When we start on the project, we insert a new column next to the budget where we put the actual information. This worked well for us.

We recently changed to Quickbooks. It is much faster to enter data and the reporting capabilities make customizing reports easy. We also selected it because we already use it for our business so it was there.