Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT reviews

My review of Financial Edge NXT

Opmerkingen: I like Financial Edge NXT and I couldn’t imagine doing my job without it!

Pluspunten:

I like that this software is for finance and accounting professionals. It has helped me to perform the daily functions of my job with limited interruptions.

Minpunten:

I haven’t been able to understand the allocation module, and so we are still doing our investments manually. The guide that is provided seems to work more for people who have an overall understanding of how it should work.

Great Fund Accounting Software

Opmerkingen: We moved from QuickBooks to BlackBaud because we needed a fund accounting program and it has performed well for our organization. Our department heads now have access to the site and can see their financials more than just once a month which is game changing for financial decisions.

Pluspunten:

The cost of this software verses the others in the market is very affordable. The implementation went very smooth and it has been working very well. Support is usually really quick and helpful to get problems solved.

Minpunten:

The reporting functions are time consuming to set up but most reports can be built to suit your needs and work great after the initial build.

The product you are sold is probably not what you will actually get

Opmerkingen: Our experience with FENxt has really been terrible. It is soooo slow. Features we were promised at implementation do not work or have never been rolled out (where is A/R??). It does not sync with our bill pay system (we were told it would!) so bills have to be manually entered into two systems. It takes a very long time for support and usually the ineffective solution is that we should clear our cookies or history, or we are sent something to read. One of our databases has had problems from the start. Every excel report has to be reformatted to be useful.

Pluspunten:

It is good to have project tracking capabilities and to have the ability to work from home if needed.

Minpunten:

The sales team will give you a lot of promises that are not reality. The biggest overall problems are how slow the system is, and features we were promised that never happened.

Aid me connect

Pluspunten:

This is the most advanced tool for accounting and documentation of all financial transaction an organization should have. Easy to used

Minpunten:

Has limited features this make it a bit second option for multipurpose organization

User review

Opmerkingen: Has been positive but still learning the system since "go-live" migration about 7 months ago.

Pluspunten:

Migration from previous version was seamless along with BB team to assist where needed. Ability to "copy previous" is very helpful. Helpful training opportunities via on-demand or BB U taught courses. BB support is usually always quick to reply & direct when needed.

Minpunten:

Understanding parameters that need to be set (i.e. post, etc.) can be confusing. BB support does not seem to have access to your org file when issues arise...that was a bit shocking. I would think behind the scenes that would be able to access & walk through critical problems that need to be addressed. I realize it may be a data security issue but having to add a BB staff as user seems akward.

Good product - backward implementation

Opmerkingen: The worst part is implementation. We had to make decisions about setup that cannot be changed before we fully understood how we wanted to use the software. They should have allowed us to use our own data in a "sandbox" model to learn how things work.

Pluspunten:

I love the fact that you can create journal entries and invoices and include that information in reports before posting them. This helps to avoid mistakes. The web view is user friendly and fairly intuitive.

Minpunten:

The database view is archaic and not user friendly. Many functions have not yet been converted to the web view and must be done in the database view.

This product really can only get better

Opmerkingen: Our finance and marketing departments use Blackbaud FE and RE daily and they get the job done. Migrating to something else at this point would be a monumental task, but it still may well be worth the effort.

Pluspunten:

Interfaces with our Fund Raising software (Raiser's Edge, I am equally thrilled with that too, and mostly for the same reasons cited herein). Blackbaud offers a good training program (which considering the product license fees all of which should be free).

Minpunten:

The reporting is cumbersome. Lack of a self-service audit trail. The interface is not intuitive.

Great cloud based accounting system for non profits!

Pluspunten:

I've been using black baud for almost 10 years, I love the ease of using the AP side. It's very easy to get from viewing a vendor, to adding a new invoice and checking for purchase orders, all in one window (with tabs).

Minpunten:

The only thing I don't like, it seems there are updates (which is great, but sometimes complicates things). It loses the alignment on my checks pretty drastically and doesn't save the alignment for a new run. I'm not sure if there's a glitch. It does time out kind of quickly if you aren't constantly using the system.

Excellent!

Pluspunten:

Easy to Use and access. I would recommend Raiser's Edge to anyone. Once you have aligned your system with Finance reports are really easy to produce.

Minpunten:

Raiser's Edge has so many fields that can be used or created, if you don't have an established process things can get messy like any database.

We use the full suite of modules and like the integration and support. Payroll is more challenging.

Pluspunten:

Help and support tools / resources are great. Chat support is responsive and gets a solution to the problem.

Minpunten:

Payroll leave time management configuration is challenging for our organization that has a complex leave time structure.

Great product for Non Profits

Pluspunten:

The versatility of the product was great. You are able to track data on several levels using account numbers, and several transaction codes that you are able to define yourself. Despite all of that information that was housed individually, the software also would allow you to consolidate information across multiple entities. Report writing was fairly simple as were day to day processes of entering journal entries, AP invoices and AR invoices. A nice feature of the reporting was that you were able to create one report and filter it by the transaction codes before running the report. This meant you did not have to have 100s of reports for different scenarios. Instead you could create one report and filter it each time by the transaction codes or entities you were interested in viewing. We also integrated the software with PaperSave which allowed us to go paperless.

Minpunten:

The support was not always the best. If you had an issue, sometimes the support had a difficult time understanding your issue and resolving it in a timely manner.

A top accounting software for non-profit

Opmerkingen: Blackbaud really values users' opinions. It connects all non-profit users together. It also emails me helpful tips every week.

Pluspunten:

Very good customer service. Comprehensive training program. I took all courses and mastered the software within 3 months. Those courses gave me an in-depth view of the software and simplify my work process. Financial Edge has easy-to-use features that meet our organization needs. I like the query function, VCO and various reports. VCO allows me to build reports in certain format, and query allows me to extract data quickly. The query function helps me survived this year's auditing. When an account was off, I used query and easily found the problems to fix it.

Minpunten:

It logged me out and ran very slow sometimes. I'd like it to be able to communicate with excel easily.

Financial Edge

Pluspunten:

FE is great for a fund accounting software. It does all the basics. A/P is simple and easy to accomplish. The fixed asset module works great. the ledger is fine. It can get more complicated than necessary due to the ledger structure

Minpunten:

FE is too hard to get help. There is a lot online, but sometimes you just need to have someone talk you through an issue. I have had an issue once where I needed to have their IT dept. fix a corruption in their software when I was closing a fiscal year. This software simply costs too much for maintenance and support.

FENXT - Changing with the times

Opmerkingen: Keep listening to your customer base. This is a great product and it's getting better all the time.

Pluspunten:

FENXT is a very robust product. This web-based product is being enhanced constantly. The folks at Blackbaud have been very responsive to customer feedback and if there is a functionality that isn't there, they do their best to make sure that if it's possible, it is implemented. Very happy with how the product has evolved.

Minpunten:

My suggestion at this time would be to wait until features are closer to being released before announcing them. Very frustrating when you know that something you need is going to be added but then it take six months for it to be ready.

Terrific Coud-based Financial software for non-profits

Opmerkingen: Accessibility, ease of use, and non-profit focus - that’s what brought us two years ago. I would add to that now - great support, innovation and scalability.

Pluspunten:

Easy, intuitive, clean interface. The look is modern and simple; but don’t let that fool you; the database and tools are robust and tremendously helpful.

Minpunten:

Some modules still in transition to the new web view. But what they’ve done so far is very promising for the future.

Missed it by " " that much

Pluspunten:

building reports is easy. its a great accounting package overall. the go to for non-profits of size.

Minpunten:

its a great accounting package overall. my one complaint is the way accounts are made, in three parts, account number, fund, department. these three parts all make up an account number. for example 7000-02-100. 7000 is the traditional account, 02 is the fund, and 100 is the department. so if you make an account for all funds and departments the list of accounts is HUGE!

BB Financial Edge - a Perfect Solution for non profit accounting

Opmerkingen: So many ways in which FE is the best solution out there. I love how it integrates and makes each task seamless.

Pluspunten:

Ease of use. Ease of implementation. Ease of customer support.

Minpunten:

AS our company has grown, we have become accustomed to finding work arounds to use because of the integration with Raisers Edge. Attributes in Raisers Edge helped us so many times.

Database Administrator

Pluspunten:

The FE NXT webview is a great improvement over the database view and I am looking forward to the continued delivery of new features as they role them out.

Minpunten:

Cost. The software does allow for more complex reporting than some others I have used but the cost continues to rise and due to the development and we continue to review the ROI year over year.

We Love Blackbaud's Products

Pluspunten:

Blackbaud has created a real community. You can talk with people in your industry, from others, and anyone who works for Blackbaud. Support is great and their followup is refreshing.

Minpunten:

I wish they were based here in Atlanta. BB HQ is awesome and I wish they were closer, but it gives me a destination when I am looking to go to SC.

The Cadillac of Nonprofit Software

Pluspunten:

Financial Edge is both user friendly and robust. It has significant available features to tailor your needs for reporting, querying, lookups, and of course importing and changing journal entries. The additional modules such as AR and AP are a must and integrate seamlessly for GL posting. Raiser's Edge, Blackbaud's sister product, posts directly into FE and contains significant available data for our development team. The two systems are fully linked, so that if there is a RE batch posted in FE, I can click on it in FE and bring up the record in RE.

Minpunten:

The only big drawback with Financial Edge has been cost. The initial install and annual maintenance are a hefty price for a nonprofit struggling to serve its constituents.

eTapestry is very robust and comparable to RaisersEdge, for a smaller scale organization.

Opmerkingen: This is an easy to use software tool!

Pluspunten:

The query, reporting and newly added wealth rating features are easy to use and has assisted in the improvement of my interaction with donors.

Minpunten:

Updates sometime cause changes in the queries and or account that need to be updated. If I do not check the updates, my reporting could go wrong.

Previous User of this product

Pluspunten:

This product works great for fund accounting. Also like the features available for tracking or researching GL items.

Minpunten:

The only problem we had was with uploads from other software programs to Financial Edge. We used this product for several years and it served us very well.

Streamlined Accounting

Opmerkingen: I am positive this tool will be the excellent complete package once the transition in completed!

Pluspunten:

-Ease of Navigation -Intuitive -Multi-level Filtering on Displays/Dashboards -Detailed Filtering in reporting -Ease of Report Export -Inclusion and detail of Accounts Payable Subsidiary Ledger (Module)

Minpunten:

-Slower transition from Database version, forcing the switch between the two versions to complete all tasks.

Great for reporting, adds some nice ease-of-use and efficiency features

Pluspunten:

We upgraded from Financial Edge 7. The NXT interface is clean and very easy to learn and navigate. The reporting features are MUCH better than in the old Financial Edge, and many of the other new features they are adding (like setting up a bank feed to automatically download transactions into FE NXT for ease of transaction matching and reconciliation) are increasing our efficiency.

Minpunten:

The roll-out of new features has been slower than I had originally anticipated when we moved to this platform over a year ago, and that's made it a little harder to get some of our staff to adopt use of the new platform over the old "classic" database view. Would be nice not to need to go back into the old view to perform some functions.

Very intuitive

Pluspunten:

The Visual chart organizer makes it easy to shuffle our numbers into different formats depending on the purpose and the audience.

Minpunten:

I don’t like having to click multiple tabs to see all related information abt something (budget and actuals for an account, or vendor info and payment activity) but looking forward to NXT which will solve this.