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).

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.

Listen, price is always a concern, but so is the time you'll spend manipulating reports in Excel when you work with lesser software packages. I guarantee you, pit me on Financial Edge against an accountant on any other software, and I can get the job done at least twice as fast, and if it's QuickBooks, five times as fast, and without ever having to go into Excel to do anything.

I've worked with Blackbaud's Financial Edge for over 2 decades now (even back when it was called Accounting for Nonprofits), and it's the best for nonprofit accounting. Its chart of accounts can be changed at any point to accommodate as many segments as you need (I have worked with as many as 4 segments), and reporting of any kind is easily accomplished with the variety of accessible reports and queries. A lot of journal entries that you'd need to create in other software packages are easily handled through invoice entry in accounts payable, at the time of invoice entry, through miscellaneous distributions. Customer service is excellent as well.

The annual support for customer service is a bit pricey, and designed to keep you on the hook forever (if you don't pay for a year, because you don't think you will need support - and after the first year or two you may not - as soon as you need support, you've got to pay a large percentage of all the years you missed). Not a con, but Blackbaud's products get a bad rep from bookkeepers who are more used to the silliness of QuickBooks than the accountant's dream that Financial Edge really is.

After seeing the NXT demo, it was clear that moving to the new platform would provide our business with all the functionality we were missing in our on premise thick client version. THIS WAS A BIG MISTAKE! Although during the demo it was clearly stated that some of the modules would not be moved from the old version to the new, it was not stated that features in the NXT migrated modules would not be available... so if you are working in say AP and rolling along with your work, you might hit a feature set that does not exist in NXT and requires you to switch to the Citrix version think client. It turns out that only a small percentage of the system has been migrated to NXT. This plan to migrate the modules and functions within the modules in realtime is a massive failure. The performance hit moving to the cloud was intollerable. GL uploads take twice as long even after assessing bandwidth and attempting to do the uploads on the local Blackbaud servers in the cloud. Its as if they did not build the environment robust enough to support the client base. There were features that simply did not work. Printing is problematic and the WebPortal for purchases and requisitions simply does not work. It fails with a web browser error. They said they fixed it as they had identified a node that was not turned up (you would have though they would have a monitoring tool to know this was the case) but this did not solve the problem in the end. Screen lockups, and crashes began to occur and yet there was no one who could effectively analyze the issues and solve the problems. We now have to roll our database back to our on premise version and search for a new solution. We will not be using Blackbaud. Their support is horrendous; forget telephone support your could be on hold for an hour or more; we were able to get on chats but that took some time as well. It was not until we started yelling and escalating that we finally got some response because the number of open incidents was ridiculous. I'm sure their bread and butter CRM and Grand management apps are probably fine but hosted Financial Edge/NXT definitely not worth the money.

None...

Product just does not work.

If you are having issues, contact support staff. Work with them. If you need to refine your initial setup do so earlier than later, you will appreciate it the long run.

The integration between Altru (our sub-ledger), BB Merchant Services and FE/NXT is superb in my opinion. You have the ability to track a transaction backwards and forwards. We use the visual chart feature to create our budget in five different views - relating to the grants we are using, thereby eliminating errors in data collection by excel spreadsheet creations not getting updated. Someone mentioned that thinking about the creation of your organization and GL was a big con for them. I disagree. We came on board with expert advice from BB and created a cohesive database that allows us to close the month within two-three days. I think the effort that is put into creating a tool should be as important as the information that you hope to receive from its use.

A few spotty delays when I an running an exceptionally detailed report as you watch the Jeopardy button go around in circles.

Financial Edge has been a great experience; we have streamlined data processes and improved our reporting cabability more than 10 fold. We love the project and grant data management pieces as well. The newest addition of Credit Card payment/processing has been a WONDERFUL thing for our office. Our CFO and Accounts Payable Staff can easily see where we are at any given moment in regards to AP/AR balances. Paying invoices is really easy and the load from tables funcationality for GL Disbursments is helpful as well. Financial Edge also has the capabilty to create recurring invoices for those AP invoices that are the same month after month. We are integrated with Raiser's Edge as well and that process is very easy as well.

Ease of use in Query and Report Parameters

Some of the more intricate invoices can be cumbersome, but that is only for a few items that we have. I wish the Vendor integration with Raiser's Edge was more robust, but it works for us ok.