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.

We have been able to run a very busy finance office with only 1.5 employees for several years now. We also have been able to do much more efficient and flexible reporting to business units (detail) and to board management (summary).

The NXT online service is very easy to use and very flexible to our needs for reporting. The support is good, most reps are very responsive and I love Blackbaud University.

It's really expensive. And requests for customization are hard to get through. But it's overall so easy to use that we can live with the small tweaks for now.

The system is geared towards non profits. it is very easy to use. Being able to log into the system from anywhere is a huge plus.

Third party integration is still lacking compared to most other major accounting platforms. Unless you have a tech department willing to invest time into the api it is hard to do your own in depth analytics out of the box or connect the software to other systems. If the desktop version wasn't available for those in the cloud, I am not sure how any organization could do in depth analysis without the ability to query the database. The product is still a work in process as they work on moving features from the desktop version to the cloud based system. They also do not support multiple currencies which is a big con as an international non profit.

Blackbaud's FinancialEdge is fantastic. We here at Evangel University has been using FE since 1997 and have no problems to speak of. It is very easy to use; very easy to customize your account number structure; very stable. You can create any report you want, from very detailed to summary information. All this is capable through the Chart Organizer. It has the capabilities to create PivotTables, charts, and update with just a click of a button. It has a dashboard which allows you to put reports, queries, or charts on one page and all the user has to do is hit a button to update - which saves me a lot of time when individuals call me to send them updated information. We purchased the option to have View-Only Access. I have setup our department heads and admin assistants with the option where they can view their GL accounts and create reports and queries on what they want, when they want. The best feature is that they can view the activity in their GL account anytime with current information. If you have to send out reports, which I still have to do for some, it's all done with the Accounting Que module. This feature is the best thing about the Financial Edge. I start the que and it runs by itself in the background, and I can go about my day. No more spending hours generating and distributing reports. It will run just about any report or process, including posting to Accounts Payable. You can set up your que to run anytime you want. Support is excellent. With the few problems I have had, they always were on top of it and never went more than a day or two with out hearing from them or receiving a solution. They have the capability to log into your machine and fix, or show, where the problem is. Top notch people that are easy to understand; they speak in common terms not that techy stuff. I recommend Blackbauds Financial Edge to anyone looking for an excellent and stable accounting software.

We use multiple Blackbaud products within my company, including Raiser's, NXT which is very intuitive, WordPress, TeamRaiser, Merchant Services.

Overall great foundation for management of accounting, grants, other projects. They give you the ability to customize your dashboard and views. Easily monitor accounts and generate detailed reports. Allows you to process financials in smoothly, not manually. You could even set budgets for next several years.

All Blackbaud products are very pricey but it's worth the cost. We use so many different Blackbaud products. Customer service could be improved. They send you lots of video tutorials and knowledge base articles and some of the features are kind of cumbersome to understand.

I like NXT for the look and feel and that I can pull reports into a good excel format. My staff love that they can see vendor history and payments.

There are functions that I need that I can not use in Financial Edge NXT. Therefore my got to is Financial Edge classic for my daily weekly and monthly tasks.

We were not actually able to use the software. The implementation specialist was changed 3 times with the good workers being the ones moved off the development. The 4 month scheduled process turned into a 14 month with no responsibility being claimed by BB for the delays.

The look of the web-based interface is really good and flows well. The reporting is highly customizable and sharable through email or dashboards.

The receivable module is still not available in the browser view nor are the EFT payments in Canada. So you have to do this in database view which is old, cumbersome, and confusing.

The 'in testing' credit card feeds function. Our company has a lot of credit card activity and with the credit cards feed we are able to link directly to the bank accounts and pull in every transaction as they occur. This has taken our 3 days process of entering all of the receipts and shortened it down to just half a day, with the receipts already in the system all I have to do is tie it to a vendor and code it then it's done. I also like the customization when filtering through vendors and invoices each person wants and needs to see different fields and NXT really lets each user have their own experience. When entering multiple invoices for one vendor you also have the ability to duplicate the last invoice speeding things along especially if there are minimal differences between the invoices.

There is no use for our Payroll Specialist or Accounts Receivable, and with each day having at least 40 invoices to enter at one time, there is no way to enter a bulk amount of invoices like the database view allows so Accounts Payable is limited to using it only once or twice a week.

This could be such a great product but I'm so very disappointed with the service and unwillingness to help, since we decided to leave blackbaud, that it doesn't even matter how good the software is.

Blackbaud is quite comprehensive, flexible and useful, unfortunately the poor customer service and outrageous cost does not qualify it to be a good choice for any institute.

Once blackbaud lures you in you are trapped, then they raise the prices , sometimes by three times the original amount, and your company suffers. Absolutely not a good option for non profits!!!

This was the best option for our organization as we have a large amount of staff that are in need of quick access to financial and budget information. Being a cloud system, this has allowed our staff to have quick access at any place in the world to stay informed.

Speed. I know a lot has to do with internet connection but even in places where we have fiber internet connection, the load time is lacking. This is a great opportunity area for improvement.

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.

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.

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

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

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!

Overall Financial Edge NXT is easy to use. I mostly use it to query transactions. It is easy to pull the data that I need.

Setting up queries is not intuitive. However, once you have set it up you can use the same one over and over again. I wish the output downloaded to a different version of Excel.

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

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

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.