Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT Reviews

Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT
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167 Reviews
- Industry: Philanthropy
- Company size: 11–50 Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 7.0 /10
FE and RE are standards for managing your data
Reviewed on 2018/03/07
RaisersEdge allows my organization to keep track of tens of thousands of individual records....
RaisersEdge allows my organization to keep track of tens of thousands of individual records. Without these we wouldn't be able to interact successfully and efficiently with our clients, donors and partners. Financial Edge allows us to produce accounting reports and maintain our large assets.
Pros
RaisersEdge is easy to use and store data. RaisersEdge has vast capabilities and reliability. FE makes the process of accounting and check printing very easy. Both products integrate well with other software
Cons
Even though RaisersEdge has many different tools - you may not be likely to use many of them regularly. Instead I find I reuse the same tools and end up bypassing a lot of what I could do, instead sticking to the essentials. Those extra functionalities just are not that useful to me
- Industry: Education Management
- Company size: 11–50 Employees
- Used Weekly for 1-5 months
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 6.0 /10
Easier tool than other Blackbaud products
Reviewed on 2023/06/07
Pros
Easier to use than other BB products, because of ease with refunding purchases and with tracking deposits.
Cons
Irregular, not-reliable customer service.
- Industry: Philanthropy
- Company size: 501–1,000 Employees
- Used Daily for 1+ year
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 3.0 /10
FE- no thanks!
Reviewed on 2018/01/19
We were pushed into FE after our original program, Fundware, was "sunsetting". In hindsight, we...
We were pushed into FE after our original program, Fundware, was "sunsetting". In hindsight, we should've researched other programs before settling with this one.
Pros
I guess if not being "too complex" is a pro, that would be it for Financial Edge. It is a simple product and doesn't have too many bells and whistles so its pretty easy to pick up on.
Cons
Hmm where to being....
I will preface this by saying that our implementation of FE was a nightmare. They had people leaving the company left and right and in our 3 month implementation and data conversion, we were passed along to 3 different Project managers. Because of this we were playing a constant game of catch up and I don't think we were ever really given a good training of how to use the product. Also, employee support is HORRIBLE with this product. Blackbaud parcels out their support to 3rd party companies and we were working with Zobrio. They were of no help to us. The prduct doesnt intergrate with our other platforms well, so importing info in to our GL is a process that could be made much easier. We also used them for payroll for a while which was an absolute nightmare. Our W-2's were wrong due to wrong info being imported during our data conversion. We also spent many late nights working on payroll issues in the program and again, had no response when calling Zobrio or Blackbaud. ( Blackbaud did get back to us once and worked well with us, but it was quite an undertaking to even get to a person at Blackbaud. The accounting side of the software is probably the best, but overall, I am sure there are much better accounting programs out there.
- Industry: Food & Beverages
- Company size: 2–10 Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 8.0 /10
Aid me connect
Reviewed on 2023/02/21
Pros
This is the most advanced tool for accounting and documentation of all financial transaction an organization should have. Easy to used
Cons
Has limited features this make it a bit second option for multipurpose organization
- Industry: Nonprofit Organization Management
- Company size: 51–200 Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 9.0 /10
Blackbaud for Nonprofits
Reviewed on 2022/05/11
Overall this is a great product. We are very pleased with Blackbaud and do not plan on changing...
Overall this is a great product. We are very pleased with Blackbaud and do not plan on changing vendors any time soon.
Pros
This software is perfect for our organization. It continues to implement updated features to make our jobs easier.
Cons
The expense tracking sometimes appears to be offline and causes our staff a good amount of time to enter their expenses.
- Industry: Nonprofit Organization Management
- Company size: 11–50 Employees
- Used Daily for 1+ year
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 5.0 /10
Blackbaud NXT functions with great effort
Reviewed on 2022/01/22
Blackbaud has two ways of interfacing with the software. One can use a database interface or NXT....
Blackbaud has two ways of interfacing with the software. One can use a database interface or NXT. In some cases, NXT is easy to use. In other cases, the database option is more efficient. I find myself having to use both. Blackbaud has a steep learning curve. Parameters that control the software are buried in a sea of screens and options. It is often a needle in a haystack search. Blackbaud documentation is exhaustive but hard to find answers. User manuals may run on for hundreds of pages without answering the question.
Pros
The report writer allows financial statement to be developed using column and row specifications that are user defined. The row specs are based on organizing the chart of accounts. The columns are user defined and are adequate.
Cons
Blackbaud is not intuitive or user friendly. Trying to control the software is very cumbersome. Also the report writer in Financial Edge is less flexible than other software products I have used. Columns are defined as to time periods. But if one wants to run the same financial statement from past time periods, these specs must be re-written. The reporting periods should be a relative definition and should refer to a fiscal period selection at run time.
- Industry: Philanthropy
- Company size: 11–50 Employees
- Used Daily for 1-5 months
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 6.0 /10
Blackbaud Financial Edge (BBFE)
Reviewed on 2016/10/04
BBFE has both strengths and weaknesses, as might be expected. It is a true fund accounting...
BBFE has both strengths and weaknesses, as might be expected. It is a true fund accounting software with the ability to handle thousands of funds. Being able to push data in and exporting data out are 2 features that are usually very important, and BBFE mostly does that well. BBFE allows for attaching various homegrown codes to the data at the fund, account, and transaction level. This is not a panacea but can be helpful. The software can be used in a fairly high volume a/p environment and the g/l functionality is also pretty good.
Pros
Exporting data is easy, so long as the export you are looking for is available. Importing fund codes is do-able but may require some significant preparation of the upload. BBFE allows for a seemingly unlimited amount of codes to be attached to funds, accounts, and transaction lines. This is very helpful. BBFE has some built in custom reporting facilities that can be helpful. BBFE has a detailed security model that can help with internal controls.
Cons
Reports: many of the builtin reports do not contain running totals and grand totals as well as header information page-to-page as one would like. Exports: the data exports are not true sql type, but are a simplified version, which is sometimes adequate. You might need another sql facility to adequately access the data and control the data joins. BBFE imposes credit memos and disallows negative invoices--depending on what you are doing, that could be a big problem that will need to be addressed. BBFE automatically computes and shows balance forwards and each year does not stand on its own, so for some data analysis you might have to compute balance forwards in order to avoid having to download all historical data. BBFE doesn't enforce cash balancing for JEs (if 2 funds are exchanging cash, the JE can give more cash to the recipient than was removed from the payer). BBFE doesn't seem to understand control funds (a fund that holds detail information that belongs to a pool of other funds)--this will require booking JEs that would be unnecessary in some other fund accounting software. BBFE enforces using an outside service for production of 1099s.
- Industry: Education Management
- Company size: 1,001–5,000 Employees
- Used Weekly for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 9.0 /10
Financial Edge - the application that works with Raiser's Edge
Reviewed on 2019/03/14
Overall, FE is a good application if you are already RE but do not have an existing accounting...
Overall, FE is a good application if you are already RE but do not have an existing accounting application. If your organization is small and do not have an IT team, then look at Blackbaud to host your RE and FE applications and let the professionals take care of your application hardware infrastructure.
Pros
If you are using Blackbaud's Raiser's Edge (RE) software and need another application to perform accounting functions, Financial Edge (FE) is the application that will take care of Vendor tracking, A/R, A/P, etc. Rather than using another accounting application (ie. Quickbooks), Financial Edge integrates with Raiser's Edge. When you post gifts from Raiser's Edge, it goes over to Financial Edge and updates the information. The information for batch number, Appeal, Funds, Campaign migrate over to FE from RE. The user interface, look and feel between Financial Edge and Raiser's are the same. If you know RE, then FE will be easy to catch on. If you are hosted by Blackbaud, then you will be looking for FE/NXT
Cons
While there is a lot of integration from RE to FE, this comes at a cost. The FE application is expensive compared to other financial applications. If you are hosting FE on-premise, I believe Blackbaud charges by the number of users. You also need to a server with SQL to run FE. This is not like QuickBooks which can install on a local PC. If you are hosted by Blackbaud, then you will be looking at FE/NXT and again price will your main concern.
- Industry: Philanthropy
- Company size: 2–10 Employees
- Used for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10
Financial Edge - Hands Down the Best Nonprofit Accounting Package
Reviewed on 2018/03/20
Listen, price is always a concern, but so is the time you'll spend manipulating reports in Excel...
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.
Pros
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.
Cons
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.
- Industry: Education Management
- Company size: 201–500 Employees
- Used for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10
Financial Edge by Blackbaud
Reviewed on 2018/09/06
Overall had a very positive experience with it.....used it for years. Hardly any complaints.
Overall had a very positive experience with it.....used it for years. Hardly any complaints.
Pros
Functionality.......covers just about everything one would want an Accounting software to do.
Cons
Times out on the user sometimes. A little complicated to learn but good once it is mastered.
- Industry: Nonprofit Organization Management
- Company size: 11–50 Employees
- Used Daily for 1+ year
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 0.0 /10
Not what it is projected to be
Reviewed on 2022/07/22
We were not actually able to use the software. The implementation specialist was changed 3 times...
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.
Pros
The look of the web-based interface is really good and flows well. The reporting is highly customizable and sharable through email or dashboards.
Cons
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.
- Industry: Nonprofit Organization Management
- Company size: 51–200 Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10
Financial Edge is indispensible for us
Reviewed on 2020/10/30
We have been able to run a very busy finance office with only 1.5 employees for several years now. ...
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).
Pros
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.
Cons
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.
- Industry: Civic & Social Organization
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10
The best nonprofit accounting software, period.
Reviewed on 2016/07/22
Pros
FE is quite flexible, especially its chart of accounts and the number of segments you can report on. Setup is easy, and unlike other packages, you're not glued to what you set up originally. If down the road you find you need to add a segment to your chart of accounts for reporting purposes, you can do that on the fly. And you don't need to be concerned at set-up with adding future account segments. But make no mistake: you've got to have a basic understanding of accounting in order to appreciate this product for all it can do. Customer support, through annual maintenance contracts, is excellent.
Cons
I too would like to be able to export financial reports into Excel without having to re-format when I get to Excel. That's a mild inconvenience, but there are times when you want to put stuff, data onto financial reports that can't get there any other way than through manipulation in Excel.
- Industry: Philanthropy
- Company size: 11–50 Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 7.0 /10
Full featured software but not cheap
Reviewed on 2018/07/16
Pros
Great functionality, and able to handle everything our local non-profit organization needs it to do, including integration with the donor management side, Blackbaud Raisers Edge. An example of the good integration is that gifts recorded in Raisers Edge then can be posted over to Financial Edge, to avoid duplicate entry. Good audit trail for all transactions, with inability to change posted items.
Cons
The desktop version is being phased out with customer support and account reps strongly encouraging a move to the web based version, which is in fact more user friendly (per the demos I've seen) but is also more expensive, and it already was not cheap.
- Industry: Government Administration
- Company size: 11–50 Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 7.0 /10
Good Software but Pricey
Reviewed on 2018/02/16
Financial Edge does everything we need in office except for a few minor things. However, because...
Financial Edge does everything we need in office except for a few minor things. However, because the annual cost has gotten so high, it does not feel like we get much value for what we are paying anymore.
Pros
Software is powerful and fairly easy to use. Support is generally quick and helpful. Can do everything from payroll, to AR to AP.
Cons
Very expensive. Annual cost has gotten to the point where it almost matches what it would cost us to implement another software suite entirely.
- Used Weekly for 1+ year
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
With their continued expanding, focus on what the users want, this product can only get better!
Reviewed on 2018/03/13
Pros
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.
Cons
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.
- Industry: Accounting
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10
The Cadillac of Nonprofit Software
Reviewed on 2015/11/11
Pros
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.
Cons
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.
- Industry: Religious Institutions
- Company size: 51–200 Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 9.0 /10
eTapestry is very robust and comparable to RaisersEdge, for a smaller scale organization.
Reviewed on 2017/05/04
This is an easy to use software tool!
This is an easy to use software tool!
Pros
The query, reporting and newly added wealth rating features are easy to use and has assisted in the improvement of my interaction with donors.
Cons
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.
- Industry: Philanthropy
- Company size: 11–50 Employees
- Used Daily for 1+ year
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 8.0 /10
FENXT - Changing with the times
Reviewed on 2017/05/23
Keep listening to your customer base. This is a great product and it's getting better all the time.
Keep listening to your customer base. This is a great product and it's getting better all the time.
Pros
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.
Cons
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.
- Industry: Nonprofit Organization Management
- Company size: 201–500 Employees
- Used Weekly for 6-12 months
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Likelihood to recommend 1.0 /10
Way too difficult to use.
Reviewed on 2020/08/28
I could not recommend it for any organization under $500MM in revenue. This is for Big companies...
I could not recommend it for any organization under $500MM in revenue. This is for Big companies with Big staffs. No need to reach for this unless you have the size and infrastructure to support this solution.
Pros
The software clearly has a lot of capabilities. If you are a large organization with lots of time and money to burn, you can get some value out of this.
Cons
The program is very difficult to use. I was leading a team that took over the accounting function from another organization. This was their software. The company had not seen a balance sheet they had confidence in for many years. Getting information out in a form and format that they could use was difficult to impossible. I was told they spent $250k getting the program up and running in implementation costs. This was a terrible option for a company with just 2 people in the accounting department.
I'm sure it may be good for a MUCH larger organization, but a bad choice here.
- Industry: Management Consulting
- Company size: 2–10 Employees
- Used Daily for 1+ year
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 8.0 /10
Streamlined Accounting
Reviewed on 2018/06/15
I am positive this tool will be the excellent complete package once the transition in completed!
I am positive this tool will be the excellent complete package once the transition in completed!
Pros
-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)
Cons
-Slower transition from Database version, forcing the switch between the two versions to complete all tasks.
- Industry: Nonprofit Organization Management
- Company size: 201–500 Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10
Terrific Coud-based Financial software for non-profits
Reviewed on 2018/10/09
Accessibility, ease of use, and non-profit focus - that’s what brought us two years ago. I would...
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.
Pros
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.
Cons
Some modules still in transition to the new web view. But what they’ve done so far is very promising for the future.
- Industry: Primary/Secondary Education
- Company size: 11–50 Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 7.0 /10
Database Administrator
Reviewed on 2018/03/15
Pros
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.
Cons
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.
- Industry: Philanthropy
- Company size: 51–200 Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Ease of Use
- Likelihood to recommend 8.0 /10
Blackbaud Financial Edge is easy to use.
Reviewed on 2017/05/18
Pros
Financial Edge is user friendly, and offers a variety of customizable reporting formats. Built in links from sub-ledger to general ledger allow for drilling to move along quickly.
Cons
We recently upgraded to a hosted database from housing on our own server. There have been some issues with processing delay and getting kicked out.
- Industry: Primary/Secondary Education
- Company size: 10,000+ Employees
- Used Daily for 1+ year
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 5.0 /10
Does What I Need, But Not the Easiest to Use
Reviewed on 2017/08/18
Pros
The reports are fairly easy to generate, and have many customization options. Setting up templates and favorite reports is very helpful.
Cons
It's not the most user-friendly or intuitive of software. I can't stand the bank reconciliation (which could just be my own problem, to be sure). I don't often work with invoices and printing checks, but when I need to I have difficulty determining how to do so (again, could be my own limitations, I just wish it were more intuitive).