Modules
Make The Financial Edge work for you! Choose from the following optional modules based on your unique needs.
General Ledger — the core component of The Financial Edge
Because all transactions flow from other modules into General Ledger’s accounts and projects, you can easily track and report from multiple perspectives and access critical information to guide your strategic planning. With the customizable General Ledger as its foundation, you can demonstrate fiscal responsibility to your donors and transform your information into decision-making power.
Print low-cost, high-quality forms on blank paper using a laser printer. An alternative to purchasing pre-printed stationery for checks, invoices, statements, purchase orders, envelopes, labels, dunning letters and other correspondence, this module integrates with many of Blackbaud’s accounting products. It tells your printer where to print graphics, lines and text, and you can even include your logo. Multiple formats are available for many types of forms.
Accounts Payable for bill-paying automation
Make payments any way you want — by system-generated or handwritten check, bank draft or electronic funds transfer (using Blackbaud’s Electronic Funds Transfer module). Accounts Payable makes paying bills easier and more efficient, even allowing you to define multiple electronic signatures based on check amounts.
Accounting Queue for task automation
Schedule a sequence of tasks that can be executed, one after the other, automatically and unattended. Using Accounting Queue is easy — simply add tasks to a queue and schedule it to run whenever you want, even overnight or over a weekend! By automating common tasks, Accounting Queue frees up your time, so you can concentrate on more important work.
Accounts Receivable for efficient collections
Separately track individual clients, organizations and funding sources. Accounts Receivable provides the ability to establish default payment responsibility for each client record, enabling you to bill a third party for a portion, or all, of a client’s charges and services rendered. You can also apply one payment (whether cash, check or credit card) to multiple client accounts.
Advanced Budget Management for payroll budgeting and advanced budgeting features
Take advantage of powerful budgeting, in-depth analysis and reporting features that replace spreadsheets and cumbersome, error-prone tools used outside the system. Perform payroll budgeting, including salary and benefits, on a per-employee basis. Execute driver-based planning by using parameters and costs that "drive" your organization. View line item budget details and notes for details of budget assumptions that make up the overall account budget.
Advanced Security for user permissions and view-only license administration
Set full security on accounts, projects, reports and queries. Your system administrator or staff member with supervisor security rights, can give or deny user rights to specific information so it does not appear on an unauthorized user’s search screen or in any reports that user creates. Advanced Security also offers view-only licenses, putting timely financial information in the hands of individual budget, department, and program managers — while still protecting confidential information and without incurring the cost of full user licenses.
Allocation Management for automating allocations
Automatically allocate amounts by account, account attribute, project, project attribute, transaction code and/or transaction attribute. Allocation Management provides mechanisms for both direct and indirect allocations, as well as reallocations based on ending balances, average daily balances or net change balances, eliminating the need for external spreadsheets that have no built-in validation. Define your investment pool and add projects to it, specifying the asset accounts that make up the project’s portion of the pool, and let the system do the rest! You can even account for fixed amount and percentage fees based on each project’s asset balance.
Budget Management for planning, budgeting, and forecasting
Budget as many years into the future as needed so your organization can prioritize its expenditures, assess its funding needs and make comparisons across fiscal years. You can configure budgets created at the project level to automatically change existing account budgets and create multiple "what if" budget scenarios for planning purposes and to measure the impact of change.
Cash Management for multiple account management
Manage multiple bank accounts with advanced features to make payment adjustments, account activity, and bank reconciliation easy. For each account, you can view an electronic register listing all deposits and disbursements, drilling down to view additional details. Plus, automated reconciliation features ensure you start balanced and stay balanced.
Cash Receipts for management of small cash transactions
Identify where small cash amounts originate, produce a detailed profile of each transaction and print a deposit ticket with this flexible receipt entry module. It handles the small details that can clutter a ledger, such as postage meter money and vending machine revenue.
Consolidation Management for automated "roll-up" of financial data
Report across multiple databases from one central, "headquarters" database. Whether your organization is reporting on multiple chapters, foreign or domestic subsidiary offices, headquarters or outreach operations, Consolidation Management automates the "roll-up" of financial data, letting staff easily and efficiently consolidate and report on financial information across separate databases.
EFT for Electronic Funds Transfer
Save time and labor involved in printing and mailing checks and automate periodic drafts from your bank account for direct deposit into employee bank accounts. All you need are your bank accounts’ login cards, your vendors’ routing and account numbers, your employees’ bank account numbers with routing information, and a modem. Making payments is as easy as selecting the invoices you want and then sending to the bank a file containing those transactions via phone line or the Internet. And it’s just as easy to keep a clear audit trail with EFT as with other payment methods.
CounterPoint for a complete retail management solution
Gain a 360 degree view of your customers with the only comprehensive retail management solution. CounterPoint gives nonprofit organizations powerful features and flexible options so you can run your retail business your way. It may be used as a standalone solution or in conjunction with The Financial Edge to deliver all the tools you need to run you retail business profitably and securely.
WebPurchasing for automated requisitions & payment authorization
Bring your requisition and approval process online to give users and reviewers a central place to request items and approve purchases! WebPurchasing enhances the functionality of the Purchase Orders module and streamlines the purchase process by allowing users to manage purchase requests via the Internet, saving time and increasing office efficiency.
Fixed Assets for asset tracking and management
Store all the information your organization needs to properly track and manage your property, plant and equipment. The system calculates depreciation based on built-in IRS formulas and tables, or on custom depreciation schedules you enter, to meet specific needs. Other features enable you to print scannable bar code labels to expedite asset inventory, automatically remind yourself of scheduled maintenance, and even view a picture of the asset from inside the program.
PaperSave for secure donor records and streamlined operations
Provide your donors and staff a complete and secure electronic storage system for source documents without the inherent inefficiencies and risk of loss associated with traditional paper filing systems. PaperSave gives organizations the ability to share documents between departments without having to photocopy and manually route them. All documents are efficiently maintained online for immediate access. Staff can spend more time on mission-critical tasks and less time on administrative tasks. Documents can be securely accessed from within The Financial Edge and printed or emailed at a moment's notice.
Payroll for streamlined payroll and human resources
Simplify your payroll administration and human resources procedures. Payroll makes your in-house payroll process a timely and cost-effective alternative to outsourcing. Designed to reflect current employment trends, this sophisticated, yet easy-to-use system accommodates incentives offered in today’s workplace — flexible work schedules, complex benefits packages and much more.
Point of Sale for automated retail management
Post sales transactions from your gift shop, snack bar, cafeteria or anywhere else you sell merchandise into General Ledger. Point of Sale manages sales, inventory control, discounts, mailings, pricing, purchasing, receivables, reporting and suppliers, helping you to increase customer flow, reduce customer wait time, control inventory and automate purchasing and routine tasks.
Project, Grant, and Endowment Management for advanced project, grant, or endowment tracking
Get an extra level of tracking, making it easy to separate and report on activity for various projects, special events, endowments, exhibitions, scholarships, investments and other entities without exploding the number of accounts in your system. With other accounting systems, adding a project often means adding numerous accounts with new segment values to your chart of accounts, which can waste time and clutter your chart of accounts. By tracking transactional and budgeting data at the project level, you can easily create reports to satisfy your board members, auditors and donors within minutes.
Purchase Orders for automated purchasing, encumbrance tracking and invoice generation
Take advantage of a variety of options for recording purchases, tracking encumbrances and generating invoices from receipts. You can track the complete order process, from the initial requisition through the entry and printing of purchase orders, to the recording of merchandise when it arrives and the generation of accounts payable invoices. Purchase Orders also enables you to track supply and shipment needs, as well as costs.
WebInvoicing
Because invoice requests, check requests, and travel and entertainment (also known as T&E) are often the second largest expense area for organizations, they are one of the first places organizations look to control costs. Organizations that operate on paper-based reporting systems often struggle with controlling and monitoring expenses. And just like purchasing, approval processes can be drawn out and costly if approval signatures need to be obtained by sending requests to multiple approvers and/or multiple office locations. Take your requests online using WebInvoicing™, to reduce costs and time spent off task, gain greater visibility into spending, and improved compliance with your organization's spending policies and regulatory compliance.
F9 for Reporting
F9 is an easy-to-use financial reporting tool that dynamically links The Financial Edge™ General Ledger (GL) data to Microsoft® Excel®. F9® leverages spreadsheet value by delivering your GL data directly to Excel® through a live link to the most current information with no exports or manual entries required. F9® offers an unbeatable feature package including flexible cell-based reporting for accounts and projects, budget reporting and analysis, drill down, graphing and analytical tools, Excel®’s built-in formulas and formatting options, and report analysis.
Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) for advanced customizations
"Tweak" your system to mirror your organization’s policies and procedures. VBA is the premier development technology for rapidly customizing applications and integrating them with existing data and systems. With it, you can design specific business rules or customized data entry screens to further meet your unique organizational needs.
Application Programming Interface (API) for enhanced third-party integration
Integrate other systems with The Financial Edge, helping to ensure efficiency and data integrity by eliminating the need to re-key financial data from other third-party systems.
Student Billing for streamlined billing and collections
Get maximum flexibility in how you bill and receive payments so you can accommodate any situation that may arise! Student Billing is a highly efficient system for generating charges, producing statements, recording payments, and organizing and analyzing information. Introduced in 1981, it is a sophisticated, yet easy-to-use solution relied on by more than 1,000 leading independent schools.
Student Billing comes in two flavors: for independent schools and for small colleges.
Student Billing for Independent Schools
The latest edition brings improved integration with The Education Edge through Registrar’s Office and will allow you to:
- Find only student records when searching from charge records
- Include active and inactive records in the same search
- View the account balance at the bottom of every tab on a student’s record
- Assign a default payment method to new deposits so all payments are automatically set to that payment method
- View a Total column on the Preview Records screen when adding transactions to a group of records
- Set restrictions to facilitate consistent data entry
- Set a business rule for defaulting payer information onto student records
- Sort reports by grade
- Define business rules to configure a balance forward system
- When recording payments on student records,
- Identify a new payer by name instead of creating a new record
- Select an established payer from a drop-down list instead of searching for the record
Student Billing for Small Colleges
Fully integrated with The Financial Edge and Blackbaud Student Information System™, Student Billing provides the tools to efficiently and cost-effectively manage the billing process by simplifying complex tasks with user-friendly screens and one-click processing.
Charges, Payments, and Deposits
Student Billing gives you flexibility in how you bill, receive, and track payments, taking into account individual financial situations. With Student Billing you can:
- Distribute responsibility for charges among multiple records with flexible billing
- Print multiple statements
- View students’ account balances at the bottom of every tab on their records
- Set up conditional billing for full-time, part-time, continuing education, and housing
- Exempt students from late charges when hardships occur
- Take advantage of true integration with General Ledger™, the core component of The Financial Edge
- Create holds to delay transcripts and registration on records with an outstanding balance
Statements, Correspondence, and Reports
Student Billing allows you to choose from a variety of formats for your reports and documents. With Student Billing you can:
- Choose from a variety of statement formats that can include your logo
- Choose what transactions to include on statements; filter transactions based on billing items
- Control what prints on statements for each transaction
- Print the "amount due" on each statement based on a flat fee or a percentage of the statement balance
- Provide recap statements for any range of dates, and reprint copies of original statements
- Easily customize standard reports with flexible reporting options
- Check outstanding balances using the student portal
School Store Manager for automated retail management
Take control with this point-of-sale solution for your bookstore, snack bar, cafeteria, athletic store, or anywhere else on-campus purchases are made. Cashiers enter sales and returns on one simple checkout screen that looks like a sales ticket. Scanned items register instantly, and the system can even display a picture each item.
Integration with The Raiser’s Edge for more efficient operations, improved data integrity, and a tighter audit trail
The Financial Edge’s built-in interface with The Raiser’s Edge helps your business office operate more efficiently and protects the integrity of your data. Stop importing files — The Raiser’s Edge pushes financial information directly to an open Financial Edge journal entry batch. Link gift records in The Raiser’s Edge to account balances in The Financial Edge for a tight audit trail and simple, straightforward reconciliation. Access revenue and expense allocation information for a fund in The Raiser’s Edge.