In the Before You Close Your Fiscal Year... post, I spoke about creating, printing, and comparing the Trial Balance, Income Statement, Balance Sheet, Statement of Activities, and the General Ledger reports. But once this is complete, what do you do with the fiscal year?  Should you Soft Close, Pre-close, Optimize, Summarize, Hard Close, or Purge?

Let's start with the reversible options:

• Soft Close prevents posting to specific periods in the fiscal year. This is a great option to temporarily prevent users from posting activity to fiscal periods that have already been audited, are awaiting audit, or are being prepared for year end. If you need to post activity, no worries, you can reopen the period, post the activity, and then soft close it again.
  
  
• Pre-Close performs a mock close and soft closes the entire fiscal year in a single step. It's a good option to temporarily close a fiscal year to prepare for year end, audits, or to speed reporting. Just like a soft close, if you need to post activity, you can reopen the period, post the activity, and then pre-close the year again.
  
  
• Optimize soft closes the fiscal year and summarizes transaction data to improve report processing speed. I recommend optimizing a fiscal year that will not have additional transactions posted and is more than two years old. If for some reason you find you need to post a transaction, you can reopen the period, post the activity, and then optimize it again.

Now let's move onto the irreversible options. Before you try any of these, make sure you have a valid backup of your database right before performing the process. I strongly recommend this because the only way to reverse a hard closing, summarizing, or purging fiscal years is to restore to a backup. Backups also come in handy in case you need to see the details from a summarized or purged fiscal year.

• Hard Close permanently closes the fiscal year and retains the transaction detail for reporting. It also updates the net asset accounts in the Balance Sheet with income statement activity and prevents future posting. Remember, once you hard close a fiscal year, you cannot reopen it without restoring to the backup created before closing.
  
  
• Summarize erases all transaction detail for the hard-closed fiscal year. After summarizing, reports can be based on only beginning balance, net change, and ending balance for each period. A benefit of Summarizing a fiscal year is that it saves space in your database. Once you Summarize your fiscal year, the only way to view the details is through a backup.
  
  
• Purge deletes the hard-closed fiscal year from your database. Before purging a fiscal year, make sure you save or print all financial statements for your records. After a fiscal year has been purged, the only way to view the transactions is through a backup (I hope you're getting the importance of a backup).

I hope this helps you decide what to do with your fiscal years. Talk to you soon!

Blackbaud Netcommunity version 6.15 has just gone into a controlled release phase and is almost ready to hit the streets.  This is a major step on for us at Blackbaud as it is the first version that is running on our new Infinity platform.

I thought today I'd share a couple of the cool (or in some cases just incredibly useful)  new UK features that you can expect to in this release.

Gift Aid -

You now have the ability to switch off Gift Aid capture on donation forms.  This is a small tweak but an incredibly useful change if you do any overseas fundraising.  As BBNC can take donations from a large number of foreign countries it's important that we don't confuse people when collecting that money.  You can also switch this on and off in our fundraiser functionality also.  This particular feature was requested directly through our Ideasbank service and implemented for the UK market.  If you haven't used Ideasbank I'd recommend you go there and check out how we're trying to empower people

 

 

 

Address Look up

In this version we've teamed up with the guys over at Experian QAS to add a new address look up feature to the software.  Using this feature your're able to add in the ability for donors and new registrants to sign up and have the system validate their addresses for them.  This helps greatly with data accuracy, data processing and cuts down on invalid addresses in direct mailing etc.  It's also a lot quicker and easier for a donor/registrant to enter their details.  We've added this feature as standard but you do have to register with QAS for their onDemand service.  For more details of this please contact your account executive at Blackbaud.

So that's two new features to increase efficiency and make the product more flexible and easier to use.

I'd be interested in your thoughts on these UK only changes.  For more details on the highlights of the release overall click on Steve MacLaughlin's blog post.
 

We're pleased to let you know about two new Case Central enhancements that will make it easier for you to view, print, and save your case notes. Now when you use Case Search to review a case online, two links display beneath the case number that you can click to generate a printer-friendly and PDF version.

 

We've also made some improvements to the overall layout of your case notes; we hope you like the changes! As a reminder, your cases are confidential so only members of your organization who have Blackbaud.com accounts can view your cases. For more information about Case Central, take a look at Case Central Help.

In The Raiser’s Edge, Dashboard is a way to get a quick overview of information in your database. On a Dashboard page, you can put up to 255 panels of summarized information on to track the progress or performance of your campaigns, funds, appeals, gifts, solicitors, memberships, events, proposals, volunteers, or actions.

Unlike records, queries, exports, and reports, Dashboard pages aren't automatically made available to other database users. Dashboards are specific to each user, so additional steps are necessary in order to share a dashboard you've created with another user, or to let them share one with you.

To give a user the right to share dashboards, begin by logging into The Raiser's Edge as a user who has rights to Security, such as the Supervisor user. Once you have logged into The Raiser's Edge, go to Administration, Security, and select the Security Group that you want to give the ability to view shared dashboards. In the Security Group window, check Dashboards in the Group Privileges panel. This will activate the Options button to the right. Click the Options button, then mark the Allow to Share Dashboards checkbox, click OK, then Save and Close the User Group.

Now, go to Dashboards and select the dashboard to share. Click the Sharing button in the upper right-hand corner of the dashboard screen, move the appropriate Security group over to the Selected column and click OK.

Now users from the group with whom you shared the dashboard cab go to Dashboards, click Select Shared Dashboards, and select any Dashboards that have been shared.

You can also find these steps in Knowledgebase solution BB29912.

Andy Sarosy, software architect for Blackbaud Direct Marketing, writes: 

As you may already know, we introduced Finder Number Check Digits a few releases ago. Since then, I've had requests for details around the algorithm used to generate the check digit. The simple answer is that we use the industry standard Luhn Algorithm (details here, courtesy of Wikipedia). The algorithm is more commonly known as Mod 10, or Modulus 10, so you'll likely hear that term used.

Out in the wild there are a number of variants to the Luhn Algorithm, so in the interest of being as transparent as possible I put together a spreadsheet that explains the algorithm and generates a check digit when you enter a finder number.

Side note: As of Blackbaud Enterprise CRM 2.5, you will find Finder Number Settings in the task list under Marketing and Communications / Acquisition and Segmentation / Finder Files.

The Distance Learning team is excited to introduce you to the newest member of our team, Leanne Vitanzo. Leanne's primary responsibility is to educate customers on our products in our online learning environment. We are all very excited to have Leanne join the Distance Learning team and one of the first things we asked her to do was tell us all a little about herself. Here's what she had to say:

Question: What can you tell us about this picture?

Answer: This picture was taken at a friends wedding in October of 08.  I think it's only picture of JUST me taken in the past 5 years! Thank goodness it's a good one.

Question: Where do you live (state/country)?

Answer: Danbury, CT; USA

Question: What is your favorite thing to do when you aren't working?

Answer: It changes with the season.  Right now it's reading/playing with my 4 month old son.  When it gets warmer it's being outside, walking, hiking, etc. (also with my son now!)

Question: If you could visit one place in the world, where would you go and why?

Answer: I would probably go to Ireland because it's where my ancestors are from.  I'd love to see the island and explore my heritage.  But there are many, many places I'd love to see as well.

Question: What are your hobbies?

Answer: Reading, Hiking, Skiing, Kayaking, Computers, and a little bit of Photography

Question: How long have you been at Blackbaud?

Answer: 5 years

Question: What inspired you to work at Blackbaud?

Answer: My sister works for Blackbaud as well and she used to talk about what a great company it was to work for and how much she enjoyed Blackbaud.  When I decided to move into the business sector, Blackbaud was my first choice!  She was right, it really is a great company to work for.

Question: What do you love most about your position at Blackbaud?

Answer: What I love most about my current position is being able to reach so many clients on a a daily basis.  Distance Learning allows me to work with a variety of customers and topics, which in turn allows me to help make many of their jobs easier.  I love being able to make clients see how our products can help make them more efficient.

Question: What is your professional background?

Answer: I have a degree in Elementary Education and I taught 1^st grade before coming to Blackbaud.  I started out in our Customer Support department doing phone support for both The Raiser's Edge and The Education Edge.  I worked on the phones for about a year and a half before becoming a Support Education Trainer, training new support analysts on The Education Edge.  6 months later I moved to NYC and Educational Services.  I trained onsite with clients, at regional centers and online for 3 years before moving to the Distance Learning team in January of this year.

Question: Is there anything else you would like to share?

Answer: Just that I'm very excited to be part of the Distance Learning team.  I'm looking forward to working with such an exciting and dynamic training platform and a wonderful team.

Once again, welcome to the team Leanne and if you ever get to Ireland we would love to see pictures and hear stories of your trip.

Until next time!

Each time you post transactions to or in General Ledger (GL), the system creates an audit report called the Trace Report. This report is made up of two sections, Detail and Summary.

The Detail section contains a line-by-line printout of the journal entry as it's entered. This includes the account number, account description, item description, three reference fields, and debit and/or credit amount. You can even add optional information such as data items or units and rates if it's collected by the journal.

The Summary section summarizes all items by account number for the entire transaction. It includes the business date, calendar date, transaction total, and ID of the operator that posted the transaction. The Summary section also includes Created by Posting accounts.

To view or print a Trace Report, select File, Print Manager from the menu bar. In the Print Manager window, highlight the Trace Report and click Open. All Trace Reports begin with CS followed by the system number. If you would like to print the report, select File, Print from the Print Manager tool. When viewing the Trace Report after each posting, which I recommend, verify the:

• Journal used to post the entry
• Amount of the entry
• Type of entry (debit or credit)
• Description of the entry in the Detail section

Enjoy your audit trail.  Talk to you soon!

Several times a week, we offer free, hour-long web seminars on our website. The seminars usually focus on Blackbaud products or best practices for nonprofits.

To register, select Web Seminars from the Events menu on our website, find a seminar you want to attend, and click Register Now. Once you submit the enrollment form, you’ll receive an email with instructions for viewing the online presentation, as well as the telephone access number. If you’d like to enroll for additional seminars, click Continue after you fill out the enrollment form.

Here are some of the web seminars coming up next week:

February 10:
The Financial Edge for Small-Office Organizations, 2:00 p.m. ET: Learn how to manage budgets, allocate grants, and run the reports you need.

February 11:
Time to Upgrade – Moving Beyond Blackbaud NetSolutions, 2:00 p.m. ET: Join us to learn about Blackbaud's Internet Solutions and how they can provide you with all the functionality you currently have plus a more up-to-date look and added functionality.

Have a super weekend!

Have you ever seen the Reverse on column in Journal Entry and wondered what it's for? When adding transactions in a batch, you have the ability to automatically reverse transactions by adding a date in the Reverse on column. The only hitch is that you must enter a Reverse on date that is in the future of the posting date entered.

Why is a future post date required and how would automatically reversing a transaction be helpful? I'm glad you asked. There are some situations in which an automatic journal entry reversal will make your life simpler. Let's say you didn't receive a large invoice at the end of January, but you can reasonably estimate the amount. To show your board the impact on your financial statements, make a journal entry to accrue the invoice at the end of February debiting the expense and crediting a payable and enter the Reverse on date for March. By selecting to automatically reverse these entries in March of the same year, additional lines are created when posting, which reverse the journal entry in March. This results in your February financial statement including the estimated expense while the March financial statements don't. When the invoice is received, you can then enter it in March without the worry of duplicating the expense.

Talk to you soon!

The recent Haiti earthquake disaster has once again brought to the forefront the role that new giving channels play in helping those most affected. The combination of online giving and mobile giving were the first response channels of choice by donors. I will save the pros and cons of mobile giving for another blog post.

I did some research to look back at previous major events and the volume of online giving that took place. Blackbaud has online giving data going back to 1999 and that allows us to look at some historical trends. USA Today referenced some of these trends in their recent "More go online or text to donate for Haiti's quake victims" article.

The graph above shows the volume of online giving for the first five days immediately following each major event. This was based on approximately 3,300 nonprofit organizations that had online giving data for these time periods.

Online giving following the Haiti earthquake was 19% greater than response to the 2004 Asian Tsunami and 109% greater than Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The tsunami data begins on December 26, 2004, following the earthquake off the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia. The Katrina data begins on August 29, 2005 when the hurricane made its second landfall in Louisiana. Online giving during the first give days following September 11, 2001 was less than 1% of what was given towards Haiti relief.

All of these events have a very long tail of online giving, but the purpose here was to look at the first few days when online giving serves a key role in raising money for relief.  It should also be noted that there's a pareto distribution on the organizations receiving most of the donations. For each event, about 80% of the donations were received by 20% of the organizations.

A year-over-year comparison of organizations not specifically raising money for Haiti relief did not have any unusual difference in online giving in January 2010. Giving to organizations directly involved in Haiti relief were simply off the charts compared to previous time periods and other events in the analysis.

There are a few important points to make from all of this. First, nonprofits that had a plan in place to quickly respond online through web content, focused online giving, and email communication performed better than organizations that didn't. You cannot react fast enough to just be a fast follower. Things move too quickly, in particular how soon various media outlets begin referencing where people can donate online. If your nonprofit is involved in programs and services often related to disaster relief, then you better have a plan and resources in a staging mode. And every organization should have some kind of emergency communication plan that involves the use of the web.

Second, the response to these kinds of unfortunate events will only increase in the future. We are well beyond the tipping point of whether people will give online and that is now true for mobile giving in North America too. Several organizations reported system outages from other vendors and tools being used. Now would be a good time to ask about whether your system can handle even larger volumes. This is a situation where poorly built multi-tenant systems can knock down anyone using them, including those organizations not directly involved in relief efforts.

Finally, this might be the end of internal obstructionists that question the importance of online communication and giving. Remind them that it is a multi-channel world, even if your nonprofit serves other parts of the sector. And it may prompt some more serious discussions about how prepared organizations are for the future.

Have you ever wondered the different between the check number and control number in Accounts Payable (AP)? If so, keep reading. The control number is an internal check number assigned by FW, where the check number is the number assigned by the user when the check is created. This is the basic difference; let's get into some more details:

The control number, assigned by FW, allows the system to track the check from the mark for Pay stage to the Cut stage, to the logged stage when the check number is assigned. You can find the control number in Print Manager on the OTCK###.L## file. The control number is made up of three parts, which prints on the check:

• Run number
• Internal check number
• Form sequence number

Now that you are more familiar with the control number, let's move onto the check number, assigned by you. The check number prints on the final check register (OTREG) and posts to the General Ledger. It's also the number used to void and reconcile the check. Please note that the check number does not print on the check and cannot be viewed in Print Manager.

So, why have a control number and check number? When the checks are cut, the OTCK####.L## file is created in the Print Manager. The checks are printed based on the information in this file, which does not include the check number. The control number also gives you a continuous audit trail, unlike check numbers which can skip around.

Talk to you soon!

Have you ever needed to add a one-time fee to a particular group of students?  You can automatically add this fee to the group without adding the fee to records one at a time.

Adding transactions to a group is similar to adding a charge, and then copying it to the other records in a query. The key is grouping the records together using a field they have in common, such as grade level. For example, if all 5th graders will be going on a field trip and need to have a field trip fee added to their records, you can create a query using the criteria: Current Grade equals 5 to group the records. You can also add attributes to records for grouping purposes.

After you have your query, you can open the first record in the query, add a charge on the Activity tab, and save the transaction. After the charge is saved, select Transaction from the menu bar of the charge, and choose Add this Charge to a Group of Records. Select the query and check the box to ‘Skip the current record if they are included in the query.’ Select the desired options below and make sure to select ‘Preview Records Before Charges are Added.’ Then click Add Charges Now. This will pull up a preview, and records can be deselected if necessary. Then click ‘Add Charges Now.’

Now that you’ve added all the transactions at once, the only thing left is to decide what to do with all of your spare time!

Here are the most popular Forums posts as well as unanswered posts from last week:

Most Popular Topics:

• Data Entry Volume
• Importing Addresses
• from query to Global Add

Unanswered Posts:

• Including package attributes in Ack letters
• How do you code auction winners?

 

Charleston, S.C. (February 3, 2010) – Blackbaud, Inc., (Nasdaq: BLKB) today announced its global conference schedule, including the 2010 Blackbaud Conference for Nonprofits™ — North America on September 7 to 10 at the Gaylord National Hotel and Convention Center, Washington, D.C. and the 2010 Blackbaud Conference for Nonprofits™ — Europe on October 11 to 12 at Victoria Park Plaza, London.

“We’re so excited to bring Blackbaud’s 11th annual North American Conference for Nonprofits to Washington D.C. this year and to once again hold our European Conference for Nonprofits, which has a strong focus on supporter relations, in London,” said Mary Beth Natarajan, Blackbaud’s director of communications. “This year’s conferences will provide unprecedented networking and learning experiences, partnering opportunities and fresh, new interactive sessions.”

Blackbaud’s 2010 Conference for Nonprofits — North America will provide nonprofit professionals with four days of specialized educational content and opportunities to network and interact with peers and nonprofit experts.

Read more.

Yesterday, we identified an issue with The Raiser's Edge and the Blackbaud Payment Service, which caused the message Error: The Raiser's Edge cannot connect to the Blackbaud Payment Service. For the secure storage of new or edited credit card number information, The Raiser's Edge requires a connection to the Blackbaud Payment Service. Please check your internet connection and attempt to save the record again when editing or updating existing credit cards to appear when editing credit card data on constituent and gift records.

This issue has been addressed, and will no longer affect organizations who are running The Raiser's Edge 7.91 or above and who integrate with the Blackbaud Payment Service (BBPS). This is also documented in Knowledgebase solution A href="http://www.blackbaud.com/kb/index?page=content&id=BB709727" target=_new mce_href="http://www.blackbaud.com/kb/index?page=content&id=BB709727">BB709727.