Hello!

We are a small foundation and are considering the purchase of Financial Edge not only because it integrates with Raiser's Edge but also because it will allow us to manage our own accounts which are now being handled by the Hospital accounting office.

My questions for current users is, do you need to have financial accounting experience in order to understand and use this software? I am the main Raiser's Edge user and learned Quickbooks on my own but have no formal training as a bookkeeper. If this software is as complicated as it seems, we might need to hire someone with bookkeeping experience. Any thoughts??

Hi Valerie,

 I think it would be a mistake to go forward without having some accounting expertise involved, specially in the set-up.  If you organize your chart of accounts properly and if you utilize the Projects module, you end up with very powerful tools for tracking, reporting, etc.  If you wing it and don't get these things properly thought out you will be forever running in circles and cursing the day you thought this was a good idea.

 If you pay your own bills and do your own payroll, those modules are also nice to have.  Quickbooks is a one stop software package and can handle lots of small business tasks.  Financial Edge, however, is a powerful tool and is made to integrate with it's other modules to function effectively.  It is completely different than quickbooks. 

You will also need some Information Technology folks to get the server set up properly - again, professional help is critical to successful implementation and utilization.

 All of this is just my opinion.  I have been using Blackbaud for 10 years now and gone through conversion from Accounting for Non-profits 6.xxx to Financial Edge.  We also have Raisers Edge, but do not interface it to the GL packages.  That is a different story, but not a Blackbaud issue.