Any one who dares to upgrade to version 7.7 with using payroll version 6, please let me know how this goes. We are interested in the new fast improvements in 7.7 but are not willing to go first due to the fact that we are still running payroll 6 and happen to have more than 1500 employees. We are going to wait to do the upgrade until some one else verifies that it works well.

I would say that it does not work well. We've had problems at every step...including each and every patch. I would try to stay on Payroll 6 as long as possible. Maybe the bugs will be worked out by 2008. This experience has been very uncharacteristic of Blackbaud. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

The fact that you have over 1500 employees makes me tend to agree with Chris, you may want to wait a bit. When you do convert, I would strongly recommend that you install payroll version 7.7 on a standalone workstation well before you intend to convert your live database. Payroll version 7 is very different from version 6, and your staff will need time to become familiar with vr. 7 pay types and default schedules, among other changes. I converted from version 6 to version 7 last year, and went through the 7.7 beta program this year (which wasn't as much fun as it sounds). There are a LOT of "gotchas" riddled throughout the program, some more annoying than others. It's sort of like having electrodes attached to the bottom of your chair when you process payroll. You never know when you're going to get zapped! (What? You mean you actually WANT employee names to print on the payroll register? ZZZZT!) That said, version 7 is better, overall, than version 6. Also, Blackbaud has fixed a lot of those gotchas the plagued the initial version 7. Release version 7.7 (with patch 2) is certainly better, at least for us, and Blackbaud has been very responsive in fixing the problems we have had. Go slow, plan, invest in staff training, and definitely run a vr. 7.7 test server along with your live payroll for at least a month. It will work for you. (Just keep a rubber mat under your chair). Donor Services / Database Manager Boys & Girls Clubs of Tampa Bay, Inc. [i]--- Edited at 6/14/2007 8:16:14 AM by Brad Swafford[/i]

Thank you for your replies. I would still like to know if any one has upgraded to version 7.7 FE and is using payroll 6 with it. How does payroll 6 work with 7.7? Any problems? Do you still have to request a copy of bbbankrecon.exe every time an update is done to windows or an FE patch is done in order to get the checks to print out?

We have recently upgraded to 7.7 with payroll 6. We are experiencing major performace issues. Not 100% sure if that is why or not. I just posted a long detail of what we are experiencing in the database/admin-performace forum, which you can read here: http://www.blackbaud.com/forums/topic.asp?forumid=121&topicid=116&nodes=116  With everything else that our accounting team is in the middle of, they don't want to roll back to the previous version (and re-enter 2 weeks of data) quite yet; although I am coming to the conclusion if they want the performace back that's what it is going to take.

Matt, Thank you for the info. I am going to sit in on the Web seminar: The Financial Edge Version 7.7 Enhancements today, but I don't think we will be upgrading for a while.

We have been running FE with Payroll 6 for about 2 years now. I will not convert to payroll 7 until the very last minute. No real issues with the interface, but FE 7.7 is significantly slower than Accounting For Non-profits was.

We converted to FE7 October 2006 and are still using PR6. We did not have any major issues with the conversion to FE7. We are TRYING, quite unsuccessfully, to upgrade to PR7, but the process seems to fail at every turn. We started testing in April 2007 and six months later still don't feel comfortable with the product to even try and test a batch. By comfortable I mean the thing doesn't work. Every glitch gets an "Ooops" response from Blackbaud. They fix the errors, but I don't know how they rolled out PR7 when it still has so many bugs in it. FYI - the Payroll taxes do NOT calculate properly. They don't even match PR6. Put off upgrading to PR7 until they threaten to pull the plug.

Does anyone know if Blackbaud is going to support the 2007 W-2 format with Payroll version 6? I understand from the IRS website that there have been some format changes to the W-2 and I wonder if those will be supported?

I contacted support this morning about this issue. Stayce Halverson assured me that they are are aware of the needed changes and are working on it. An update will be available after Nov 30. I can only hope she's right. I told her that MD would fine $50 per incorrect W-2 and that we wouldn't be the ones paying it if Blackbaud didn't make the proper changes.