We converted to SB7 in June. Running a pregeneration report for the Generate Transactions Auto option now takes 45 minutes. In version 6, the same report took under a minute. Is anyone else experiencing the same processing delays? Blackbaud does not appear to be concerned with this. We also are finding the process of entering and applying payments to be very time consuming. Last week it took 2 hours to enter and apply a deposit of 44 payments. (and we are using every shortcut we can) Each screen takes a few seconds to load and we have to load 3 screens to enter the payment and apply it. (We can't use the auto apply option because of our needs.) We have found some of the new features to be very cool, but the overall processing time is much slower than version 6. Karen McAlinden Database Manager St. Martin's Episcopal School

Karen, We are having a lot of the same issues and concerns that you mentioned in this post. I have asked about this and have been told that supposedly they are reviewing this issue and maybe it will be addressed in today's release. I am not confident that BB truly embraces what the implications of these issues are for those of us who work with it and need to wait on it on a daily basis. I only wish that I would have been using the forum before we converted in March so that I could have asked some of these questions; even then I am not sure that would have helped. Has anything changed for you or been helpful in speeding up the processes? Thanks, Lorie Lancaster Mennonite School

Hi Lorie, We only generate transactions once a year (June) so we are getting ready to see how much this process has improved. My understanding is that it should be working faster. In regards to entering payments, we started using FAST! to enter the payments and then we open each payment up in Query to apply them to the applicable charges. (you can't go from one payment to the next in the deposit record, so that is why we are using query as a workaround. If you open a payment in a deposit and use the > next arrow button, it takes you to the last record in the deposit instead of the next record. But you can work around this in Query. This has helped with the processing time of entering payments. And I agree, unless the Design team sits with an end user to see exactly how the system is used, they don't realize how these things can be extremely frustrating. We couldn't even work on something else while the pre-generation report was processing. It would tie up all the resources on that workstation. We needed a 2nd computer to do our work. Karen McAlinden Database Manager St. Martin's Episcopal School

Karen, Thanks for the update and input. We generate monthly and currently try to do it on a day when one of our computers is not in use (a part time employee's computer), thus our work-around, also using another computer. We too are using FAST, and then also commiting that from that same workstation when it is not in use since it does indeed tie up the workstation. I was looking for a user's group meeting to attend to brainstorm on some of our issues, but I do not see any available, so I appreciate it that you took the time to respond - Thanks! Lorie

I had this same issue yesterday and after working with support discovered that running transaction generation while logged in as a supervisor took just a minute or two. Evidently when you are logged in as supervisor the system doesn't spend most of it's time checking the rights for every record it encounters. I was giving up after 15 to 20 minutes under my normal login. I don't think I would ever have the patience to wait 45 minutes. Let's hope version 7.7 resolves some of the speed issues as suggested in an earlier post. I have also learned that queries are the best defense against a poorly designed user interface and am continuing to work with Fast to explore it's limited useability. [i]--- Edited at 5/25/2007 9:17:10 AM by Steve Harris[/i]