Financial Edge NXT is a cloud accounting solution tailored for nonprofits that provides a general ledger, projects, grants, endowments, accounts payable and receivable, fixed assets, banking, and more. It offers real-time reporting, with one-click drill-down functionality and export capability.
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Emburse Certify
Score 7.4 out of 10
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Certify is travel and expense management software developed by the company of the same name in Maine, which merged with Chrome River in 2019 to form Emburse.
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Pricing
Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT
Emburse Certify
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT
Emburse Certify
Free Trial
No
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
Required
$8 Expense report
Additional Details
Blackbaud is currently offering the first six months of Financial Edge NXT free for new customers. Limited conditions apply.
Certify AP has volume based pricing based on processed invoices
The look of the reports and the platform is great. It's easy to lookup vendors and find some information. I wish the flow to navigate around the system was more intuitive. We tend to do more going back and forth to move to another vendor. It must be an easier solution. But that's the learning curve piece we need.
Certify is not well suited for multi-dimensional ERPs. Although Certify 'offers' general ledger dimensions GLD, the use of them is extremely limited. Filtering on any GLD can only be done once. There is not the possibility for creating hierarchies with the dimensions. The only method of exporting is via a flat file or the open API, which I understand is quite limited. This software is for a smaller scaled business that is not trying to track across dimensions or create hierarchies. Data flow is one directional. I cannot emphasize enough the shortcomings of the reporting. The parameters are mostly based on expense dates rather than expense reports. There are entirely too many of them, and some of them perform the function!
Uploading and inputting information is easy due to a clear format and outline.
Researching and finding past information is quick and easy to navigate due to searching and filtering options as well as the ability to name the files for quick searches.
Pulling project titles and accounts - you can have a large amount of projects and accounts and are able to know them through the system without having to memorize each individual title.
Being able to export a general ledger for an account to excel while still being formatted correctly.
Having the ability to filter in what transactions are pulled in the general ledger. You are able to easily look at all the activity or only activity in a certain time frame or other specific filters.
There is always access to help from Blackbaud services for any sort of difficulty.
Learning and the ability to attend Blackbaud classes are readily and easily available so you can increase your knowledge and ability to serve well in your organizations' role.
Integration with Amtrav or other travel booking systems. Certify has a tight integration with travel systems that makes it feel nearly like one cohesive tool.
Easy expense options. Use OCR on receipts, import from credit cards and merge items, approve and inquire about expenses. Track your submissions.
Easy UI. Friendly and easy to navigate without getting lost.
Queries is not fully set up yet and could use more functionality within the reporting structure
Recurring payments do not seem to be moving forward and we have several annuities that run quarterly
Queue appears to be going away and report scheduling is coming, however, you cannot send to users outside of your organization. We run so many monthly reports that we used to have emailed out via queue that now we have to run them manually and save them to a sharepoint site for our campus partners to access.
A little concerned with printing checks once database view goes away since the one time I tried it the printing margins were totally off.
Integration of papersave products and cash receipts.
Reporting: I would like to see more chart availability from the program. We include various data points from Certify in our monthly financial statement package. Currently, we export data from the program and create our own pivot tables to create charts.
Dashboard feature: It would be nice to be able to use the data for a specific date and then be able to print that information.
Can't think of another one. As stated before, they listen to their customers so prior issues have been addressed and implemented.
It is meeting our needs very well and they continue to introduce enhancements. Much of our staff is not very technical, and the ease of use is very important. Training is quick and easy. The licensing is reasonable and affordable. And, the time, effort, and cost of finding another solution and implementing it would be very substantial.
I don't have much to compare it to but if I speak of just the reporting options; sometimes there are so many options I spend more time finding the "perfect" report when a basic report with minimal columns is needed. But I know I can always add to the report if asked.
If the integrations with our card programs had succeeded, I expect [Emburse] Certify would have worked well for expense submitters and approvers. During the short time that the American Express Business integration was active, transactions flowed smoothly, and the expense reporting and receipt matching functions were quite good. The [Emburse] Certify mobile app was particularly powerful and easy to use.
No one is perfect, but this support team is as close as it gets. They respond promptly and if the person I'm talking to doesn't have the answer they find someone that does. They also provide documentation and/or resources to support their responses to my questions. The online chat is awesome and usually all I need
The measure of support is how well they respond when you really need them, like when the system is not performing correctly. We have been on the platform less than a year, and there have been at least 2 instances, where the platform was down. The 2nd time was the day before out fiscal year end. And they need a development website. When they are making changes to your LIVE instance, and things go wrong, the client is the first to know about it! I've come to understand that Certify has tiers of support. Those in tier 1, barely know more about the software than the users. I sent a request for a report that shows expense reports currently pending approval and after 5 days of back and forth I was told to build it myself.
The training is semi helpful if you have already been in the system. If you are completely new it does make it kind of hard since chart of accounts will be different among organizations. For a general idea it is helpful. One complaint on training would be that as FENXT is attempting to go fully to the web solution there were often times things that were moved or changed that even the trainer was unaware of and had to adapt on the fly.
The implementation can be easy depending on how familiar you are with Blackbaud products. It is cloud based so there is not a need for IT involvement but you do need to know your business requirement.
Prior to using Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT, a financial software package offered by Sage was used. Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT is much more user friendly, and integrates with the fundraising software used by the Foundation, Raiser's Edge. The integration has eliminated duplicate entry of donor information into the financial software. In addition, the add-in tools provided by Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT make journal entries a much more efficient process.
Before Certify, there was only manual expense reports entered for our company. This took too much time for employees too finish and caused a delay of efficiency. With Certify, it is easier to access and finish each report with the right amount of effectiveness and efficiency it needs. Certify is really helpful in saving a lot of time for employees that do not have time.
Record accuracy has gone up with Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT. We are able to keep everything separate using both natural accounts and projects.
The AP module has increased our speed in issuing checks. We are able to easily review and see where approvals may be stuck in order to get checks out promptly.
The approval chains and easily viewed records of approvals have helped our auditors easily track processes for internal control walkthroughs.
The organization and automatic flow of the expense report to approvers and then AP saves time for all. The user has agreed that it is easier and quicker to prepare the expense report and the managers and AP department finds the automated process to be quicker and more efficient. Time saved is money saved.
Certify can recognize if a duplicate expense is submitted or if an expense is submitted too late to be reimbursed according to our policies. This prevents us from reimbursing an expense in error.
We use a customized report to track a specific type of expense that gets submitted by our sales team. There is a limit on what can be spent on specific expenses that fall into an entertainment category and the report helps us to stay within the limits. Previously, without this tool, we had spent so much more time manually tracking these expenses and had gone over the limits, creating a deficiency in our processes.
