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.
N/A
Microsoft Dynamics 365
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft Dynamics 365 is a CRM providing sales, marketing, and service functionality. It is offered as SaaS and on-premise. Dynamics 365 is part of the larger Dynamics suite of business intelligence and ERP products.
$44
per month
Pricing
Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT
Microsoft Dynamics 365
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT
Microsoft Dynamics 365
Free Trial
No
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
Required
No setup fee
Additional Details
Blackbaud is currently offering the first six months of Financial Edge NXT free for new customers. Limited conditions apply.
The main reason for choosing Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT was cost. Blackbaud measures up with the above software when it comes to entering information.
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.
Provides our company access to manage and customize the folds tailored to our needs. We needed to have certain paragraphs on certain paperwork per customer. MD 365 has those options to customize where needed and remove when not. The system is easy to navigate, and training can be done in a matter of days, even without prior knowledge of the system or similar systems.
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.
Best to use for AP - like in our organization, there are plenty of AP bills, so with Dynamics, we can quickly enter the same into the Excel utility, which means CSV-based upload, and then we can easily upload the same to the software. It's a time saver.
Best for Bank reconciliation - MS Dynamics makes Bank reconciliation easy. Banks can easily sync with software and easily get reconciled.
Generating invoices to customers and directly sending them to their inbox is easy with this software.
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.
Small learning curve, obviously. You won't figure this out in a day, a week, or even a month. But given time, you can learn to be an expert. Or you can always get a consultant or hire in somebody. But learning the tool isn't out of the questions by any means.
Licensing can be confusing at times and isn't cheap, but it is cheaper than Salesforce. Plus no additional fees for data calls to better integrate your D365 CE data with other systems.
The Classic user interface left a bit to be desired, but now with the much-improved Unified Interface, the web client and the mobile client look the same, much more modern, and have more flexibility and power behind them for customizers as well.
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.
CRM has allowed us to keep all of our data in one place that is easy for all users within the company to view. I came into the company after they had been using CRM for about 4 years. They have all said that since we have used this it has helped us control work processes better, it has allowed us to be able to track things so much better, and has been something that has helped unite many processes that used to be all over the place. We are currently using CRM 4.0 and are planning on upgrading in the next 18 months to the 2011 version. Support for 4.0 is almost all but dried up. Understandably so. Some of the customization we have done, and a plugins we use, are now contained within the 2011 version so we are looking forward to that upgrade. We use an email marketing company as well, and they primarily support the 2011 version, but their product connects and is integrated within CRM. This is a great benefit as well so that all of our marketing information can be contained in one location.
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.
The usability is easily adopted for users familiar with other Microsoft products. Dynamics 365 has several interfaces that cross over browsers and tablets. These multiple interfaces will be phased out and updated to a single unified interface eventually to provide the same usability across all devices. The backend configurations is slowly improving with the introduction of PowerApps compared to pre-D365 Online versions
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
Our partner, Ledgeview Partners has been FANTASTIC to work with. They are always timely in their response and have taken time to understand our business and our specific needs. We've made a lot of advanced customizations and they have been a great help in making those updates.
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.
We used a data warehouse to house our data, and our IT team and implementation vendor worked diligently ahead of time to construct idea implementation plans. Out of millions of records- we had less than a dozen errors, which is remarkable. My major insight is simply having a group of completely devoted individuals working towards your goal who fully understand the desired outcome. Focused resources for implementation season are critical to success.
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.
Microsoft Dynamics was part of a system overhaul for a local school, and we looked at many products. If we had used it for a company with low turnover, then it might have been more feasible. They needed something a new person could learn quickly, someone who might also be learning marketing terms at the same time - especially if there is nobody to train the individual now expected to know the system. Similar issues occurred with all of these programs (we called it being too big for their britches), and one of the bigger things we liked was that it is more compatible with MS Office products in both technical and visual appeal. If you have a steady employees who use a CRM consistently, low turnover, and those who are very familiar with Office products, Dynamics would be the smartest option for you. Unfortunately, this was just not true for the school environment
On our purchase, I'd been interrogated about our usage. Our needs are met by Microsoft Dynamics 365, which is simple to use. With so much data and information available, we must ensure that it is presented correctly to managers. Due to a lack of use, we don't have to spend as much money on Salesforce.
My company's preferred program right now is Microsoft Dynamics 365. We use it to keep track of customers and important sales metrics in a streamlined manner. Anyone familiar with CRMs will find the tool extremely useful. Considering that we have a good turnover, this product will be used for its basic segments. As a result, there are few chances of error with Microsoft dynamics because it is so easy to use. Many options for recording data on these leads are available. It meets our needs and pays off.
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.
For those without a centralized, all in one solution for major HR, Finance and other departments, Microsoft Dynamics 365 has vastly improved employee time utilization and profit.
Migrating clients from on-premise to the cloud has reaped benefits including better security, no unscheduled downtime and frequent updates to functionality.
Those transferring from cheaper solutions have lost money in the aim to be better integrated with other Microsoft products and AI they don't really utilize.
