Blackbaud’s token financial management solution, Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT® (FENXT), has been a long-standing leader in the nonprofit, educational, and social organizational space. It has helped numerous organizations transform their processes, unlock new insights, and provide growth opportunities. With the April 2024 product update release session for FENXT, Blackbaud introduced its current offerings and future plans to make its product more accessible and reach new users simultaneously. In this article, we delve into the latest updates and enhancements.
FENXT’s overarching goals for customers have been to provide financial planning tools for measuring and fine-tuning financial performance, improving data reliance and security, and streamlining tasks for better visibility and decision-making. Blackbaud continues to work toward this core vision by rolling out new features and more road mapping for the future. Among the main takeaways from the product updates were the expected rollout of FENXT’s Total Web Solution, enhanced security updates, and new features in the existing offerings with updates to efficiency, accountability, integration, and automation.
FENXT’s Total Web Solution Upcoming Release
Perhaps one of FENXT’s most requested features for users was the ability to have a 100% web-based interactive interface. Phased delivery of FENXT’s Total Web Solution is expected to be complete by the end of 2024, with the goal of improving user experience by moving away from the database view to web-based, enabling users to complete all tasks in one place. This goes hand in hand with another significant priority, the security and compliance domain, which will improve user security and reduce risk. Highlights for security updates include incident response and access policy updates, enhanced encryption, threat intelligence, and account management. With the new total web view, Blackbaud will be able to standardize more of the features and allow for enhanced security and usability. This will help ensure everyone running FENXT is using the same version with the same features.
FENXT’s Recent Updates & Improvements
GL Functionality
Recent updates also reflected improvements to the GL functionality, Accounts Payable, and Accounts Receivable areas. In response to customer demand, users will now be able to create recurring journal entries, including batch entries, using templates and scheduling features. This will help users save time and reduce data entry risks associated with copious amounts of journal entries. Processing time for running GL reports will also be reduced, allowing users to attain the information they need without added lag time.
Accounts Payable
In Accounts Payable, the purchase order and receipt module in web view is now more robust with new abilities; this is fully available to early adopters and is being made available to more customers in waved releases. Users can now convert requisition to purchase orders in batches within the web view and will be able to import invoices and add attachments to Accounts Payable. New API offerings allow users to access receipts for orders and credit memos lists for vendors more easily. FENXT's Payment Assistant will allow users to automate vendor payments by grouping payments in "payment runs" and introducing automated emails for approvals. It will also allow for remote check printing, faster ACH processing, and automatic vendor follow-up, with the hopes of improving efficiency while reducing time spent on tasks for users. Payment Assistant is now in the early adopter phase.
Accounts Receivable
A host of new capabilities are also available in the web view for Accounts Receivable (AR), mainly in the reporting domain. New AR reports such as AR aging, distribution, and open items are now available for viewing. Users will soon be able to add, edit, and void deposits, clients, payments, charges, and more in web view. AR will also have better functionalities for client management, billing items, queries, and payment lists. An update to the query function, for all ledgers, includes being able to share queries in web view with other colleagues and introducing queries as an API to better work with advanced workflows.
In addition to the changes noted above, Blackbaud hopes to add even more enticing user functionalities in the areas of reporting, allocations, and incorporating AI. The allocations daily workflow is slated to be released in Q3 2024, marking another anticipated and user-requested feature. Along with other requested features, Report Scheduler option, integration with Aatrix software to streamline 1099 reporting and filing, FENXT is continuing to deliver toward its commitment to be the leading cloud fund accounting software in the social impact space.
If you have any questions or need assistance, please reach out to one of our Nonprofit Advisory Services professionals at Forvis Mazars.