The Day I Became a Professional Sandwich Maker

Will Wellman
Will Wellman Blackbaud Employee
Seventh Anniversary Kudos 2 Name Dropper Participant
in Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT® Blog
Were you an overconfident child?

From a very early age, I insisted on doing things myself. Problem was, I was almost always rubbish at them. At age 4, I would proudly brush my own teeth only to have my mother re-brush them because I usually forgot to use toothpaste. It seems my confidence was inflated even as a child.

One thing I always did myself was make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. They were my favorite (still are) and I had them for lunch almost every day.

Here was my method:
  1. Gather butter knife, bread, jelly, and peanut butter
  2. Put two pieces of bread side-by-side
  3. Spread jelly on bread 1
  4. Spread peanut butter also onto bread 1 (this took awhile)
  5. Place unsullied bread 2 on top of bread 1
You can probably see the folly in my method. This is the way I made these sandwiches for YEARS until my mother introduced me to the concept of jam on bread 1 and peanut butter on the other. I was 8 years old and my life changed forever in that moment. I still look back with disdain on those wasted hours of struggle.

The problem younger me had was that I could do something simple, but I was not aware of how to best do those simple things. Which is not unlike knowing the simplification and shortcut tools available while building chart organizers in Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT. The chart organizer is the peanut butter to a financial statement parameter’s jelly. In order to have an effective “sandwich” you must have both a chart organizer and a report parameter. Knowing how to build a basic but customized chart organizer puts you on the path to focusing your financial statements directly at the intended audience.

Interested in learning more? We’ve developed a new class drilling down on those shortcut tools with Financial Edge NXT: Feature Focus - Building Chart Organizers.

This class is included in your Learn More and Learn Everything training subscriptions. Not yet a subscriber? Find out how a Blackbaud Learn® subscription can help you get the most out of your software.

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