Paperless A/P

Stephanie Maxwell

We are in the process of moving to a paperless Accounts Payable system. We have most of our vendors being paid EFT or ACH and now in the process of having our invoices e-mailed instead of hard copies; in addition looking into having them approved online then imported into FE once approved thereby eliminating a lot of manual data entry. The Expense Management module does not work for us, and wondering if anyone out there is using a 3rd party vendor.


Thanks

Stacy Evans

I don't recommend using a third party. It's expensive! I'm assuming you're a non-profit, that's money that can go to services. Can you tailor the system to your needs? If you're not a non-profit disregard my advice.

Paul Wu

I'm interested in what you find to help on the expense management side. Also curious why the BB Expense Management module won't work?


I have seen demo's from Concur, very powerful but looks expensive and not sure if it would work in our situation. Another package I seen was Beanworks, but at that time I was using Sage and it looked like they had some better integration as well as they were local. I was looking at this as more of an AP integration package with some expense capabilities.


I'm in the FE world now and need to learn how to get the most out of it.

Gail Mullins

We are currently doing the same thing - we have chosen Papersave for our third party. We have some issues with them but are working them out.

Ferdie Alayon

I'm interested in what others are using too.


We use Concur Expense Pay by SAP for employee expense reports and a couple vendors.

It has a built-in approval system with limits that allow for multiple approvers.

It's the first program I've used that I can say is truly paperless from the time a payment request is submitted to when direct deposit is made.

When we installed it, it didn't have integration with Blackbaud FE so we have a little Excel routine to run in order to import transactions to FE Accounts Payable.

Angela Tuttle

Subscribing! We have Expense Manager but we were wanting to use it for Credit Cards - (except our bank is not linked up). I think Blackbaud is coming out with something else to help with AP.

Rita Earle

Can you elaborate a little on why Expense Management doesn't work for you? We began implementing that at the end of 2020, along with Blackbaud P Cards to get rid of our other credit card accounts as that was rather labor intensive to manage. Is it because you are doing most of your payments EFT and ACH? We still do plenty of checks although we do have some things ACH. We are trying to go paperless in 2021.


Rita

Stephanie Maxwell

We are looking for a software or vendor that would allow us to import invoices into FE Accounts Payable once it had gone through the approval process. When we looked at Expense Management, we could only import credit card transactions and I believe you could only view one transaction at a time and enter the distribution. There seemed to be too much manual data entry. Unlike when adding an invoice through the database view, you select the vendor, enter the total amount of the invoice, then distribute accordingly.


I've had a few suggestions for 3rd party such as Avidxchange, M-files, and Compleate software and looking into all three. I've seen the demo for M-files and looks like it might work, just need to see more detail. I will let you all know what I find.

AnneMarie Smith

We are using ezescan for our clients. They have been amazing to work with and once up and running, my clients love it.

Katie Turner

Good morning! I just saw an announcement this morning pairing FENXT and Paymarang! This could be a great system for you for AP, the question would be whether they now provide the invoice approval piece with the product integration. Might be worth exploring. If not, another option for the invoice routing and approvals would be PaperSave, also integrates with FENXT.

Patrick Lunn

Why doesn't Exp Mgmt work for you? I am going to be trying to use it for both invoice submission/approval, and credit card transactions. Haven't implemented it yet, but it seems pretty simple and intuitive. My biggest worry is not being able to get the necessary parties within the organization to buy in to it and actually use it for all of our invoices.....that's why I've dragged my feet on implementation. It would be a big change, something else among an ever-increasing number of applications for employees to have to log into and learn how to use - I'll be honest, my intent is to do away with paper, but I'm very afraid the employees wouldn't use it to begin with, or wouldn't use it properly, leaving me a bigger mess than the pile of paper I'm trying to eliminate. I feel like the problem would be the same whether I use EM or a 3rd party vendor.

Stephanie Maxwell

Expense Management doesn't work for us because it only imports credit card activity and you can only view one transaction at a time. So, if you have 10 entries on one statement you won't be able to see all 10 at one time and apply the distribution. We also want to be able to import all invoices. And like you, we didn't want to open NXT to everyone and then have to train them.

Rita Earle

Hi Patrick,


I think you have to insist that they use the system. You just say "this is the way we are doing it now." Once it is set up, it's pretty easy to use. If you have a core team (people already using FE) to help with implementation and training that is very helpful as well. If folks are already approving invoices manually and then giving them to you to enter in FE, the automated system will free up time and make things more efficient. I think you will find that people like it once they are comfortable with it. They probably hate dealing with all the paper as much as you do! We got really valuable assistance on set-up and implementation from Salvatore Catalano, scatalano@npactsolutions.com

Katie Turner

I agree with Rita, if that is the way you are moving, then the employees shouldn't have a choice. Having said that, we all know that change is HARD, and practically speaking there will be holdouts. Just make sure you roll it out with all parties involved, have cheat sheets ready, training, the whole 9 yards. And always present it in how this new method/program will help them, not you! Once they see the benefits for themselves, they will be more likely to jump on board!


If you decide to go with Exp Mgmt, I can also vouch for Sal! I worked with him at BB and he really knows his stuff!


Best of luck!

Rena Lolley

We are in a similar situation Stephanie, we are currently using Expense Management for some things but we don't like the way it is structured and not as easy to review and approve as we would like - seems a little clunky. Also it doesn't have the intuitiveness (like pulling info off the invoice and plugging that information in without additional manual entry) that some of the other paperless systems seem to have. And we would like the ability for the staff to be able to take pictures of their receipts and upload into a system, which can't be done with Exp Mgmt at this point in time.We only have a few employees on it right now because adding all staff to NXT seems like a lot. We have looked at Paramount Workplace, PaperSave, Concur, and Certify. We are currently leaning toward Certify. Anyone have any experience with them?

Kristi Clemmons

Why are you only able to see one transaction at a time? When our cards sync, all new transactions refresh for all cards. I can view all transactions for all the cards we have.

AnneMarie Smith

II don't but look into ezescan as well. We use to use Papersave, when it was on our server.

Nancy Smith

@Rena Lolley Did you end up going with Certify?

Rena Lolley

Nancy,


No we ended up going with SAP Concur. Still in the process of implementing and setting it up - haven't started using it yet.

Jennifer Painter

I would like to know if Blackbaud or anyone has asked how to do electronic approval process of Vendor Invoices through BB NXT that are not CC charges? I would like to go paperless AP. I can see how we can attach the documentation to the invoice entry but it doesn't look how we can then route the invoice to the approving manager for the invoice. So that still leaves a manual transaction of chasing someone down for approval of the invoice. The uploading the approved invoice or the email approval. Why is there only an expense management option for Credit Cards and not a way to route old fashioned invoices for payment (either by check or EFT/ACH)? If there is a way please let me know before we purchase a bunch of file folders for next year! LOL

Rena Lolley

You can use expense management for invoices as well. You use the "Invoice Request" section to upload the invoice and input the information from it (it does not automatically pull any info from the invoice). Then you set up "approval paths' (I believe you have to do that in database view still) with the each person that needs to approve it before getting processed. The last person in the path needs to be the AP person for final processing. Each person receives an email when they have invoices that needs their approval.


So it is possible to do, but we haven't like the way it works much or the fact you have to set everyone that is submitting or approving as users in the system so we decided to try a different system (Concur) - still in the process of implementing and am nervous about importing into FE but going to give it a go...

Jennifer Painter

Thank you! So if you have to add users along the approval process that would mean an additional cost within blackbaud correct? Has anyone looked into Bill.com? Does that import into Blackbaud? How much does Concur cost?

Rena Lolley

As far as BB cost goes, that would depend on your contract I assume. And I believe it is based on concurrent users so if they are not all in the system at the same time it should be a problem.


We are currently paying $700/mo for Concur but it depends on the features you decide to go with.


have not looked at Bill.com

Jennifer Painter

Thank you! I think I will look into a couple of these.

Valerie Priddle

We implemented Paramount WorkPlace, now PairSoft. WorkPlace integrates with FE and has requisition to purchase order to receipt to 2-way or 3-way vendor invoice match in addition to submitting “after the fact” check requests. There is an expense module for employees to submit reimbursement requests, but we have not implemented that module yet. The implementation process is extensive, but end users find it easy to use.

Dan Alpe

We are using expense manager for both AP and Credit card approvals. We are small, but our staff have taken to it pretty well. the only thing I don't like as an admin is not being able to see the status of all expense requests. if there is a bottleneck because a staff didn't setup out of office, no one but the person submitting the expense for approval can see it. Happy to jump on a teams meeting to show you our setup.

Kim Szalkus

Hi Rena - If you use your mobile phone (iphone) and connect to FE NXT through the browser, you can take pictures of your receipts from your phone and attach to items in Expense Management. I do this all the time. I usually prepare the item using my laptop and then open it from my phone and attach the receipt and submit. Works pretty well. The FE NXT interface on a phone is so-so, but it does the job.

Katie Fox

@Jennifer Painter, I am in the same boat - have you received any answers/feedback on this?

Nessa Venida

@Rena Lolley
Hi Rena! How did the Concur implementation go? Did you get both expense and invoicing modules? Appreciate any feedback you may have! Thanks!

Rena Lolley

@Nessa Venida
We actually did not have a good experience with Concur. They were not able to get us the features etc that we needed. So after a year of trying to work with them, we cancelled and moved over the Emburse/Certify. So far that is going better. We are able to import into Financial Edge NXT and whenever we have something that needs to be changed they have been able to fix/change it without any hesitation. They have been much easier to work with than Concur.

We decided to start with only the expense reimbursement portion and Corporate credit card features for now and if it all works well for a year or 2 then we may add invoicing to it.

Emburse/Certify also has an Amazon Business integration feature where the receipts for Amazon Business purchases will go to the employees wallet automatically so that has been a feature we are really enjoying.

We are still in the testing phase and so haven't completely rolled it out to our staff yet, but the hope is to do that soon.

Nessa Venida

@Rena Lolley
Thanks for sharing, Rena! So you mentioned that you are able to import to NXT. Does a third party vendor do that integration? Or is it some kind of a report that Certify can create, then that report gets imported to NXT?