Using Expense Management for general invoice processing

Joshua Cohen

We are looking for a fully integrated invoice submission, approval, and management system. Is anybody using NXT's native Expense Management module for that purpose? It looks like it can be jerry-rigged, but that's not really what it's built for. Particular questions:

1. Once an invoice has been through the full approval procedure, is there an audit trail of who submitted and who approved the invoice? What does that look like?
2. In the Invoice Request workflow, is there any way to add a new vendor? If not, how would a requester make a payment request to a new vendor?
3. Is there any procedure in expense management to submit a credit memo?
4. What about a 1099 payment?
5. What about requesting an invoice via Computer Check vs Bank Draft (ACH)?
6. I saw that there are different approval workflows based on the invoice amount, but what about based on other categories? For example, if I wanted someone to be able to self-approve invoice requests unless the payment is made to a specific vendor (i.e., themselves), would I be able to do that?
7. Most of our invoice submitters work on enough different projects that they're always going to need to code their own invoices rather than work from a preset expense category list. Is there a recommended workflow for that situation?

Alternatively, if anybody has an external invoice submission/approval app that integrates well with NXT, what is it?

Justin Jones

@Joshua Cohen

Good morning,

I have been trying to implement something similar in our system. Attempting to get rid of our approval process that goes through an online signing application.

I think I have answers to a few of these but not all.

Once the invoice has been created through expense management there is a history of changes that can be viewed to see who approved/created/edited.

I am not the Admin on our system, we do not have the ability to add vendors through expense management but there may be a setting where you can allow this. We do all of our adding/editing of vendors in AP or the vendor area.

I believe that Credit Memos cannot be entered through expense management. They would have to be done through the vendor record is how I usually enter them.

The 1099 payment status would come from the status on the vendors page, if they are marked to receive a 1099 and which box. This can be changed once the invoice is created AP.

The payment method will also default to what is selected on the vendor page and can be changed once the invoice gets created in AP as well.

There are quite a few options when it comes to the approval process and hierarchy. There are limits that you can put on self-approving. But I am not sure you can split it up as you have described for different situations. You could create different approval rules though for different situations that may be able to work as you need.

When it comes to coding the submitted invoices there is a selection under business settings that will allow users to edit the distributions. You can create a list of expense categories that are useful and common but also allow users to edit the coding.

Hopefully I helped a little bit here without going into too much detail.

Thanks!
Justin

Robert Ovesen

@Joshua Cohen
HI Joshua -

We have also been looking at automating our Accounts Payable. We currently use Certify Expense for our credit card transactions. They were finally able to create the import file we needed to import through the Accounts Payable module. However, we have not set up approval thresholds on the credit card side. We tried to initiate Expense Management in FE-NXT but it did not work for us as the interface with Yodlee was screwed up and they were unwilling to fix it.

We have looked for a similar solution for importing invoices into the Accounts Payable module. Unfortunately we so far have come up empty handed. We spent a summer setting up Certify AP only to get to the end of the process and they were unable to generate the import file we needed. Their method was to complete everything in Certify and then upload a journal entry to record the activity. However, that skips the Accounts Payable module and invoices are no longer searchable by vendor. They indicated they had worked with Blackbaud FE users but they must only be using the journal entry upload instead of the Accounts Payable import.

We had a meeting today with Ramp and encountered pretty much the same issue. It would be great if Blackbaud could come up with this solution. I would like all of it to be integrated into FE.

Hopefully maybe someone with a working solution will see this thread and rescue us all.

Robert

Heather Costa

@Joshua Cohen Hi Joshua, We are beginning our search as well and I have similar questions/concerns. Let me know if you've received an additional feedback or information since your original post.

Joshua Cohen

@Heather Costa We explored Paymerang, and while it is somewhat more functional than the internal NXT system, it's also very expensive compared to the value added. I spoke to a colleague at a similar company who uses the invoice submission process in NXT and speaks very highly of it. I'm planning to try piloting it with one department to see if it meets our needs.

Angie Fletcher

@Joshua Cohen- Hi Josh, We use papersave for submission & approvals it works with NXT and is cloud based and has different versions of automation.

Tanzie Faison

@Joshua Cohen We use Expense Management and we are fairly happy with it. We are looking forward to the Purchase Control part to be added.

• Once an invoice has been through the full approval procedure, is there an audit trail of who submitted and who approved the invoice? Yes, you can see who submitted it and who approved it. What does that look like? It shows the and time it was submitted and by whom. Then the trail follows the rest of the approvers.

1. In the Invoice Request workflow, is there any way to add a new vendor? No If not, how would a requester make a payment request to a new vendor? We have them email our business office a copy of a vendor's 1099 before they try to enter an invoice so that we can set them up.
2. Is there any procedure in expense management to submit a credit memo? No
3. What about a 1099 payment? (Not sure what you are asking)
4. What about requesting an invoice via Computer Check vs Bank Draft (ACH)? This is according to how the vendor is set up in your system but you can put notes on your invoice request that only the accounting office can see if you want to select a different method.
5. I saw that there are different approval workflows based on the invoice amount, but what about based on other categories? For example, if I wanted someone to be able to self-approve invoice requests unless the payment is made to a specific vendor (i.e., themselves), would I be able to do that? No and yes. We have business departments so you can set it up so that when an invoice is setup, it will only go to a specific department. I have controls set up where certain people can only approve from specific accounting lines or projects. There is not a way to stop someone from approving a request to themselves.
6. Most of our invoice submitters work on enough different projects that they're always going to need to code their own invoices rather than work from a preset expense category list. Is there a recommended workflow for that situation? You can set up preset categories to make it easier but I also set up one called miscellaneous where they can enter in the information exactly how they want it.

Expense management does not do all I would like it to do but for the price I pay, it is well worth it for what it has done for us. We have only been using it for a year but it has made our life so much easier.

Nikki Baldwin

@Tanzie Faison thanks for sharing your experience! Just a small note, though, you can prevent users from self-approving, if you'd like:

• In database view go to Administration> Setup System Security.

1. Open the affected user record.
2. On the Online Security tab, select WebInvoicing.
3. Mark the option Can self-approve Invoice requests.
4. Click Save and Close record.

Hope this helps!

Tanzie Faison

@Nikki Baldwin
Thanks Nikki,

We have that turned on but we have managers that can self-approve but also approve other employees invoices. If we turn off the self-approve, they will not be able to approve invoices they submitted for vendors that are not themselves.

Crystal Ratering

@Tanzie Faison Do you have any tips on how to set it up and implementation? We received a half hour phone call with an implementation specialist which was not very productive. If you have any step by step instructions for that, would you mind sharing them? We have the module, but nothing has been set up or implemented and I don't even know where to begin. Thanks!

Tanzie Faison

@Crystal Ratering
Crystal, when we purchased it, they provided a specialist from Blackbaud who met with me via Zoom to set it up. She gave me beginning steps and forms and every week, she walked me through a different step in the process. My Implementation Specialist name was Ingrid Garcia. You should reach out to them to see if they would provide the same for you. Try that first and if not reach out to me via email and I will try to help.

Crystal Ratering

@Tanzie Faison Thank you! Unfortunately I did reach out to them and they said we received all the training we were going to get. The problem is we waiting a couple of years between moving over to FENXT and then being ready to implement Expense Management.

Edstruments Sync

@Joshua Cohen we've built an app that integrates with FE NXT for invoices, vendors, and payments. Feel free to reach out if you're interested to hello@edstruments.com

Tanzie Faison

@Crystal Ratering
Maybe we can set up a time where i can show you what we do through a teams chat. Let me know if that would interest you and we can set a date!