Reports not working as expected

Julie Goldsberry

My balance sheets are suddenly not balancing - and when I run them for 10 years in the past, they don't balance in any year. This is not something we've done. I tried to chat with support yesterday but after waiting for 30 minutes to be connected with someone, I gave up. Our audit started yesterday and I really need reports that work and don't have time to spend several hours troubleshooting. I also don't relish the thought of how difficult it will be to get the level of support person that we need to look at this.

Is anyone else having reports not work as expected?

Blake Paradise

@Julie Goldsberry Hi Julie!

I would first take a look at your chart template - it is possible you may have missing accounts. I would try running off the “default” template first and see if it balances. It is also possible that you may have report filters that are excluding items that need to be considered to balance

I would recommend checking out this article (one of my favorites personally) -

Julie Goldsberry

@Blake Paradise Yes - I found the problem doing exactly what you described (checking against the template). But - why was this suddenly a problem this month when it never was before? The report that wasn't working had some pretty complicated selection criteria in its chart organizer for the lines that ultimately turned out to be the problem. I suspect that moving from database to NXT caused the complicated selections to not work (I simplified them by adding additional lines and that fixed it). This was not something that I or my team did and took me about 5 hours of detailed research to find it. Also - apparently yesterday was Independence Day in Costa Rica so the chat support people were out. Someone finally got back with me today and suggested that it was related to closing of fiscal years (not even close).

All this happened right during audit prep, of course - so I could not afford 5 hours to run this down. Guess that will come out of my evenings and weekends this week. How can I get someone's attention among BB higher ups so they can understand how all these changes are affecting regular customers? This was a very unsatisfying couple of days for me. We are paying lots more for the product that we used to, only to have surprise problems crop up randomly and no ability to get real help from BB.

Blake Paradise

@Julie Goldsberry I am glad that worked. In the future, there is a column you can add to see who has made the last change ("last changed by") and “date last changed”.

I can reassure you that no recent changes have been made around financial statements and chart organizers. They have been available in webview for years, so please rest assured that is not the source of this change.

I have let your CSM know about this so you guys can review further. I am very sorry this all happened during your audit - I know that is a very stressful time. Also, I just sent you an email with something to help get you through!

Julie Goldsberry

@Blake Paradise Thank you!

Paul Wu

@Julie Goldsberry
I wish you much success in your future interactions with Blackbaud.

I have yet to have any real satisfaction. Our 3 year renewal is up this December and we have someone working on the new contract.

I suggest organizations invest in Blackbaud stock so at least there is some sort of payback from all the frustration we are dealing with.

Julie Goldsberry

@Paul Wu I am down to 2 year contracts because I don't want to commit to Blackbaud for longer than that - you have to throw a fit, but they will do it (2 years instead of 3). Also, I've decided in our next renewal that I'm going to demand that they give us the ability to enter support tickets ourselves rather than waiting on chat or phone. Some organizations have this ability - why not us?

In last year's negotiations they started with a 25% increase or so - told me I could just pass it on to my customers (no, I can't). I was able to get them down to a 12% increase but it's a sad day when a 12% increase seems like a victory.