FE NXT Expense management and posting dates

Jonathan Sturgis

We have been testing Expense management with a small group in our organization. We have run into a conflict when entering invoice dates that conflict with a closed period. Once we “close” a month, we toggle the period to the “Closed” position so that the financial statements issued always match the period statements in Blackbaud.

However, we have noticed that when our AP person tries to enter an invoice in Expense Management, if the actual invoice date is from a period we have “Closed” an error message pops up preventing it from being entered into Expense Management. The only solution we have found is to “Open” the previously closed period to process the invoice through Expense Management. The issue is that for some reason the invoice then posts to the “Closed” period we issued financial statements for. Then when we get to the next period, the monthly amounts are messed up between periods, though the year to date is fine.

It may be that we are not using Expense Management correctly or it may mean there is a system glitch Blackbaud needs to resolve.

Kevin Brazell

@Jonathan Sturgis
It's not a glitch. Invoice requests don't have a post date field. It has an Invoice field, so if the Invoice request is approved, it's using the invoice date as the post date on the invoice. That's where the issue is coming in for you since you're back dating the invoice into a “closed” period. I would recommend a workflow change : 1. Either prevent the closing of the period until all invoice requests have been entered and processed through Expense Management or 2. Have the AP person enter the invoice manually in Payables so you can have both Invoice date & Post date fields and can avoid the closed date period.

Jann McKenzie

@Jonathan Sturgis
Can't you change the post date after an expense request has been approved and has become an AP invoice but has not yet been posted in an AP Subledger post?

Shana Meadows

@Jonathan Sturgis
This appears to be a flaw in BB FE. Sometimes invoices come in late. The invoice date and the post date are two different things so keeping books open is not an option. Entering manually is not an option because the workflow still needs to happen. FE needs to have a workflow for all AP and a post date and invoice date.

Jane Garoutte

@Jonathan Sturgis
You are right. This is a problem. I cannot roll out Expense Management to my users because of this. We are using WebPurchasing now, but I am concerned about how this will work when BB moves this to FENXT. The invoice date cannot be the post date. I cannot change our workflow to suit the software. If the software does not allow us to post with a date different from the invoice date, it needs to be added.