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Integration with FE and RE - seeking insights

Julie Bostick

Hello,

I'm new to an organization that has the RE/FE integration, but has not had success with it. My experience to date is on the RE/NXT side, so I'm looking for some insight into the FE integration.

We have been manually entering data into both systems, since the journal entries didn't have enough of the right details once it appeared in FE.

Are others having success with it working smoothly (once set up), or is it lots of end-arounds to make it work for you?

There is concern that it will still be lots of extra work on the Finance side and may not be worth setting up. Thanks for any insights from your experience!

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Karen Smyth

@Julie Bostick - I have set up the RE/FE integration at two schools now. It is a game changer. Happy to answer any questions you have. We are right in the thick of contracts, so it might be a few weeks.

Tanya Bakken

@Julie Bostick
I set up the integration with RE/FE back in 2018 and it made all the difference in the world. I am still wondering how this will work with the NXT as last time I checked it only was capable of working in Database. Is it in NXT yet, does anyone know?

Karen Smyth

@Tanya Bakken Still need to perform in DB view. They have not moved that function over to NXT yet.

Susan Trippe

@Tanya Bakken
We use the RE/FE integration, and right now only a few reports are available in RE. All the work is done in database.

Tanya Bakken

@Susan Trippe thanks for confirming!

Tanya Bakken

@Karen Smyth Thanks for confirming!

Susan Trippe

@Julie Bostick
We use RE & FE and don't have many problems with it. Occasionally a transaction created in RE will not generate a journal entry to send over to FE, but I think that is usually because we made a mistake in the way we entered something in RE.

We set up our RE journal entries to send Constituent Number, Date of the gift, and the Gift subtype in it's journal entry description for FE. You do have some choices regarding what you want to have included in your journal entry detail. This is set up in FE, but today I cannot locate where we set up our Raiser's Edge journal reference description parameters. Blackbaud has moved a lot of things around, so I'm not seeing it where I think it ought to be (under General Ledger, Settings, Posting Info, Journal References), so you might need to contact support to find out where they've put it.

Faith Murray

@Julie Bostick, our RE/FE integration is smooth and timesaving for sure. Can you provide more detail on what errors you've been experiencing? I know that it requires setting up under Config-General Ledger with your server name and database name, but it also requires going into each Fund on the RE side and entering information in the “GL Ledger” tab for Project and debit/credit account numbers. You also have to have certain fields on each gift, such as Post Status, Fund, Gift Type, etc.

Lastly, FE can be really picky about historical gift record matching in RE and FE from previous years, or it can cause an error pulling over. One time, as a rookie, I accidentally deleted a gift that had been made 7 years before from a donor record. The absence of the gift in RE caused an error in our FE integration, and we could not pull over any new gifts from the day's posting until the gift data was restored in RE. Thankfully, we keep hard copies of gifts for 7 years before shredding, so I was able to find the information to re-create the gift. But I kept thinking, boy was I glad I didn't delete an eight year old gift record by mistake….

Susan Trippe

@Julie Bostick
I was wrong…the journal reference (JE description) for RE journal entries is set up in Raiser's Edge (not FE). Search for this article in Knowledgebase.

47035278af88035b52bbb542db118b2d-huge-im

Julie Bostick

@Faith Murray Thank you! I'm doing some research now to learn more about the specific issues that didn't reconcile. I'm thinking it's more about the mapping and set up that wasn't quite right last night.

Julie Bostick

@Faith Murray The integration was previously set up and I'm trying to gain an understanding of what wasn't working. It seems that the information that was sent to Financial Edge wasn't what Finance needed and required more editing and work on their end to get the data in a format they could use. Do you know if there's a way to see a “sample” of our data, without actually posting? It looks like maybe I can choose to validate the batch first (in RE) so I can be sure it looks correct in FE.

They have been doing manual entry into FE for a time, instead, so I know the info lives there. I'm hoping it's just a matter of connecting and streamlining the field set up so the info works for both RE and FE.

Julie Bostick

@Faith Murray @Susan Trippe Are either of you willing to chat by phone or video call? I've learned that the journal entry postings that go to FE are double bookkeeping - with the debir and credit for each transaction - and that's now how our Finance team tracks, so they were deleting each duplicate line. Do you know if that can be turned off?

Susan Trippe

@Julie Bostick
Hey Julie, I'm not very knowledgable about how RE works. I'm the general ledger accountant for our school, so I spend almost all my time in FE. I want to take some RE courses in BB university to try to understand how the RE to FE integration works because I run into problems when someone deletes or changes a gift in RE that has already been posted to FE. My problem is that RE doesn't generate a reversing journal entry for FE at all in those cases. I've not had the problem of duplicate lines in journal entries at all, so I can't imagine what's causing that. It's got to be the way something was set up, but I wasn't involved with our RE set up at all, so I don't think I'd be much help figuring out the problem.

Julie Bostick

@Faith Murray the main issue is that each journal entry to FE posts a debit and credit for each donation - rather a dollar amount than by batch. Do you have this same issue? I've tried different variations in the post test an I can't seem to find one that doesn't do that. It creates a lot more work for our Finance person to adjust the journal entry and she is finding it much more effective to just create the entries manually. Are you experiencing this? Any suggestions?

Susan Trippe

@Julie Bostick
This is how our works also…a debit and credit for each gift. We don't get a massive number of gifts, so it hasn't been a problem for me.

Christine Robertson

@Julie Bostick I know you posted this a little while ago, but NPact is hosting a free webinar on this integration (featuring both a Raiser's Edge NXT consultant and a Financial Edge NXT consultant). We'd love to have you join!

Level Up - Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT® and Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT® integration - Blackbaud Community

Julie Bostick

@Christine Robertson thank you! I'd love to join.

Susan Trippe

@Christine Robertson
I don't see a way to register in the link you attached. Is this not a webinar?

Christine Robertson

@Susan Trippe It should be on the BB event, but just in case use this link:

Roberta A. Gilbert

@Julie Bostick:
@Faith Murray the main issue is that each journal entry to FE posts a debit and credit for each donation - rather a dollar amount than by batch. Do you have this same issue? I've tried different variations in the post test an I can't seem to find one that doesn't do that. It creates a lot more work for our Finance person to adjust the journal entry and she is finding it much more effective to just create the entries manually. Are you experiencing this? Any suggestions?

The person who pulls the RE info into FE (this applies to database or NXT, same answer) can choose to post it in one of 3 formats: Detail, Consolidated on the DR (bank or AR) side only, or completely Consolidated, with no detail on either side. If they do a Pre-post under one of those choices before actually posting, they will see what the batches will look like after posting. Then if there is too much detail, they can re-do the pre-Post under another consolidation view. For FE, I only need detail on the CR (revenue) side, so I use the partial consolidated, which usually gives me the batch totals on the left and the detail on the right. This choice also makes it easier to reconcile the DR online bank entries in each posting with the bank statement.