Expense Module - how are folks using it??

Jessica Holmes
Jessica Holmes
Eighth Anniversary Name Dropper Facilitator 1
in Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT® General Discussions
We just added the expense module as I was under the impression from my BB account person that it would make the invoice approval process flow better. I am not feeling totally good about this module to date - my testing tells me it is not in sync with accounts payable which honestly makes no sense to me and I worry about non accountants being asked to make expense coding choices.  I made clear I was using this for regular invoices not just staff reimbursements (we have very  few of those) and was assured this would be a great boon to me.  We are working remotely and I have been struggling with how to get bills/credit card purchases coded and approved by program heads. I haven't gotten great training support around the day to day to use and the workflow. I would love to hear from others who are using the Expense Module for invoice approval; any best practices, work arounds, other ideas would be appreciated.  Right now I am really wondering if I have just wasted money and time on this.....Help??


Jessica

Comments

  • Kyle Solberg
    Kyle Solberg
    Fourth Anniversary Facilitator 1
    Hi Jessica, you can set up Expense Categories that non-financial users can use. Those categories are mapped to the GL codes you choose. You might also have to set up some Business Rules for AP in order to post to the GL.


    Kyle
  • Patricia Vermeire
    Patricia Vermeire
    Fifth Anniversary Participant Facilitator 1
    We added Expenses for the same reason and have yet to implement (1+ year later). Yes, you can set up approval levels for custom groups. But be aware that every line item becomes an invoice in AP (yes, I asked for confirmation on that point from BB support). So if you distribute your invoices across multiple accounts, you won't like the outcome. I won't say we wasted our money...but I doubt we'll pay for it again when we renew our contract.
  • Jessica Holmes
    Jessica Holmes
    Eighth Anniversary Name Dropper Facilitator 1
    Thanks, yes I got that far.  But since I have distributions set up in A/P for many of these invoices those get overwritten when staff enters their coding which means coding has to be re-entered by the bookkeeper. We also have a lot of bills that get distributed to multiple projects/grant and that puts an onus on non accounting staff to understand that which I am not sure is comfortable for anyone.  My whole goal in purchasing the module (and my sales rep assured me this was the appropriate tool) was to be able to get program lead approvals on the bills without having to print, stamp, code, and scan bills that then have to be electronically or physically approved and resent. All this has to be accomplished remotely.....I am wracking my brain for a work around that just gets invoices into the pipeline for approval without out of extra input for with staff or the bookkeeper.....this module seems somewhat disconnected from accounts payable which seems to make no sense at all. Maybe it assumes all invoices are super simplistic with one line of coding, I don't know.  Maybe an A/P holding account would work?? I sometimes wonder if practiced accountants are creating these tools because they just don't seem to flow in a workable way. Sorry for the slight rant but I am feeling very frustrated.....
  • Karen Edwards
    Karen Edwards
    Eighth Anniversary Kudos 1 Name Dropper Participant
    We use the web purchasing portal for approvals, but that is not really tied well into payables either.  I had been hoping to start using the expense management feature, but after reading many of the posts related to it, I don't think it will work well for us either.  We have many purchases that we don't need a purchase order for, but that need to go through an approval and coding process.  We would not want the non-accounting staff doing the coding however, and just assigning a blanket coding wouldn't work because the acounting is often more complicated than that.  I think they designed expense mgmt as the replacement for web invoicing which is mainly applicable for staff reimbursements and not something we do that much of. It might be helpful for credit card receipts, but even those don't always have the same coding for the same person.   I really wish BB would get to working on a good upgrade to web purchasing that would tie into accounts payable.  
  • Geoffrey Goodfellow
    Geoffrey Goodfellow
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 Name Dropper Participant
    Jessica,


    We don't currently have the Expense Management module but have been considering it.  However, we do have Accounts Payable within NXT and it has a very basic approval system where our accounts payable department enters in all of the information, but they cannot actually pay or post the invoice unless it is marked approved first.  We have several administrators or department heads that have this approval right in NXT.  In the database view, there is a Business Rule that enables this approval requirement.


    Within in NXT Payables > Invoices, you can create a filtered list of just invoices that are pending approval and then setup the columns to dispaly date, vendor, expense description, dollar amount, attachment icon to open PDF of invoice, etc.  You can also filter by a custom field where we could store the name of the person who needs to approve.  The view is relatively friendly, and they have access to see most everything.  From there, they can approve each individual invoice or can approve them in bulk.  Once they approve, it drops out of their view which is convenient.  Obviously, by changing the filters, they could get back to see previous invoices.  The invoice history property does show who last changed the invoice which would be the approver as the last step of our process.  However, this isn't archived if someone else makes an additional change.  Their view truly is the accounts payable view, so there is no disconnect between what they are approving and what AP is paying.


    It still requires our AP people to input all of the information and scan/upload the invoice PDF, but they would be putting that into NXT anyway, so having that all in there for the approvers isn't really an extra step for us.  Obviously, with multiple approvers, there is no security to prevent them from approving or seeing invoices that don't belong to their department, but filtering on the custom field and NXT remembering the filters seems to work okay for us.  For anything fancier, we would need the Expense Management module, but I thought I would share what we do without it.  Still not perfect, but it does help us keep going remotely.


    Geoffrey Goodfellow

    Southwest Chicago Christian Schools
  • Courtney Garcia
    Courtney Garcia
    Seventh Anniversary Participant Facilitator 1 Blackbaud Certified
    Hi Jessica,


    We have been using Expense Management for about a year, and while there are things I would fix about it, overall it has been incredibly helpful for us. If your invoices are complex and the non accounting staff doesn't understand the nuances, can you have a bookkeeper enter the invoice in Expense Management and select an approval path to then send it out to the program head for approval? That would solve the problem of getting approval paperlessly.  


    Credit cards is harder, but if you give your bookkeeper, as well as the program head, access priviledges to each credit card the charges will show up in the Manage Expenses section of Expense Management and the bookkeeper could code the complex charges and them send them to the program head for approval. The program head would be able to access the remaining charges and code them themselves. We have one department where 10 people have access to the charges and everyone claims the charges that are theirs and then sends the coded charge to their department head for approval. The department loves it and it has allowed us to completely remove paper from the credit card process, which used to be incredibly paper dependent.


    I'm happy to talk offline or answer any questions you have about the module. 


    -Courtney
  • David Hurtt
    David Hurtt
    Ninth Anniversary Facilitator 1 Loyalty Badge
    We are basically using it for everything except grants. Those we process through Granted Edge and pull into FE.  We do use fairly complex workflows. Different ones for each department and executives  have a shorter approval flow. AP does enter quite a bit of invoices, particularly complex ones and then routes them through the proper approver. On CC we use the categories so users don't need to know the coding, just their budget and it works pretty well. The second approval is always a manager in the Finance/Accounting Department to review and/or fix coding. After they are approved we route them to the check signers to approve for payment.  Since the pandemic we have moved almost all of our vendors to EFT so the approval by the signers is approval to create and upload the EFT file.  It takes two people to send the EFT files as another safeguard.  I would be happy to answer more questions about how we are doing this maybe provide screen shots of the setups. The one thing I would fix is that once an invoice is created only the creator can see where it is in the process. So if my clerk has entered stuff and is out I can't see who is holding on to approvals.

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