Name: How to Build a Fit-for-Purpose Finance System
Uploaded: 2026-10-13T18:30:50.828Z
Duration: 54 min 8 s
Description: How to Build a Fit-for-Purpose Finance System

Transcript for "How to Build a Fit-for-Purpose Finance System": Hi everyone and welcome to today's webinar. We're excited to have you. My name is Rachel Croyle Covey. I'm one of our principal growth marketers on our finance team and I'll be kicking things off today. Thank you again for joining us, for how to build a fit for purpose finance system. Before we get started, I am just going to go over some housekeeping and agenda items with everyone. So really quickly, here's just a look at what we're going to be reviewing today. Like I said, we'll go through those housekeeping items. We'll talk through how to earn CPE credit. You'll get to meet Andrew Horrow, our speaker, and then he'll walk you through today's presentation before we wrap up with a quick look at FENXT and then go into some q and a. So let's dive into things. First off with housekeeping. On the right hand side of your screen, you will have a control panel that includes chat, docs, polls, and q and a. These are your tools to interact with us throughout the webinar. In the docs tab, you'll be able to download today's webinar. We'll also send you an email with the recording after the session. All poll questions will appear in the polls tab. Currently, you cannot see this. This will pop up when we push a poll question out. These will stay open for a few minutes so that you've got time to respond. If you are looking to earn CPE credit today, you must respond to all three poll questions. Once the poll is closed, that tab will disappear. If by chance you did miss a question, just shoot us a message in the chat and we can reopen that for you. We also have a chat and q and a as well, so you can use these to interact with us and other attendees during the webinar. If there are any questions that you have during today's webinar, we ask that you submit those through the q and a box in the control panel. And we'll answer as many of those as we can during the presentation, and any that we're not able to, we'll save until the end. Then if you are having any streaming or connection issues, try refreshing your browser. This usually resolves the issue fairly quickly. If that doesn't work, you might need to log out and log back in. And then for, getting that CPE credit today, that is available with today's webinar. To receive it, you must, meet some of the requirements, which is to attend the webinar for at least fifty minutes and then respond to, like I mentioned, the three poll questions. The certificates will be issued within two weeks of the webinar over email. And if you do have any issues or questions with that, there is an email that's listed here on the screen that you can reach out to, for any of those needs. So with that, I am going to hand things over to Andrew, and he is going to walk us through today's webinar. So, Andrew, it is all yours to take away, sir. Oh, thank you, Rachel, and hello, everybody. Thank you for joining me today. One sec. There. Well, that that should sound a little better. Thank you for joining me today. What we're gonna try to talk about today is, how to look at your system. I was just at BBC, and I'm sure some of you were too. There's so many new features, and how to kinda make that determination of, is this a feature I wanna work into my system, or is this just something that I don't need right now? Because not every nonprofit is different is why. As I go through this introduction, you get to see my lovely kids. So it's a good slide to to sit on. Not every feature is going to be worthwhile for you and your processes. It's one of the reasons I like working with nonprofits is everybody's different. You can always look at two nonprofits with the same mission, same income statement. They're gonna do things differently. So that's kind of what we're gonna talk about today. Just a little about me. So I am the director of finance here at Fifth Avenue Committee, which is an affordable non... Affordable housing nonprofit here in Brooklyn, New York. I'm also the founder and partner of Finnovate for Good LLC where the goal is really to help nonprofits get the most out of what they're using. And then if you do need new software, kind of help you through some of the things we're gonna talk about today. I've been in the nonprofit field for about fifteen years and every time I do a presentation that number is just gonna keep picking upwards. And I am a CPA licensed in both New York and Pennsylvania. So most of you at some point or another have sat through a sales demo. And there are some great sales people. I know some of them are black product. I'm friendly with some of them, and there are some not so good ones depending on who you talk to. So we've all sat in that demo where it's the, they start with the slide deck about the company and all the features. And you get to about slide 40 or hour two of that sales pitch and you're just wondering, does any of this matter to me? There's a lot of buzzwords used around. I've talked to a lot of salespeople that the words kinda AI, automation, real time, don't mean as much anymore because everybody will say them as if they're handy and not really explain how it's gonna help you. That was one of the cool things I thought from Blackbaud this year was they actually showed some of it in action and how it's gonna help. So really thinking about how to take those features within your processes is really where we wanna talk about today. So no matter what system you're looking at, gone are the days of... I'm gonna date myself. Your your QuickBooks desktops, which is being sunsetted, your, a s 400, your MS DOS based systems, your, Lawson's of the world. And they're being replaced by these cloud solutions that every week it seems there's a new feature. And I think unless you're a... As some describe... Has described me as a sicko, but a interested party, not everybody reads the release notes. We... We've all logged into FE. When you first log in, there's that giant pop up with all the new features in your releases. I bet 90% of you just close that box and get back to your day because when you're processing payables, you don't wanna stop and read what Effie is gonna be doing next month. But thinking about how to work that in and also thinking about how to take those features and get rid of the manual work. Because I see so many non profits they are... I don't think stuck in their ways is the right way to put it, but they have a process that works. So no matter what their system's gonna do, they're gonna keep the process. The example I always give is when I first started working at a nonprofit now twelve years ago, I got there and they just moved to a system that had... It was brand new to them. They had gone from QuickBooks to a to a different system, and the system had journal entry approvals in the system. Now the person I was replacing as controller had implemented that system but did not trust it. So they were approving journal entries in the system and then would print out the journal entries with the backup, which was saved in the system, stamp them, and then sign them as approval. And, literally, I got there the first day and there was this this giant stack of papers on my staff account and desk. I said, what's that for? She goes, that's the journal entry you have to sign and approve, but it's approved in the system. And it was just a broken disconnect between the controller at the time and what the system was actually doing. And even though they had... They were paying for the system with all the bells and whistles had spent $40.50 grand to have it implemented properly, they were still doing this manual process because they never a step back and realized, what do we need to do now? And I see so many people that even using FE, your month end close will still stretch for a week for weeks. You're rekeying the same data between system. That's the biggest thing I see. Or you know what? We've set up the FE to RE connection years ago, and we've added programs. We've added things, but development doesn't really want us to touch the system. So we just kinda make these manual adjustments every month. And then you sit and watch those manual adjustments and you're paying these top accountants who could do so much more to just rekey in data and waste their time. And I think the other thing is the board still gets what it needs and still gets the reporting out. You get your audit out, but everything is built by hand the night before. And what that leads to is two things. One, there's a lot of blood, sweat, and tears that are going into simple reports that should be simple, but we all work in nonprofit. There is no such thing as a simple request. And secondly, you don't have time to analyze it. I am as guilty as anybody else that there have been times I have spent hours creating either a funder report, a special board report, something my executive director wants, and it's done. And you know what? The check ties to zero and the numbers look kinda right. You just send it off and just wanna be done. It's it's 2AM. My my children are gonna wake up at 6AM, so I I gotta get my four hours of sleep if if if that that... I'm not gonna spend the time reviewing it because I just don't have the time. But if we can use our system to the false and get away from this manual reporting, you open up a chance to actually analyze the numbers and make sure they're correct, make sure what's going in front of a board, in front of your EDs, in front of your presidents is correct. So that leads us to our first poll question. As Rachel said, that'll pop up on the right side under polls, when it is launched. And just to get a sense of kinda where you guys are, how many days does your month end close take right now? And I know when I speak to a lot of you, it's not always under your control that you're always waiting for something. You're waiting for something from this department, from that department, and something blocks you. And that's where I always come in. If you heard me talk before, it's that, that breakdown between timeliness and accuracy in your accounting and figuring out where you are on the scale, but also using your system to the best of your advantage. So it seems like most of you are in that six to fifteen range, which is good. I always say if you can get it out by ten business days, that's... I say the gold standard for nonprofit. If you can do it fewer than that, great. A lot of us can't because we're waiting for credit card receipts from our ED or, we're waiting for development to close. So it's really, finding things that are out of our control, but if we can get everything else ready. So what's the real problem that I see when organizations either aren't using their system to the fullest or looking for a new system? And I... I've seen a lot over the past few years. I I don't know how many of you are new in your organization, but you come in, you inherit a system. And if you've never used that system before, that first time you ask for a rep... I was working with an organization and the CFO asked for a report and their controller essentially said, it's gonna take me three days to get a program p and l. And she was beside herself. And we had just started talking. She's like, tell me this isn't true. And I said, well, if your financial edge is set up correctly, it shouldn't be. It should be the click of a button. And then we really dug deep into it and realized that their FE was not set up correctly. And it was just... It took so much manual effort to get those program level p and l's that her controller wasn't lying, but it doesn't mean it's the right answer. And what that became was she came to me originally because she was just like, FE doesn't work for us. We need a new system. And I said, let's take a look at what you're doing and how you're doing it. And it turned out it wasn't that... It wasn't the system for them. It was just never set up correctly. And I... I've also talked to a lot of clients. You have all these new AIs, the the chatbot, the MCP connections. If your if your system's not set up correctly and your dimensions aren't logical, none of these features are really gonna work. So it's really never a problem of capability, in the system. It's how you're using the system and how can you close the gap in between what the... If you see that circle right there, what the system can do and what you actually do. And like I said, there's usually a few reasons for this, and we'll get into a little later. But one is no one knows what the system can do. We we implemented it ten years ago, and we haven't really thought about it, and, no one knows. Two is we have people that are stuck in their old processes. I'm sure all of you can think of somebody on your team or you yourself have a process that you know there's a better way to do it, but it works for you, so you are not gonna let it go easily. So thinking about those two things as we move forward to really think of how can we use our system to the fullest. So this is this is what I want you to remember. If you're going into a demo with a new system, remember, the best demo is still built to sell you something. It's not going to fix every one of your problems. I always say a new system not designed correctly with new processes, you're you're gonna be running that system like you're running a car in the Flintstones. Hopefully, I didn't show my age with that analogy. Sometimes I do. But you're not even gonna be using the engine if you haven't thought about what you actually need and how you're gonna change your processes to fit this system. Because the demo is designed to show you all the cool features, but it's not necessarily gonna show you how you, yourself, in your organization are going to process accounts payable. How we're gonna do your credit cards. It's not gonna show you where Andrew, my general ledger specialist is gonna slow down the entire process because he's gonna export everything into his old school Excel that he feels comfortable with. And it's not gonna tell you, you know what? In phase one of implementing the system, this is not a feature we're gonna do right away. We're gonna do the core features and then think about expanding and not bite off more than we can chew. But we're also... You're also not gonna think about what you need to ignore or keep in mind as you move forward. So even the best demos, remember, they are trying to sell you something. And I always say, listen to the answers they give to your questions. Are they actually answering your questions, or are they just showing you a new feature when you ask? And the best demo... The best salespeople and the best demo people, there's many good ones at Blackbaud. They will actually answer your question and show you how you are asking to do something or work with you to figure out how your process is gonna fit. So... And to think about it, part of that... When you're looking at a new system or you're looking at the system you have, with all these features, figuring out what you actually need. And there are some great systems where it's one size fits all, and there's gonna be systems where you're gonna pay for every module. And thinking about what you need, especially when you're implementing a new system or revamping your system, which processes are you trying to get into the system? What are you trying to solve for? I always say, if you are fixing your system, enhancing your system, or go into a new system, sit down and write out a mission statement with some bullets. What are you hoping to accomplish? Give yourself a comp... A compass during this time that you can always report back to. Always go, this is what we're trying to solve for. You know, we made a change to our configuration. Are we still gonna be able to solve for x, y, and z? Because if you are trying to implement everything at once or get every feature under the sun during an implementation, remember, you're gonna have to get trained on all that. And I always say during implementations, I can set up a system. I can bring in your information. I can set up your reports. The one thing I have not figured out how to do is trains... Is, osmosis train somebody. You still have to go through the training. You still have to get certified. You still have to listen to whoever's training you. Even if I do it, you still have to listen to me and learn. Are you paying for things you're not using? Did a... Did somebody add a feature a year ago that, you know what, you never implemented, and it's not gonna get implemented anytime soon. So let's save ourselves a few $100 a month. I know every nonprofit out there, if you could save a thousand to $2,000 a year, that that is money that could be better spent in today's, climate. So think about those features you're not using. And remember, the more you add on to your system, the more bells and whistles, it's just another place to click or another place to permission... Provision permissions. That's the word I was looking for. Per... Provision permissions. It's one more thing you're gonna have to tweak. So thinking about your system, make sure you have your core in place, and now think about, okay. Here's all the things that a system can do. Which ones are gonna help us? Which ones are gonna be the ones that are gonna save us time? And don't try to shoot for the moon because think of think of a budget tool. Not everybody needs a budget tool. What what financial... The the edge does great is once you have your budget, you can load it in and report on it. You can make tweaks, but it's not a true budget tool. And there are budget tools out there, but do you need something? And I've seen a lot of organizations, they jump to a budget tool. They're like, we needed to help budget. And there's so many bells and whistles that they end up not really implementing it, And they're really just using a a glorified Excel for 10 to $15,000 a year. So really get down to the basics of what you need and think about how to move forward in that. So in the chat, as we go through this, and I'll give you some example. Think about a feature that you have paid for in the past or right now that you have never used. The example I give is when I started at my last nonprofit, they had implemented an... They had purchased an expense management system for three years and had never implemented it. It took us two months to implement. It was just something that, like, they had bought, they thought they needed, and no one ever tried it. And I see right there somebody put fixed asset modules. It wouldn't account for partial disposals. That's a big... That's a great example. Because what that tells me is during the sales process or the implementation process, the right questions weren't asked about your situation, and kinda do what we needed to do. And that's why I always say, before you look for new software, before you implement a new module, figure out what you're gonna need it for. And make sure during a sales cycle that you are asking the questions that you need to answer. So there there... And there's a lot of examples. Some of them are the same. Some of them are different. But it's it's really about making sure as you purchase something to make sure it's gonna work for you. Like I said, every nonprofit is different. Every board wants to see something a little differently and make sure that you're able to do what you need to. And if you are sitting on software and it hasn't been implemented, figure out where the bottleneck is. Is it you? Is it your predecessor? Is it your implementer? Do you know what? I need another consultant in there to fix it. I need to get somebody else that's really gonna supercharge this. We need to make this a priority. Like I said, when I go back to expense management system at my last nonprofit, we just made it a priority. We're like, we are going to get this done and implemented. And it turns out there were just little tweaks we had to make on the back end. And like I said, within two months, everybody was now submitting expense reports and credit card reports via a system. So thinking about how to use these tools, I think is key. A lot of good answers. So going back to kinda what we've been talking about this year, if you join me in other webinars, it's how to reclaim your day as a CFO, controller, staff accountant, somebody who just needs CPE. Thinking about... Okay. So we have all these processes that either don't work, never implemented, just doesn't work for us. Think about your process. Think about what you do on a day to day. Start with what you... Going back to that, start with your mission statement. Start with your bottleneck. What are you trying to solve? Don't start with what Financial Edge NXT can do. Start with what you needed to do. Because if you start from a feature list and try to work your processes around what the system can do, you're gonna miss parts of your process and you're gonna end up with workarounds on day one. But if you start with, here is our process map. Here is our procedure. How can we automate, digitize, systematize our process into a system? How can we get to a point where everything we are doing is within the system? That that way, when you bring that to your salesperson, you bring that to your account executive and say, this is what we're trying to solve for. Help us. It's going to be a much more fulfilling process to fix that rather than you showed me I can do bank recs. Please please set that up rather than here's how we do bank recs. Here's the little thing that makes us unique. Can you help us solve for that? So three questions when you're thinking about a demo or an implementation or a change in process. The biggest one in 2026, where does data get reentered by hand or entered into two systems? That is going to be the biggest time waster ever. Something as simple as there's so many nonprofits that aren't using the payment features or payment assistance, which it soon seems like based off what I heard of Blackbaud that can be, you can use bill now. But I see so many companies that when they do accounts payable, they enter everything into FE, and then they're paying either directly through their bank or another tool, and they're rekeying all their vendor information or all their payment information into two system. And that takes a lot of time. Thinking about where your systems don't talk and should they talk, or how can we make import exports even starting there. Thinking about journal entries and accounts payable and expense management. How many of us have sent something off for approval and just waited on email? I know when I get off this webinar, I will have at least 20 emails sitting in my inbox. And I had zero new emails when I got on it, 15 to the hour. Things get lost in email. But if you put them in a system that's constantly reminding people, people can see where things are. The example I give is we've implemented an accounts payable system here. Gone are the days of people emailing me, where is this? Because I was able to give everybody read only access. Your invoices come in, you can see where they are. So instead of getting that, what I get is a lot of emails to my executive director that I'm cc'd on is, hey. Can you approve this? You're holding up the line. So where a year ago, they used to go, hey. Where is this? Now it's the point of question. I see in the chat they still ask. I got approval for my ED for the first two months we have the system. If somebody asked me where a payable was, I just sent them a how to video I made of how to look up their own invoices. Now it was in my tone, so it was humorous, and no one really took it too seriously. But I was able... I got approval to do that for the first two months. Now some people ask me and I'll look it up, but I just got to the point where I was just like, here's the instructions on how to look it up yourself. That's how I treat my four year old. Sometimes that's how you have to do it. The third thing to ask is, are there any reports you were doing monthly, quarterly, annually, whenever your board meets that you think should take three minutes but takes three days? That you see the Excel is piecing together that when you go to the board and a question is asked on the detail, you have no idea where these numbers came from because they don't match with an FD because it was exported a week ago. Thinking about how to bridge that gap. Why are these reports taking so long? What's not being done in the system? Is it just somebody really needs to sit down and spend time with that chart organizer and FE to really make sure things are codified correctly? Is it that we're not really using programs right and we kinda combine things? Do we need to think about our chart of accounts or our account string to make it easier to report? And I think a big part of this is before you make any change depending on where you are in the ring, ask the people who do the work. The staff you're running your AP every week, they know where the bottlenecks are. They know who the problems are and what the problems are. They know who kinda gives them that each week. The person signing the checks probably doesn't know where the exact bottlenecks are. They just know AP is too slow. So when you're thinking about this, make sure it becomes a collaborative process. Unfortunately, I think gone are the days where finance can sit on its own and do everything. A CFO can just do everything unilaterally. These systems have so many features that are gonna affect your people's lives. And if your goal is to make their life better, make sure it's going to. The last thing you wanna do is put in a system that's not gonna make anybody's life better and, in fact, gonna make people's life harder. So poll number two, which will be launched on the right side, where does your team lose the most time? Thinking about it... In your mind, maybe you don't exactly know, but thinking about the things we just talked about, where do you think you lose the most time during your monthly close, your daily work? Like, I'd say right now, depending on what I'm doing, it's probably building reports by hand. Just because every day it feels like there's a special report and there's some systems you can't necessarily rebuild. But we're making we're making strides. We're doing little things every day to make it better and thinking about how to do it. When it's closing information from other teams, what information of it? Could it end up being an estimate that we can use moving forward? And I know some of you wanna select all the above, but I didn't put that option in there. But I'm sure it is all the above depending on the day. It's always gonna be one thing or another, but thinking about how you can really get to where your team needs to be. Make sure it's the right slide. So now thinking about it. And like I said, I am the biggest culprit of leaving a webinar with great ideas. Hopefully, these are great ideas to you. And doing absolutely nothing with them because I will open my email, open my team. Somebody will inevitably knock on my door in the office. And next thing you know, it's 05:00 and I'm running out of here, and I haven't sat down on my computer again till nine, when my kids go to sleep. And I got work to do. I won't remember this. So trying to use this time wisely. So think of your three busiest workflows, whether it's reporting, AP, like, what takes up your most time? Now think of that process. And if you have a little sheet of paper or, do it on a word document or another screen, leave my face on your screen. It... It's it's good. Think of where the work stalls when you think of that process. And think of what... What's being done by hand, what the process is. Try to map it out. And as you're going through, start circling where you think your team's losing the most time. Because as I started this, nonprofits are all so different. You all do things so differently. And I always say, if we could put the ingenuity that finance teams put into working around their systems to get reporting out to actually solving the problems our nonprofits are trying to face, we'd have no problems in this world. Because, unfortunately, everybody on this call is not allowed to say what I hear so much at my nonprofit. That's not my job. I'm not allowed to say that. If my executive director needs a payment out, I can't say, you know what? As a CFO, that is not my job. So we figure out a way where some pro... Where some people in our our organization won't, and I'm sure you're thinking of them right now. But figure out where those bottlenecks aren't solved for that because the system's not gonna solve every one of your problem. What you want a system to solve is your biggest ones that take up your most time. Because those smaller problems, they can either be tweaked by change of process, the system makes them obsolete, or maybe we just have to think about things a little differently because we're now using a system that has approvals for journal entries in the systems that lock them. We can now close our books in a timely manner. Alright? We're using the expense management feature feature to actually digitally approve AP. So thinking about where those bottlenecks truly are, take that back to your account executive, take that back to the Blackbaud support team. If you're not on Blackbaud, take that to your sales demo and say, these are the things we're trying to solve by moving to a new system. By truly identifying those, what a demo or a reimplementation or a fix is gonna do, it's actually gonna solve your problem rather than just add a bells and whistle. So you're trying to get better dashboards and use the insights. What reports are you trying to create to make sure they can actually do it rather than saying I just want pretty report? And I think a big thing here, and I said it before, there are great salespeople in this world. But I see a lot of nonprofits because of the budget constraints, what we don't get to do in the nonprofit world is sit on a lot of sales calls. Because when an organization needs to invest in accounting software or accounting infrastructure, it's usually three years too late because we always fall at the bottom of the rung. We'd rather support a 100 more participants than get you dashboarding software. Seen it a million times. So I think where that ends up hurting people like us is we're not used to these sales pitches. And I have seen nonprofits get fooled by software because the sales pitch is all bells and whistles, but they never actually see in the sales pitch how to record a journal entry or how they're gonna run their trial balance. And I think that ends up hurting a lot of people because they're just not ready for getting excited about the exciting things. But don't forget about the meat and potatoes. What's gonna be your day to day workflow? AI chat is great, but but if your data in the system isn't good, the AI chat's not gonna be able to do anything. So I would say there's a few rules for every demo. Bring your wish list. I always tell my clients when we're preparing for demos, you should have your need to have... These are my deal breakers. If we can't do this, we're walking. Nice to have. These are the things that are truly gonna be that added value beyond the core that's really gonna get our executive director excited or our development team excited because we're gonna be able to run these reports. And then there's gonna be that category. What's gonna make you do a back flip in the parking lot? What are those showstoppers? What are those things you've always thought, you know, if my system could do this, I'd have my feet up not at 04:00 on a Friday, 11:00 on a Friday having an early morning margarita or bloody Mary because my work's gonna be so easy. We all have that one thing that we could automate, and we're getting there. So bring that list to the demo. And I always say send that list ahead of time if you can. Because what... That'll tell you one of two things. One, do they prepare for the demo? Or are... Do... Are you getting a canned demo? If you send a list of these are the things I need, and you come back, you show a demo and they don't show you any of that. That tells you something about the partner you are choosing in choosing a software. A good demo that's tailored to you is always the best. Make them show it to you as well. I am very experienced in this. I've been in the software game with... On the nonprofit side for about eight years. I have been fooled in a demo taking somebody's work for it. Ask to see it. Always ask to see the boring stuff first. They are always gonna wanna lead with the the nicest feature, the new feature, the thing that they are advertising on the main stage of their conference. Show me how I'm doing a bank rec first. Show me how I'm doing a journal entry first. Because those are the things that are actually gonna affect your day to day work and that's what your people are gonna wanna see how they're gonna do it. And I said this before, watch for a tell in a sales a sales thing. There are great salespeople that will that will answer your questions, but if it turns out they're not answering your questions and they're kind of giving you a generic answer and kind of pivoting away, that's a tell. It tells you something. And maybe you need to get some references. Maybe you need to ask for a more in-depth demo. Never be afraid to ask to see it again if something didn't feel right. Always bring your people to the work. You do the work. Bring them to the demo. Let them ask questions. And the the the one I didn't put on here that I always say is, if you're looking at multiple softwares, if you see something in demo three that you didn't see in one, don't assume one can't do it without asking. Even if you give a full detailed, here's what I wanna see on a demo, every demo is gonna be different. So just because you didn't see something doesn't mean the system can't do it and don't just write it off. Go back and ask. Ask for more demos. You are the customer. You wanna make sure that this system's gonna work for you. Don't be afraid to keep asking questions. One of my favorite pastimes on demos is to try to stump a salesperson. I always ask very nuanced questions just to make sure that my clients and my... Or myself are getting what I need at the end of the day. And this is the way I always think about it. When I am scoring that bottlenecks with... Bottleneck list I made during a demo, make sure the core is gonna fit. Make sure I'm getting what I truly need. Where is my problem in this process? What am I trying to solve by spending money? And make sure that it's doing that. It's great that I can go into my chat g b t or call and ask how much I've spent on expenses this year, and it can spit it out in plain English without logging the system. That's fantastic. If my AP person can't get the payments into the system, then the bells and whistles of the chatbot aren't gonna be worth it because I'm just gonna either have a per... AP person who's quitting, or or I'm gonna have an AP person that's still behind on the work that it's not real time, that it doesn't matter what I ask you because the data is not good. So make sure that you are keying in on those core capabilities and not getting lost in what looks really... And it's cool. There are a lot of cool features. But if I can't do a journal entry in the system without pulling my hair out, don't have any hair but just pretend, then it's not worth it to me. So thinking about all the cool things you see, because that's what I... That's the thing I always get lost in is they say, but it can do this. I say, but can I do your core thing? What do... What are you here to solve? So thinking about these features that you're seeing. So you're gonna rank them. How often will this actually get used? How often are you gonna use this DAT porting? How often are you gonna use something that maybe looks really cool, but you're gonna lose some core capabilities? How often is it gonna save time and whose time is it gonna save? Because sometimes, maybe it's saving just four hours in terms of reporting, but it's four hours of the CFO's time. And let's say I can now automate my reporting that, you know, my controller can now produce the reporting, review it, and then I can secondary... Secondarily review it. Even though maybe I only saved two hours, I am now allowing myself to analyze a reviewed report rather than being the one that created. Is there risk being reduced? Or am I closing a control, control gap? Thinking about some audits... Having journal entries approved in a system, having AP approved in the system, being able to close the books which you can't do in every system. Having bank recs that are automated and you're reviewing exceptions. Thinking about if that's in a system, is that reducing risk for you? Because I know a lot of you are working on small teams. So how can you have those internal controls? Can you have a system that... You know what? We give read only access to our ED. And once a month, her process is to go in there... His or her process to go in there and review. Now maybe they do, maybe they don't, but part of our controls is they have access to see everything if they have a question. And then the other thing is ask how long how long implementation is. Is this feature gonna add another month or two months to your implementation? Will my team use it? Or is it gonna sit unused after go live that maybe let's let's face this out and we're gonna add this module after six months to make sure that we know the core. And make sure your score and the vendors you're looking at against themselves. Even though if you're looking at different implementation partners. Think about what they're telling you and how they're telling you they're gonna do things, and make sure you're not forgetting. Ask for recordings. Ask for notes. Take notes. And I think the key is here, a lot of times, especially when I meet clients for the first time, I see it in the chat here all the time, the chat here all the time. What system should I use? What should I use for AP? What should I use for credit card? What should I use for my my my accounting system? And just so everybody knows, if you miss poll one, it's been reopened on the side. It's all relative. There is no system that's gonna work for everyone, and I will say that I... We are here with my friends at Blackbaud. FE will work for so many different nonprofits. It is not a fit for everyone. And when you try to fit something that's not a fit, you're just gonna have so much friction that you're gonna have a wasted investment. And the last thing you wanna do as a nonprofit is when your program team takes away money to put into accounting infrastructure to waste those dollars. So just remember, it's relative to your size and what you do. That's why I always say the first thing you should do before you go into any system selection is map out what you do and how you do it. Because that's gonna be key to making sure that you are getting the right system for you. What works for $5,000,000 organization does not work for a $50,000,000 organization. Bigger is not always better. An ERP that can do everything under the sun may not be better than a very specific fund accounting software. Making sure it matches what you do today and what you wanna do tomorrow is the key, not what's sounds nice. So this is an example kind of to bring it home. We have organization a. They map their bottlenecks first. They bring a scorecard to every demo. Picks three or four capabilities that solve most of the pain. The staff then... During implementation, they've been part of the process. They know what they're trying to solve for. They've been able to tweak their processes and see where the controls are still gonna lie, where their checks are gonna lie, how they're... How they know everything's gonna equal. There's gonna be more uptick on owning these processes, implementing these processes, and using these processes. Because the one thing I say is there is no such thing as a smooth implementation. There is always gonna be some road bump, some speed bump, some fork in the road where there's something you just... Even if you are the most prepared, as you are implementing, there's going to be a decision tree that you did not expect. The goal of all this prep work is to make that a smoother transition, to take away those giant peaks and valleys during implementation and smooth it out so that when you do hit that fork in the road, we can refer back to the bottlenecks we're trying to solve. We can refer back to our mission statement and really make sure that the decision we are making today will really hit moving forward. Contrast that with organization b. They buy the shiny new toy, the one that can do everything, that the most features. It will be executive director. They sent you a tote bag and a a Stanley mugs. You're like, yep. They are the ones for me. A year and a half later, my guess is those modules sit untouched. I'd be surprised if you have a trial balance that balances and your staff are now doing even more in Excel than when you started and you have just wasted so much of your organization's dollars. Remember, every dollar that's allocated to accounting infrastructure is the same as a dollar in the field. You have a fiduciary duty to the people you serve at your nonprofit to spend those dollar wisely. So that's why it's so important to make sure you are solving for what you need, not for what is being sold to you. So think about think about what your system you're using now. Pick three things you think you use today and this is very similar to what was already given. Or you were shown in a recent demo or you saw unreleased notes or you saw in a... If you're using Blackbaud bbcon recap, think of the capability you've seen and think about whether or not it would actually help you. And sometimes it's... You... You'll do this exercise and you won't understand what this capability actually is until you use it. So thinking about, you know what? I've heard this. I don't think it'll work for me. Talk to your account executive. Talk to your salesperson for your your thing. Or look at it in a demo and ask, how would I use this? Rather than talking to all the bells and whistles. I always tell salespeople when I talk to them, especially when it comes to AI. Anybody can talk in generalities about what AI can do and can't do and why it's great or why it's not where it needs to be yet. I always say put it in practical terms for the nonprofit. How is a nonprofit actually going to use this feature? Because sometimes showing them how we're gonna use it is so much better. So what is your next steps? You listen to me talk now for forty five minutes. What do I think the next steps are? Map out the bottlenecks and processes. Everything starts here. And if you're thinking that seems like a really tall task, well, this is where I will tell you AI. Your AI will... Choice will help. Open a Teams. Open a Zoom. Start recording. Verbally talk through your process and feed that into your generative AI and choice and ask for a process map. It's a great place to start to figure out where your bottlenecks are. Talk to other people. Do that. Have a meeting and go, hey. Walk me through that AP process. I'm just gonna record it. Create a procedure manual. Create a process map because it's always easier to use something. Even if it's gonna be wrong, at least you're starting with something rather than starting with a blank word or Excel document. List what you own and can change. Sometimes when we do this, we're gonna go, you know what? We need to change the way Razor's Edge codes codes revenue. Most of us know most development teams are not open to changing their own systems. So sometimes it's a matter of figuring out what we own and what we can change and starting from there. Now write a scorecard of what you think would be a good change and use it at your next renewal or demo. So now to to bring us to the last poll question, what are you gonna do first today coming out of this? Before we wrap up, I'm gonna turn it over to my friend, Rachel. I'm just gonna talk a little bit about how this all fits into Financial Edge to bring it home. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you, Andrew, again. Fantastic content. As someone who's... Give you a little... My my background, I've been working with nonprofit organizations, particularly within the finance office or business office. Not to date myself too too much. I tell that joke way too often. But, since the days of DOS, so any of you who are attending and remember that lovely operating system, all I can say is was fast. Right? Didn't have to take my hands off the keys way back in the day, for this thing we call it mouse now. But, anyway, I've I've been in sales for for twenty years. Professional service is part of that as well. And I love, you know, quite a lot of what Andrew has to say today... Or has has had to say today just around the practicality of an evaluation. Right? I mean, of course, we, you know, we in sales, we we get... We certainly get excited. Some of us who are on the technical side, such as myself, we tend to geek out, and we we find things just are really cool. Right? I mean, AI is, like, all the buzz right now as Andrew is saying. Right? I mean, there's a lot of things that we can get excited for. You can even see it... Hear it in my voice right now. But, really, at the end of the day, if I can't do my job, if I can't, you know, meet the requirements, you know, that that that shiny thing really isn't of much help. So during an evaluation, while we're happy to show you kind of where we're going in terms of the technology, certainly when they check the boxes to make sure that I can meet the needs of what I have today, and then certainly how is that gonna allow me to grow in the future. Right? So love the guidance that we, heard today from Andrew. And then certainly with Financial Aid at XT, for those of you who... By the way, for those of you who are at BDcon last, the the prior week or or maybe attended virtually, wonderful to, be with you again. Wonderful show. Had a lot of really great features that we kinda showcase there. But, you know, with Financial Edge, again, we... We've been with, we only focus on the on the, nonprofit, market. So, over the last fifty years, we've... We've learned quite a lot, and, hopefully, that's demonstrated throughout the product, and certainly kind of, showcasing some of the features. And, really, at the end of the day, we wanna make sure that, you know, the reporting that you're getting out of the system is, something that you have confidence in, something that's easy to get out and certainly helps as we as we release some of these AI features. Our goal with AI is really to kinda alleviate some of the time that is spent today. I I kinda make fun, but I've heard it way too often, from clients. But, you know, even if it equates to, you know, guilt free vacations, we'll we'll take that. So, anyway, thank you again, for joining us today. Andrew, I can't thank you enough. Fantastic content, as always. Rachel, I'll, give it over to you. Yeah. Thank you guys both so much for this presentation today. A lot to digest and think about. Wanna turn it over to you all now. So if you do have any questions, please shoot those over in the chat or in the q and a, and we can take the next few minutes to answer those. Real quickly before we get into any questions, just a reminder that today's webinar, a recording will be sent to you at the end of it, which will also include the deck. If you have not downloaded that yet, though, you can go to the docs tab and you will have a link to today's presentation, our buyer's guide to fund accounting, our blog that Andrew Horrow did to go along with this webinar, and then another blog that just gives you a few signs and ideas of when you might need to transition to a nonprofit accounting solution. So we will check the q and a quickly, and I don't see anything in there that hasn't been answered yet. And it doesn't. look like anything coming over in the chat. But, Andrew Horrow or Gregory, any final thoughts from you guys? Yeah. The only thing I'll add, I know there's a lot of very specific questions I saw throughout there. If you're having any trouble, feel free to... I would reach out to your account executive at Blackbaud. The support's great. If you wanna talk to somebody who is in the field, I'm more than happy to always have a conversation and find some way to help you. I know sometimes it's not just the system. It's, hey. We need somebody to come in here and really fight our processes with us, and sometimes you do need that outside voice. People get very wrapped up in what they do, and they're not gonna listen necessarily. So that's part of what I help my clients do is really find those places to, fix their processes. But if it's epi specific, the the team over at Blackbaud is great at helping. But feel free to reach out. And, really, the goal is to make your system work for you. I always say if if you always think there's a way it has... If you're thinking during your day, it has to... There has to be a better way, there probably is. And I would reach out to your account executive, support, myself, anybody else in the Blackbaud here and go, hey. This is what we're doing. Does this sound right? They'll give you a very quick yes or no answer, and that'll probably start you on your way to fixing your system. Because like I started this whole thing, nine times out of 10, it's not the system that's not working. It's how you're using the system. So before you think about I need a whole system selection, I need to get something else, I need to spend the money, first take a step back and go, how is the system supposed to work? Ask for a fresh demo as if you're a new customer. I always say that. Salespeople don't always love that, but ask for a fresh demo. See what the system can do if functioning properly, and then you can figure out if it's you or the system. It's not me. It's you. Always. No. And, Andrew, I did open one final poll question. This one is not for CPE credit. But if you are a current customer joining us today and you'd like to be connected to your account executive, answer that question, and I can get you guys connected. And you can kind of continue the conversation one on one to talk specifically about your needs and your questions. But just. checking that q and a again, it looks like we've got one question that came in from John. And he said, where's the best way to learn about how to use Effie reporting function better? Three days to three hours and maybe a dashboard. I... So I'd say I'd start with not only the help section, which is always very... Lays it out in. English. I would look at Blackbaud University for some courses. Also, John, if... Some of that might be how your system's set up when it comes to reporting. That you might see, Yeah. here's how. I run reports here. Here's how I create reports. I'm still not getting what I need. There are some quirks to setting it up right the first time, so I'm more than happy to... If you wanna reach out to me, I'm more than happy to talk to you, see where your issue is. But the place I would start would be the help and and Blackbaud University to just take those courses. And if it's still not working, that's probably just a function of setting it up correctly the first time and then learning right. the, the the way the chart organizer truly works. Perfect. Okay. And Mary also put in a question. She asked, is there a suggestion for cleaning up historical data that has been left unprocessed? There's no easy answer. I'd love to talk to you and figure? out what that is. That's one of those that, like, I wish. I had a silver. bullet. Let's... I... I'd let... Mary, Yeah. if you wanna reach out, we can figure out what that data is and figure out the best way. But I I I always say if a client can show me something I've never seen before, I'll buy them lunch. I have not bought anybody lunch in three. years. That's right. Yeah. And, Mary, I would suggest too. that if you are a current user, go ahead and click yes in that poll that I've still got open, and we can connect you not only to Andrew but also to your account executive to talk about that. Well, thank you everybody for taking the time today. Thank you guys so much and everyone, Thank you. and enjoy the rest of your days. Thank you. Alright. Bye, guys. Thank you, everyone. Bye bye.