Blackbaud, Best beefing up fund product lines

New York - The two leading developers of software for nonprofits and government entities - Blackbaud and Best Software - have each significantly upgraded their respective fund accounting products.

Charleston, S.C.-based Blackbaud enhanced its Financial Edge product with a new “eRequisitions” module that allows budget managers to use their organizations’ intranet “as a shopping cart” when making purchasing requests. Other improvements include an accounts receivable module designed to handle multi-party billing.

Version 5 of Best’s MIP Fund Accounting product line includes a “One-Click Navigator” interface, an “Executive View” reports-only license option, and charting and graphing capabilities. Other refinements include expanded user-defined fields, and enhanced drill-down features, increased flexibility, customization, and ease of use.

“Accountability has been an especially hot topic in the nonprofit sector for the last year,” said Kent Hollrah, general manager of Best’s Austin, Texas-based nonprofit and government group. “Accounting technology plays an important role in demonstrating financial and organizational accountability, which helps ensure nonprofit and government organizations maintain the trust of the community they serve.”

Blackbaud customer Harold Bower, an executive with Children’s Home Inc., in Tampa, Fla., credited the new Financial Edge with letting him “retire” separate stand-alone invoicing systems he had been using for Medicaid and state reimbursements. “With all receivables information in one system, we spend less time on data entry and more time being proactive,” he said.

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