Welcome to The Financial Edge 7.75. Before you begin using the program, please take a moment to review the following notes, which highlight some of the new features. It is important to share this information with all Financial Edge users in your organization. A shortcut to the Release Notes for The Financial Edge has been added to your desktop, so you can access these notes at any time. General Ledger, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Cash Receipts, Fixed Assets, Student Billing, Payroll and all other programs and optional modules are available as part of The Financial Edge only if you have purchased each.

Budget Management

If you have the optional module Budget Management, the following change was made in The Financial Edge 7.75.

  • The Financial Edge 7.75 release gives you the ability to budget for a range of periods that do not have to follow fiscal years. For example, you can enter an 18 month budget for a project starting in period 4 of your fiscal year and ending in period 9 of your next fiscal year. The period range budget does not have to start in period 1 or end in period 12. For more information, see the Budget chapter of the Records Guide for General Ledger.

Projects and Grants

If you have the optional module Projects and Grants, the following changes were made in The Financial Edge 7.75.

  • We added additional fields to the project record. These new fields and corresponding report filters may be used to report on information previously handled using project attributes. The new fields are Division, Department, and Location. For more information about these fields, see the Projects chapter of the Records Guide for General Ledger.

  • The Financial Edge also gives you the ability to create budgets for grants. We have made changes to the Budget tabs of the account and project records, and added a Budget tab to the grant record. Grant record budgets allow total expense budgeting. For more information on these changes, see the Records Guide for General Ledger.

  • We added a new Grant business rule. Using the new Allow total budget amounts to be set for selected grant types business rule, you can select the grant types for which you want to use grant total budgeting, instead of account based budgeting. This business rule affects how the Budget tab displays on the grant record. For more information about Grant business rules, see the Configuration Guide for General Ledger.

Budget Tools

  • We added a new Budget Tool to Budget Management. You can use the new Increase/Decrease Grant budget to increase and decrease multiple grant budgets by an amount or percent, making the budgeting process more efficient and flexible. For more information, see the Budget chapter of the Records Guide for General Ledger.

Budget Reporting

  • To accommodate grant budgeting and period range budgeting, some options and terminology changed on each of the three Budget reports in General Ledger. For more information, see the Budget Reports chapter of the Reports Guide for General Ledger.

  • In General Ledger, we have added a new Grant report, which is available if you have Projects and Grants. The Grant Budget vs. Actual Report shows budget information and the actual activity of selected grants and accounts. You can use this report to compare actual and budgeted revenue and expenses for a grant. This report can be in a summary or detail format. For more information, see the Grant Reports chapter of the Reports Guide for General Ledger.

  • In addition, we have enhanced the Project Budget vs. Actual Report to show either project budgets with account detail or the project total expense budget. For more information, see the Project Reports chapter of the Reports Guide for General Ledger.

  • On the Project Financial Statements Report, you can now specify a transaction code to use as a secondary level of detail in the report. For more information, see the Project Reports chapter of the Reports Guide for General Ledger.

BAI Format

  • A new file type is available when clearing transactions electronically from your bank. In addition to the *.qif, *.qbo, *.ofx, and *.qfx formats, you can now use a Bai.txt file. For more information, see the Cash Management Tasks chapter of the Banks Guide.

Payroll Enhancements

  • Based upon your suggestions, we added two new reports to Payroll. The Compensation and Deductions Register lists employee earnings, benefits, deductions, and tax amounts for paid or unpaid calculations over a specified period of time. You can format the report in summary or detail. The Employee Directory provides a list of employees and includes biographical information such as department, address, telephone number, or birthday. For more information, see the Reports Guide for Payroll.

  • With this release, label and envelope functionality has been added to Payroll. You can now create labels and envelopes for your employees within Payroll. For more information, see the Labels, Label Truncation Reports, and Envelopes chapters of the Mail Guide.

Student Billing Enhancements

  • You can now create billing cycles in Configuration to group transactions and activity by date ranges for filtering transactions in reports and statements. For example, you can create reports and statements that are broken down or summarized by billing cycles to provide parents with information about their transactions for a particular academic year. For more information, see the Configuration Guide for Student Billing.

  • In Configuration, you can now create application restrictions that determine which transactions payments, credits, advance deposits, and financial aid apply to. For more information, see the Configuration Guide for Student Billing

  • To make automatic payment applications easier for payer-centric billing systems, we added the Distribute payments [ ] option to General Business Rules in Configuration so you can select the default method for distributing unapplied payments. You can select to apply payments proportionally based on the balance, evenly across students only, or evenly across all records. The program uses this option along with settings from the Payers tab on records to determine which charges the payment applies to by default. We also added the Transactions For column to the grid on the Student Billing Detail tab of payments and the Applied To tab of credits so you can more easily specify whose charges the payment or credit should be distributed to. The new Balance column displays the current balance for the record selected in the Transactions For column. You can use the new Columns button to hide the Reduces the Balance Of column to make the grid appear more like the one in the 6.x version of Student Billing.
    The Distribute payments [ ] option does not apply to existing payment applications made before upgrading to 7.75, only those applications made after upgrading. Existing payments will display in the Transactions For column after upgrading. If you use student-centric billing, these changes do not apply and will not affect your current applications process. For more information about the payment applications process, see the Payment and Credit Applications chapter of the Configuration Guide for Student Billing.

  • We added a new field in Student Billing Configuration to help speed data entry when adding payments. Using the new Default payment method field, you can select a default payment method for new deposit records. Your selection appears automatically on the deposit record when you create a new deposit, as well as any payments associated with that deposit record. For more information, see the Configuration Guide for Student Billing.  

  • When adding EFT bank account information for students, individuals, and organizations, you can now enter the bank account owner’s name in the new Account holder field. For example, if a student’s payments are drawn from a parent’s account, enter the parent’s name. For more information, see the Students, Individuals, and Organizations chapters of the Records Guide for Student Billing.

  • Two account balances appear in the status bar for student, individual, and organization records. The Balance field displays the same calculated value as the Total Account Balance field on the Activity tab when the View fields are set to “Activity” and “Owned by or Assigned to”. If you mark Show account balance with scheduled activity for students, individuals and organizations in Records Options, the Balance with scheduled activity field displays the same calculated value as the Total field on the Activity tab when the View fields are set to “Scheduled Activity” and “Owned by or Assigned to”. The account balances update automatically when an associated charge, credit, payment, line item, return, or refund record is added, changed, or deleted. For more information, see the Records Guide for Student Billing. If you are upgrading from an earlier version of Student Billing, you will need to run the Update Cached Record Balances utility on the Plug-Ins page to calculate the current balances. For more information, see the Plug-ins chapter of the Administration Guide for The Financial Edge.  

  • The Add Transactions to a Group process (from an open charge, credit, advanced deposit, or financial aid record, select Transaction, Add this to a Group of Records) has improved. If you mark Preview records before <transactions> are added, the Preview Records screen appears. On this screen you can select which records from the query you want to add the transaction to. After processing, you can click Review to view the Review Added and Exceptions screen. For more information, see the Records Guide for Student Billing.

  • In Records, on the Bio 1 tab of a student record, you can add hold codes that restrict students from performing certain tasks until they complete a responsibility. When you put students on hold, you encourage them to complete their responsibilities. For more information about hold codes, see the Configuration Guide for Student Billing.

  • For college billing systems, you can now create deferred payment plans in Configuration for students who need to pay their balance in increments. Payment plans can include most of the student’s fees, such as housing and meal plans, lab and computer fees, as well as the setup fee for the payment plan and any late payment charges. For more information, see the Configuration Guide for Student Billing.  Once you create the payment plans in Configuration, you can assign them to student records. For more information, see the Students chapter of the Records Guide for Student Billing.

  • For college billing systems, we have added the 1098T form. You can use the 1098T form for reporting to the IRS and students the amount of qualified tuition and related expenses, and fees billed or paid during the calendar year. This form helps students determine whether they are eligible to claim an Education Tax Credit on their individual income tax returns. For more information, see the Forms chapter of the Mail Guide for The Financial Edge.

  • For college billing systems, in Records, on the Bio 2 tab of a student record, you can view a student's expected graduation date. The expected graduation date can assist you when you report financial aid information. For more information, see the Students chapter of the Records Guide for Student Billing.

The Financial Edge User Guides

  • The Financial Edge user guides are no longer installed on your workstation. However, you can still access the guides from the User Guides page within the program, as well as the Blackbaud website. If you experience problems accessing the guides, create a case on the Blackbaud Customer Support Case Central website.