PCI Compliance

• The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is a set of requirements developed by the major credit card companies to enhance credit and debit card data security. All organizations that process, store, or transmit payment card data must follow the PCI DSS requirements or will eventually risk losing their ability to process credit card payments. To comply with these requirements, The Financial Edge will no longer store credit card numbers in their entirety and will instead store just the last four digits. For information about PCI DSS, visit http://www.blackbaud.com/pci or the PCI Security Standards Council website at https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org.

Security

• With this release we increased password strength by requiring longer, more complex passwords. Now, when a new user is created, or existing user is updated, the passwords must be at least eight characters and include one alphabetic character and one non-alphabetic character (i.e., 0-9, !, @, #).

WebPurchasing

eRequisitions is now WebPurchasing. WebPurchasing has the same basic functionality of eRequisitions, but with the following enhancements:

• We have improved the user interface for easier navigation.

• We have improved product searching so you can scroll through products more easily or filter the product list using an enhanced search screen.

• Products can now be sorted by price, product ID, product description, and vendor.

• Products can be organized by categories and subcategories for easier searching.

• You can now request one-time products that will not be stored in the product list.

• We added approval rules that support complex, multiple reviewer approval situations.

• Consolidate Requisitions has been replaced with a Generate Purchase Orders wizard.

• We have improved the receipting functionality. For more information about WebPurchasing, see the WebPurchasing User Guide and the WebPurchasing Installation Guide.

New Transaction Business Rules

• With this release, we added additional business rules to help ensure consistent data entry of transactions. For more information about these business rules, see the Configuration Guide for General Ledger.

New Reconciliation Reports

• New reconciliation reports have been added to Accounts Payable, Student Billing, and Accounts Receivable. These reports have predefined defaults to help you identify the transactions that are part of your subsidiary ledger balance. We have also updated the Subsidiary Ledger Reconciliation Guide with more troubleshooting steps for the reconciliation process. For more information, see the Subsidiary Ledger Reconciliation Guide.

Student Billing Enhancements

• In Accounts Receivable and Student Billing, we updated the way unapplied payment and credit applications are accounted for and redistributed. When you do not mark the Use a single AR Summary Account and never post Applications business rule, the default Unapplied Payment account is required on the Default Accounts page in Configuration. When posting to General Ledger again after unapplying, the unapplied payment information is tracked so you can account for changes made to the payment. For more information about unapplying payment and credit applications, see the Configuration Guide for Student Billing.

• On student records, if a student passes away, mark the Deceased? checkbox. The Age field disappears and the student no longer appears in your mailings. For more information, see the Records Guide for Student Billing.

• On course records, Billing tab, you can select the billing item ID. The billing item IDs available depend on the selection you chose for Fee Type. For more information, see the Courses chapter of the Records Guide for Student Billing.

• In Administration, for Generate Transactions Automatically, to process transactions automatically, you no longer need to have a reversal schedule defined for the academic year and session.

• For college billing systems, in Configuration, General Business Rules, you can choose to Mask accounts on billing items using the segment [ ]. With this business rule, you can determine what segment to mask on the GL Distribution tab of a billing item. For more information, see the Configuration Guide for Student Billing.

• For college billing systems, in Student Billing, on a Course record, we added a new GL Distribution tab. For more information see the Courses chapter of the Records Guide for Student Billing.

• For college billing systems, in Student Billing, Configuration, if you chose to Mask accounts on billing items using the segment [ ], on the GL Distribution tab of a course record, you can combine the billing item distribution with a specified account segment. For more information see the Courses chapter of the Records Guide for Student Billing.

• For college billing systems, in Configuration, for Determination Tables and Reversal Schedules, we enabled you to create overload fees for students who attempt credits over the established full time range for an academic year and session. For more information, see the Configuration Guide for Student Billing.

• For college billing systems, in Configuration, for Reversal Schedules, you now have to enter a From Time and To Time for each entry. Each reversal schedule entry must be a unique From Date, From Time, To Date, and To Time combination with no overlapping dates. For more information, see the Configuration Guide for Student Billing.

• For college billing systems, with this release, we offer integration with the financial aid product PowerFAIDS. This integration involves importing anticipated aid and disbursements into Blackbaud Student Information System, and exporting data from student and applicant records back into PowerFAIDS. The PowerFAIDS Integration page stores the import and export parameters needed for integration with PowerFAIDS. If you need assistance setting up the ODBC DSN, please contact PowerFAIDS Technical Support at 800-227-6734, or email pfaidssupport@cblist.org. For more information about PowerFAIDS integration, see the Administration Guide for The Financial Edge.

• For college billing systems, we have added functionality in Administration that allows you to generate 1098T data. 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 Student Billing Administration section of the Administration Guide for The Financial Edge.

Query

• To help manage and organize the queries you create, we added the Organize Categories feature in Query. You can now create directories, or categories, to group your queries. For more information, see the Query Guide for The Financial Edge.

Export

• When you export code table entries, you can now set the default format to “Long description” or “Short description”. For more information, see the Program Basics Guide.

Configuration

• With this release, you can make the City field a ‘lookup’ field, which will enable you to select cities from table entries during data entry. Selecting from table entries in lookup fields helps standardize entries and increases the consistency and speed of data entry. For more information about lookup fields, see any of the Financial Edge Configuration Guides.

The Financial Edge User Guides

• To access the user guides, select Help, User Guides from the program or select User Guides from our website's Support menu. If you experience problems accessing them, contact Support for assistance.

• The Financial Edge user guides are Portable Document Format (*.pdf) files. You must have a Reader installed to view and print PDFs. If you do not have a Reader installed, you can download Adobe’s Acrobat Reader at no charge from the Adobe website at http://www.adobe.com.