Financial Edge NXT Bank Reconciliation and Blackbaud Bank Statement Import from PDF

How do I do a bank reconciliation in Financial Edge NXT?

Open the bank account record and select Reconcile on the action bar. On Get started, enter the statement date and ending balance and pick a method, Using bank feeds or Manually. Then match feed items or clear transactions electronically, review the register, and on Finalize select Reconcile now once the difference is zero.

One setting has to be in place first. Blackbaud states that to reconcile, you must enable cash management in the subledger settings for the bank account. If an account will not reconcile, check that setting before anything else.

Get started shows the last reconciled date and balance, so you can confirm you are picking up where the prior month ended. If the account was never reconciled in Financial Edge 7 or Financial Edge NXT, enter the last balance you reconciled by hand as the Starting balance. For a new account that can be zero. Reconcile is also on the action bar of the bank register and, when a feed is linked, of the bank feed.

After that the work runs through up to three steps. Match bank feeds appears only when the account has a feed. Clear Transactions Electronically takes a bank file. Review register is where you confirm what is still outstanding and clear valid items the first two steps did not catch. Finalize then compares the register balance with the statement balance, and Blackbaud is plain about the rule: the difference must be zero before you reconcile, and you get there by clearing transactions or creating an adjustment. Alerts flag unposted subledger or general ledger entries that need posting first. Save and close keeps your progress on a month that is not done, and the Bank Reconciliation Report is the document for the month file once it is.

How do I clear transactions electronically in Financial Edge NXT?

From the bank account record, under Register, select Clear electronically and upload a .qif, .ofx, .qbo, bai.txt or .qfx file from your bank. Choose the cleared date, select Clear transactions, then open the Clear Transactions Electronically report from the notification to review the matches and the exceptions.

1. From the bank account record, under Register, select Clear electronically.
2. Upload the bank file.
3. Under Set cleared date, use the date from the bank file or enter a date.
4. Select Clear transactions. Financial Edge NXT imports the transactions and attempts to match them to transactions in the register.
5. Select the notification in the top right corner to open the Clear Transactions Electronically report.

The report shows the number and total of matches and the number and total of exceptions. Matched transactions update to Cleared. Unmatched lines appear as exceptions, which you then work through in Review register. Under Register, Clearing history keeps the last run date, the number of exceptions and the bank file name, and you can reopen the original bank file there.

Clear electronically does not create transactions. It matches lines in the bank file to deposits, checks and payments already in the register and marks them cleared. A donor deposit that was never recorded, a bank fee nobody entered or a payroll transfer posted to the wrong account comes back as an exception, not as a new entry. Record those in Financial Edge NXT the usual way, then clear them. So treat a converted file as a clearing tool, not a way to load the books. Blackbaud also notes that this process is for accounts where you are not using Yodlee to clear transactions in bank feeds.

What file formats does Financial Edge NXT accept for bank transactions?

For Clear electronically, Blackbaud lists five file types: .qif, .ofx, .qbo, bai.txt and .qfx. CSV and Excel are not on that list, and neither is PDF. A PDF statement has to become one of the listed files before Financial Edge NXT can use it to clear the register.

Does Financial Edge NXT accept QBO files?

Yes. Blackbaud lists .qbo among the accepted files for Clear electronically, next to OFX, QFX, QIF and BAI. BankXLSX exports QBO in the QuickBooks Web Connect format on the Plus plan. We have not tested our file against a Financial Edge NXT install, so convert one month first and check the report before you convert a whole year.

A good first test is a short statement with a handful of checks and deposits that are already in the register. Upload the QBO, set the cleared date and compare the matches on the Clear Transactions Electronically report with what you expect. If Financial Edge NXT rejects the file or the matches look wrong, contact us with the exact message. Until that first month goes through, keep the Excel copy as your fallback for clearing in Review register.

Before any upload, check the converted rows against the statement. Opening balance plus deposits minus withdrawals should equal the ending balance. If it does not, a line is missing or was misread, and that is much easier to fix in the converter than to chase later as an exception. Our bank statement to QBO converter page explains the file itself.

Can I import a CSV bank statement into Financial Edge NXT?

Not for clearing. Clear electronically does not list CSV, so a CSV statement will not mark register items as cleared. Financial Edge NXT has a separate import under Settings, but it is a mapping based import for records such as journal entries. We have not confirmed it for bank transactions, so we would not build a routine on it.

CSV and Excel still earn their place. Plenty of finance staff reconcile from a sorted spreadsheet next to the register: sort by amount, filter checks by number, and tick each item in Review register. Excel is also the easier format for the items that were never recorded, because you can code them by fund or program before posting. Our page on categorizing transactions from a bank statement covers that step, and every BankXLSX plan exports Excel and CSV.

How far back do Financial Edge NXT bank feeds download transactions?

Blackbaud says feed transactions download as of the last reconciliation date or up to 90 days prior to when the online account was added and linked. Anything older never comes through the feed. Feeds run through Yodlee, so if your bank does not work with Yodlee, there is no feed for that account at all.

Bank feeds are enabled by default. You manage them under Treasury, from the bank accounts list, through Settings and Bank feed configuration, where Automatch payments and Automatch deposits can also be switched on. Two details matter for catch-up work. The feed history stops at the last reconciliation or the 90 day limit, so a new implementation or an account that fell behind starts with a gap. And disabling bank feeds removes the linked online banking information along with the downloaded transactions, so turning a feed off is not a quick way to start over.

Why does Financial Edge NXT say my OFX file is not formatted correctly?

Users on the Blackbaud Community report this error when a bank OFX file does not fit what Financial Edge NXT expects. One user wrote that their bank changed its OFX format and they now have to run a series of find and replace edits in the text file. When a download keeps failing, the PDF statement is another way in.

Hand editing an OFX works until the bank changes the file again, and it is easy to damage the structure by opening the file in a spreadsheet program and saving it. If the download for a month fails, convert the PDF statement for the same period to QBO and upload that instead. Test one month first, as described above.

These notes follow the web view of Financial Edge NXT, which is what the current Blackbaud help describes. The older database view has its own Clear Transactions Electronically screen, and community threads describe format quirks there that may differ.

What does a monthly routine from PDF statements look like?

Convert the month of statements, check that each one balances, and upload the QBO for each account under Clear electronically. Work the exceptions in Review register, record anything missing, and finalize at a zero difference. For an organization with operating, restricted fund and payroll accounts, that turns three long ticking sessions into three short ones.

A restricted fund account may see little activity, which makes it quick to clear and easy to leave for later. The operating account carries the volume, and that is where a converted file saves the most time. If you want to compare a statement with a ledger export before you open Financial Edge NXT, the bank reconciliation tool does that in the browser.

Catch-up months and single audit preparation

Auditors work from bank statements and reconciliation reports, so months that were never reconciled, or were reconciled in an earlier system, need to be finished before fieldwork starts. Organizations that spend federal award money can also fall under a single audit under the Uniform Guidance, which adds a closer look at how those funds were handled.

The order matters on a catch-up project. Settle the Starting balance first, then reconcile one month at a time from the oldest forward. Bank feeds will not cover months outside their window, so those come from statements. On Plus you can upload up to 50 statements in one batch, convert a full year for every account, and work through them in sequence. Keep the statement PDF, the converted file and the Bank Reconciliation Report together for each month. Clearing history already records when each file ran and lets you reopen it.

A finished reconciliation will not prove by itself that restricted cash agrees with restricted net assets, but it is the base every other schedule sits on. Our catch-up bookkeeping converter page covers the wider job of rebuilding missing months, and the bank statement converter for nonprofits covers fund tagging and board reporting.

What does Financial Edge NXT cost, and what does this add?

Blackbaud does not publish Financial Edge NXT prices. The product page offers a demo, and pricing comes as a quote, so we cannot say what your organization pays. Clear electronically is part of the product you already license. BankXLSX adds only the step that turns a PDF statement into a file that process can use.

BankXLSX Starter is $49 a month, or $24 a month billed yearly, for 800 pages with Excel and CSV. Plus is $149 a month, or $74 a month billed yearly, for 1,920 pages, and adds QBO export, bulk upload of up to 50 statements, extraction templates and transaction categorization. Plus is the plan for Clear electronically. Every paid plan includes unlimited users, so the controller, staff accountant and an outsourced accountant can share one account.

A new account gets a one-time 15 page demo, up to 5 pages per statement, with no credit card. Demo exports may include watermark rows, so use the demo to see how your bank reads, not as a file for clearing the register. Scanned statements and phone photos in JPG, PNG, HEIC and TIFF go through OCR. Uploads are protected with 256-bit encryption, and you can delete them at any time. BankXLSX never asks for a bank login and does not connect to Financial Edge NXT.

If part of your work runs on other systems, see the Aplos bank reconciliation page for smaller nonprofits and churches, or the Sage Intacct bank statement converter.