Financial Edge (legacy) vs. QuickBooks Online

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Financial Edge (legacy)
Score 6.8 out of 10
N/A
A legacy software offering, Blackbaud now instead offers and supports their cloud-based accounting solution, Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT as a modern alternative.N/A
QuickBooks Online
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
QuickBooks Online is a SaaS version of the QuickBooks product. It contains all of the features found in the local version. Higher-priced plans include greater automation, payment management, inventory and time tracking, and analytics features.
$38
per month
Pricing
Financial Edge (legacy)QuickBooks Online
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Simple Start
$38
per month
Essentials
$75
per month
Plus
$115
per month
Advanced
$275
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Financial Edge (legacy)QuickBooks Online
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Financial Edge (legacy)QuickBooks Online
Considered Both Products
Financial Edge (legacy)
Chose Financial Edge (legacy)
It doesn't even compare. Sage is far better than Financial Edge. No contest.
Chose Financial Edge (legacy)
I like Financial Edge for non-profit accounting the best as it provides a great foundation for fund accounting. It integrates the best with a donor database and the reporting options are truly amazing.
Chose Financial Edge (legacy)
Financial Edge is more economical than GuideStar, and more focused on the financial successes than simply the management of funds and general data.
Chose Financial Edge (legacy)
Most FE installations I have participated in were from QuickBooks Pro. QuickBooks, if set up well, is a great alternative for the smaller association or nonprofit, but it has challenges handling some of the unique aspects of nonprofit accounting. Recent editions of QuickBooks …
Chose Financial Edge (legacy)
I have used EMPS system, which also works the same as Financial Edge. Financial is easier for A/P entry and A/R entry. However, it isn't very user-friendly when trying to look up batches or check-runs previously made. EMPS system works better when looking for check-runs.
Chose Financial Edge (legacy)
There is no comparison. Fundware was such a dated application and I couldn't believe we were using it as long as we were. Financial Edge allows us to post entries to multiple dates in a single entry and edit the post date as we go. When we used Fundware, we had to edit the …
QuickBooks Online
Chose QuickBooks Online
I think of the two products this has less hassle as it is pretty straight forward and streamlined. Unfortunately, as much as we use the payroll version I cannot give that product the same raving reviews as QuickBooks Online. I really wish Payroll was not as complicated as it …
Chose QuickBooks Online
We use QuickBooks Online since it is user friendly and it has the ability to accommodate small businesses with more complex accounting needs. Price is not that expensive although the users that you can add are limited, if we need to add a user we need to remove the other users.
Chose QuickBooks Online
QBO works much better for our needs and our business. Netsuite had a few too many layers for our business, it was a little harder to use. QBO makes everything simple you don't need to be an accountant to use it. We are happy with the product and will most likely continue to …
Chose QuickBooks Online
None. The only other accounting software I used was a proprietary MSDOS system 20 years ago; this is much better.
Chose QuickBooks Online
We did not look at any other products as QB online is typically considered best in class.
Chose QuickBooks Online
Desktop is way cheaper, but QuickBooks Online stays more upto date and is way better at integrating with other software.
Chose QuickBooks Online
We went with Quickbooks because it was recommended to us by our accountant, as they too use Quickbooks.
Chose QuickBooks Online
Melio was a little easier to use, but could be clunky while syncing to QB, and also got expensive as they added charges for every transaction as well as syncing.
Chose QuickBooks Online
As an accountant, QuickBooks Online uses the language I learned in school and throughout my career. Xero tries to simplify it, while actually making it more difficult to understand.
Chose QuickBooks Online
I truly hated Sage as a bookkeeper. I know that accountants don't have the same experience, but from a day to day perspective, it was not user friendly.
Chose QuickBooks Online
Easier to use and setup. More accountants are familiar with it so that also made the selection easier. Other software was also more expensive and had features that we weren't going to utilize at our current growth stage.
Chose QuickBooks Online
I have to use SAP for billing with some clients, and I think Ariba is much less intuitive, and the interface/GUI is much less modern and appealing. The fact that the client needs to send a PDF "user guide" says a lot to me about how counter-intuitive a lot of the features in …
Chose QuickBooks Online
Sage Timeslips and Avaza
Chose QuickBooks Online
Reporting is more diverse and ability to add multiple dimensions
Chose QuickBooks Online
I think QuickBooks Online is better than Xero. However I think is is lower then NetSuite and Sage Intacct. The system isself is great because it's cloud based so it can be accessed readily. However, in my opinion, it's not built for companies that are growing or expect to grow. …
Chose QuickBooks Online
QuickBooks Online has better options for sending invoices and receiving electronic payments.
Chose QuickBooks Online
QuickBooks Online is by far the easiest and fastest accounting management platform that I have used, especially compared to any industry specific tools like Sage, Foundation, Northstar, etc. I like how user friendly it is, the visual is great, and it can fit for a wise array of …
Chose QuickBooks Online
They are expensive and always have freezing issues and duplicating entries and no one available to address issues. To change the way you use the sites it takes time to update and its too jumpy and makes annoying issues. These effect the whole company and can take a lot of time …
Chose QuickBooks Online
User friendly for smaller communities.
The cost seems to be reasonable for smaller communities.
Support is helpful, and trainings provided online are helpful.
Chose QuickBooks Online
Unfortunately, in my opinion, QuickBooks Online is not anywhere cloase to coupa or Blackline in terms of functionality. Both platforms are head and shoulders above where i understand QuickBooks Online to be currently. Specifically in relation to task automation and more …
Chose QuickBooks Online
As I've mentioned, there aren't a lot of similar products, and certainly not with all the capability of QuickBooks Online. In my opinion, they nickel and dime for everything but they also do work pretty well across the board. I think the reconciliation process is also by far …
Features
Financial Edge (legacy)QuickBooks Online
Payroll Management
Comparison of Payroll Management features of Product A and Product B
Financial Edge (legacy)
1.0
Ratings
154% below category average
QuickBooks Online
8.4
Ratings
8% above category average
Pay calculation1.00 Ratings7.70 Ratings
Benefit plan administration1.00 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Direct deposit files1.00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Salary revision and increment management1.00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Reimbursement management1.00 Ratings9.50 Ratings
Customization
Comparison of Customization features of Product A and Product B
Financial Edge (legacy)
1.0
Ratings
154% below category average
QuickBooks Online
8.3
Ratings
8% above category average
API for custom integration1.00 Ratings8.70 Ratings
Plug-ins1.00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Financial Edge (legacy)
1.0
Ratings
157% below category average
QuickBooks Online
9.7
Ratings
15% above category average
Single sign-on capability1.00 Ratings9.60 Ratings
Role-based user permissions1.00 Ratings9.70 Ratings
Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Financial Edge (legacy)
1.0
Ratings
155% below category average
QuickBooks Online
8.1
Ratings
3% above category average
Dashboards1.00 Ratings8.60 Ratings
Standard reports1.00 Ratings8.20 Ratings
Custom reports1.00 Ratings7.50 Ratings
General Ledger and Configurable Accounting
Comparison of General Ledger and Configurable Accounting features of Product A and Product B
Financial Edge (legacy)
1.0
Ratings
154% below category average
QuickBooks Online
8.6
Ratings
10% above category average
Accounts payable1.00 Ratings9.20 Ratings
Accounts receivable1.00 Ratings9.40 Ratings
Cash management1.00 Ratings8.80 Ratings
Bank reconciliation1.00 Ratings9.10 Ratings
Expense management1.00 Ratings8.70 Ratings
Time tracking1.00 Ratings6.90 Ratings
Fixed asset management1.00 Ratings8.10 Ratings
Multi-currency support1.00 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Multi-division support1.00 Ratings9.20 Ratings
Regulations compliance1.00 Ratings9.20 Ratings
Electronic tax filing1.00 Ratings9.30 Ratings
Self-service portal1.00 Ratings8.80 Ratings
Global Financial Support1.00 Ratings8.10 Ratings
Primary and Secondary Ledgers1.00 Ratings8.70 Ratings
Intercompany Accounting1.00 Ratings8.80 Ratings
Localizations1.00 Ratings8.10 Ratings
Journals and Reconciliations1.00 Ratings9.30 Ratings
Enterprise Accounting1.00 Ratings8.10 Ratings
Configurable Accounting1.00 Ratings7.80 Ratings
Centralized Rules Framework1.00 Ratings8.40 Ratings
Standardized Processes1.00 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Inventory Management
Comparison of Inventory Management features of Product A and Product B
Financial Edge (legacy)
1.0
Ratings
152% below category average
QuickBooks Online
7.5
Ratings
2% above category average
Inventory tracking1.00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Automatic reordering1.00 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Location management1.00 Ratings8.10 Ratings
Manufacturing module1.00 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Order Management
Comparison of Order Management features of Product A and Product B
Financial Edge (legacy)
1.0
Ratings
154% below category average
QuickBooks Online
8.4
Ratings
8% above category average
Pricing1.00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Order entry1.00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Credit card processing1.00 Ratings8.60 Ratings
Cost of goods sold1.00 Ratings9.30 Ratings
Order Orchestration1.00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
End-to-end order visibility1.00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Order exception Resolution1.00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Financial Edge (legacy)QuickBooks Online
Small Businesses
QuickBooks Self-Employed (discontinued)
QuickBooks Self-Employed (discontinued)
Score 8.9 out of 10
QuickBooks Self-Employed (discontinued)
QuickBooks Self-Employed (discontinued)
Score 8.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Zoho Books
Zoho Books
Score 9.0 out of 10
Zoho Books
Zoho Books
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
SAP S/4HANA Cloud
SAP S/4HANA Cloud
Score 8.6 out of 10
SAP S/4HANA Cloud
SAP S/4HANA Cloud
Score 8.6 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Financial Edge (legacy)QuickBooks Online
Likelihood to Recommend
1.0
(0 ratings)
8.8
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
1.9
(0 ratings)
Usability
2.0
(0 ratings)
8.8
(0 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
2.0
(0 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
1.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
1.0
(0 ratings)
1.1
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
3.0
(0 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
1.3
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
1.0
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
1.0
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
1.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Financial Edge (legacy)QuickBooks Online
Likelihood to Recommend
  • Financial Edge is well suited for traditional day to day accounting, accounts payable, and related needs.
  • Financial Edge dashboard does not provide a snapshot view of data that I have found are available through other platforms (like QBO).
Read full review
I appreciate the ability to auto-generate invoices for recurring transactions, which saves time, as well as the option to set up auto-generated transactions. The report option is super helpful when reviewing information, as you can click to view the details in the report without having to go back and forth.
Read full review
Pros
  • Grant Management - nothing is more harrowing than grant reporting, and FE does it best. It allows for layered budgets and limitless division of expenses among grants, overhead, or other projects/programs.
  • Reporting - Most financial software tries to adapt for-profit accounting into a non-profit mode without addressing the unique needs of a nonprofit for reporting and auditing.
  • Multiple projects and/or cost centers within a budget and system - nothing is more challenging than trying to manage expenses over several cost centers and FE is a champ at allowing that complexity.
Read full review
  • It enables me to do a P&L for each specific program as requested by the county for the grant money that they give us.
  • It enables me to do [an] organizational budget as well as a budget for each specific program
  • It enables the accountant and the auditor access at any time for transparency
Read full review
Cons
  • Customer service blames the customer, and never offers solutions other than "wait it out." I've always been told it's my computer, even though everyone else at my work has the same issues.
  • Website is constantly "under maintenance" and it somehow never gets better.
  • The Database View is outdated and glitchy. Honestly get rid of it.
  • The Crystal Report is the only way to handle monthly recurring statements, and Financial Edge does not offer support for it anymore. Good luck figuring that out on your own.
Read full review
  • Purchase Orders cannot be linked to multiple bill payments which makes tracking purchase orders in QuickBooks Online obsolete. Without the function we have to track this within a different more manual spreadsheet.
  • Would be helpful if you could "split" bank transactions directly from the "review" downloads from the bank. Currently, to split transactions to multiple accounts we need to first categorize, then review after assigning to 1 account.
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Likelihood to Renew
No answers on this topic
QBO needs better integration with non-Intuit products and developers need to use Intuit's open API to develop better add-ons. Clients are having a great deal of problems with their data importing from the bank and this takes time away from better revenue producing activities. Although the efficiencies are there, they are outweighted by the shortcomings of the product. When we ran a parallel of QBO versus other cloud accounting products, we had more issues with the QBO product than any other
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Usability
It's user friendly, when it wants to be.
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I had very little trouble setting up the program and migrating from our old accounting system. The daily usage is also very intuitive and easy. Anytime we run into minor trouble with the program, there are always tons of help available on YouTube, so we don't even look up the online manual anymore.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
No answers on this topic
We have rarely had outages in the last 10 years. I can only recall 2 times in the last 10 years where we were not able to access our client files.
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Performance
No answers on this topic
Everything process has its bugs lately with the new interface. Nothing has worked smoothly since this all began last month.
Read full review
Support Rating
I would give this a zero if I could. Here's the deal. Once you request a chat with a representative, they immediately respond. So responsiveness: 10/10. However, they have a tendency to (always) tell you that whatever problem you're experiencing is your problem, not theirs. They offer no solutions and never take responsibility for their website malfunctioning
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In my experience, most representatives keep me on the phone for hours, literally, for a single issue and then usually cannot resolve it satisfactorily. I have 10 open cases that need resolution and, in my experience, there has been NO follow-up communication on any of them.
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Implementation Rating
No answers on this topic
The person in charge of QB needs to be very accurate with record keeping and is recommended to stay on top of tasks. The biggest issue we have is reconciliation, and those issues occur only when too much time has occurred between reconciliations
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Alternatives Considered
Financial Edge is more economical than GuideStar, and more focused on the financial successes than simply the management of funds and general data.
Read full review
QuickBooks Online is an accounting software package that allows companies to use a cost-effective and efficient software package. QuickBooks Online allows companies to prepare their balance sheets and income statements. It connects with a variety of other applications, which allows you to be efficient. We are very pleased with QuickBooks Online, and we would highly recommend it.
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Scalability
No answers on this topic
As we have grown along our professional path, we have also expanded our use of QB. The scalability is easy and features seem to be waiting for you until you need them. We have increased profits by over 10x from our first year in business to the current and have yet to find a reason to look elsewhere
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Return on Investment
  • We have been able to more effectively track utilization of budgets
  • Scholarship management has more than tripled over a five year period
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  • I think the help function is cumbersome and hard to use. When I go to refresh myself on a function, say quarterly, I feel like I have to cast about just looking for it.
  • The account reconciliation works, but in this place that could benefit from messaging, there are no easy helping functions flagging things like amounts that fit the discrepancy.
  • Even styling invoices and documents is more cumbersome than it should be.
Read full review
ScreenShots

QuickBooks Online Screenshots

Screenshot of the accounting and bank transactions interfaceScreenshot of an overview of the accounting inventoryScreenshot of book marksScreenshot of the business tax overviewScreenshot of the customer hubScreenshot of the dashboard