Accounting Seed vs. Financial Edge (legacy)

Accounting Seed is a great solution for businesses looking for reliable accounting software. It offers all the features needed and works as expected. In addition, it is not as pricey as many competitors and therefore a great choice. I would recommend it for both startups and established businesses.

Incentivized

• 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).

Incentivized

• When making a deposit for a donation we can tag the account record.
• Anyone can recognize donors that are also vendors.
• Extracting general ledger detail is accurate and easy - allowing us to ensure the GL matches revenue detail from donations, box office and education.
• Budgeting is actually pretty nimble now that I am using it more.

• 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.

Incentivized

• Sometimes when creating a receipt it can't seem to find the company I am searching for in the drop-down, I have to go out to the company and enter from there.
• Some of the accounting reports seem to be limited, though at times this may just be the user! Still learning as I go! But there have been some reports that state I would need to add another partner app to do, which would mean more cost.

• 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• The Database View is outdated and glitchy.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.

Accounting Seed was easy to implement and use without third-party service providers' intervention. Furthermore, the vendor forwarded us a copy of articles and documentation on implementation, customization and integration, which made it much easier for us to integrate it with company API and other external programs.

Incentivized

It's user friendly, when it wants to be.

We seldom have had to use their support but when we have, they have been responsive and actually were able to answer our questions in a simple, nontech language. You don't have to be a programmer to talk to them!

Incentivized

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

I have never used Xero at my current organization, but I used it at Alliance Data before Implementing Accounting Seed. Xero wasn’t updated much during the years that we were using it. Also, Xero failed to integrate with some of third-party applications that we were using. Finally, Accounting Seed was highly navigable, had clean UI/UX unlike Xero.

Incentivized

Financial Edge is more economical than GuideStar, and more focused on the financial successes than simply the management of funds and general data.

Incentivized

• Accounting Seed has been available to use at a reasonable annual cost.
• Installation, setup and integration cost were reasonable.
• Customization is simple so we do it our selves and saved money not using outside consultants

Incentivized

• We have been able to more effectively track utilization of budgets
• Scholarship management has more than tripled over a five year period

Incentivized