The feedback was clear through the years about the deep frustrations of matching up their data across systems. We untangled the complexity and found a path forward.
from manual transaction matching for disbursement reconciliation
Bringing the fundraising and finance office closer together.
Fundraising and Finance departments at nonprofits can speak different languages about the same money moving through their systems.
The result: a painfully manual reconciliation process. Physical spreadsheet printouts, highlighters, and a frustrating back and forth between departments.
We had the products to solve the problem but they also "spoke" different with different data structures.
Separate systems and teams, same money. Generated via Gemini (Nano Banana).
There was no shared key that could trace a donation from the moment of giving through payment processing, CRM recording, and journal ledger. We aligned teams and decided to use the "Transaction ID" to trace a donation through all our products.
We could now automate the reconciliation process completely if customers had our 3 core products (RENXT, FENXT, BBMS). Those that used other tools in their workflow could still the transaction ID to link to the donation cleanly.
Operational Impact
Automated transaction matching is saving teams hours of manual spreadsheet reconciliation reducing human error and freeing staff to focus on their mission.
Platform Architecture
The Transaction ID is now the unique connective key across Blackbaud's products, a foundational decision that enables every future cross-product feature built on payment data.
Aligning fundraising and finance together.
Lessons Learned
In this project, the problem became clear when we framed the painful workflow problem as an opportunity to improve the platform for all our products. The biggest impact here wasn't from the visual design but the backend decision to aligning teams to tie our data together across experiences.