Payment Assistant Overview

Payment Assistant automates your accounts payable process, helping you save time, reduce costs, and improve security. With robust encryption, real-time tracking, and seamless integration within Financial Edge NXT, Payment Assistant streamlines payments to vendors via virtual card, ACH, or check.

Key Benefits

  • Enhanced security and fraud protection

  • Faster, automated payment processing

  • Real-time visibility and reporting

  • Significant cost savings over paper checks

Payment Assistant features automated approvals and reconciliation, a consolidated workflow for all payment types, a tiered approval structure, and vendor onboarding managed by our enablement team. After you onboard, to use Payment Assistant, select invoices, approve the payment run, and Payment Assistant handles the rest — from funding to vendor payment and reconciliation.

Tip: Payment Assistant is included with your Financial Edge NXT subscription at no extra cost.

Note: Payment Assistant™ is currently in Limited Availability (LA). Are you interested in participating? Apply to join our LA group. During this time, we'll review and implement participant feedback to prepare for general availability.

Getting Started with Payment Assistant

To get up and running quickly, start with our Getting Started tutorial for Payment Assistant, which provides a big-picture overview of the process. For more guidance, review these resources:

When you first navigate to Payables, Payment Assistant, you see the Getting Started page. After setup, you go directly to the Payment Assistant page, where you can create payment runs and check the status of previous payments.

Training: For a visual walkthrough, watch our Payment Assistant training videos.

Frequently Asked Questions

Payment Assistant’s goal is to fully automate your invoice payment process. For many organizations, it can replace the entire process right away. In some cases, you may still need to process a few payments separately, such as wire transfers or international payments.

Virtual cards are single-use credit card numbers issued for a specific payment. Vendors receive an email with the card number, expiration date, and security code for the approved amount. They process the payment like any other credit card transaction and receive funds directly.

Before you approve a payment run, you can generate a pre-payment report from the payment run record. You can also use the Cash disbursement journals report in Reports for more comprehensive payment tracking.

You can use Payment Assistant with any invoice that’s ready to be paid, no matter how the invoice was approved. It works alongside your existing approval workflows.

Payment Assistant records when payments are delivered to your vendors. Payment runs and statuses update in real time as new information becomes available.

Yes, you can manually process payments and print checks directly from Treasury.

No, only payments processed through Payment Assistant are visible within Payment Assistant.

No. Payment Assistant doesn't support international ACH transactions. If a vendor's EFT bank account is set up for international ACH, you'll need to pay that vendor separately outside of Payment Assistant. Wire transfers and other international payments are also not processed through Payment Assistant.

No. Payment Assistant doesn't include an import feature. Invoices are selected from your existing Financial Edge NXT records when you create a payment run.

No. Payment Assistant doesn't generate or affect 1099 reporting. Continue to manage 1099s in Accounts Payable as usual.

To offboard from Payment Assistant, contact Blackbaud support. There is no self-service cancellation in the product.