How USC Foundations Achieved Digital Transformation: A Step-by-Step Guide to a Paperless Finance Office

The journey to digital transformation doesn’t happen overnight. At USC Foundations, it happened one smart, intentional step at a time.

As a student employee scanning physical records to becoming the System Administrator managing the paperless transition, I got a front row seat and hands-on experience taking the organization from reams of paper to gigs of data.

With a complex financial structure that includes multiple entities managed within a single instance of their fund accounting software, Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT®, USC Foundations required a high degree of organization and control. Their chart of accounts was carefully designed: project IDs and account segments identified each entity, while transaction codes separated principal balances, reserved earnings, and spendable funds for real-time tracking. By the time I struck out on my own, the team was overseeing nearly 7,000 active projects and managing a $1 billion endowment, all with a relatively small staff.

Digitalization was the key to making that level of oversight possible.

Starting Small: Scanning the Paper Trail

USC’s transformation began with a common challenge: physical records. As a student employee, I started by scanning an archive of documents, some dating back to the 1960s, into an early electronic document management system. This included project files, invoices, and journal entry backups.

Even after I became a full-time employee, the Accounts Payable (AP) process still involved paper check requests and backup documentation, which were then physically scanned and stored. Time-consuming, yes, but it laid the foundation for what would come next.

Moving to the Cloud: PaperSave and Workflow Automation

Eventually, limitations with our original Enterprise Document Management system (EDM) pushed us to explore other options. Enter PaperSave.

PaperSave is a document management and AP automation tool that was originally built to work both on-premise and in the cloud, with direct integrations for several accounting platforms, including Blackbaud’s. PaperSave supports automated workflows, document storage, and audit-ready visibility.

PaperSave allowed us to migrate historical documentation and automate AP workflows. With smart forms and custom routing based on project ID, vendor type, and invoice amount, we replaced manual scanning with efficient, digital approvals (and gave our poor courier a break from carting folders of paper requests all over campus).

This shift became even more critical during the pandemic, enabling remote teams across multiple campuses to submit and process requests securely and seamlessly. To support vendor management across various entities and bank accounts, we implemented an encrypted smart form through Jotform to securely gather sensitive data like W-9s and banking details.  Jotform is a user-friendly online form builder that uses drag-and-drop customization and supports encrypted submissions for secure data collection. While entry into Financial Edge NXT remained manual, this step improved security and audit compliance significantly.

Improving Reporting Access

With hundreds of internal stakeholders needing financial information, giving everyone direct access to Financial Edge NXT wasn’t feasible. Manual report distribution wasn’t scalable, either.  Our solution: Reporting Xpress. 

Reporting Xpress is a customizable reporting platform that works seamlessly with Financial Edge NXT, making it easy to automate report delivery and control who sees what. It’s especially useful in higher education and nonprofit settings where end users need reliable access to financial reports—without needing a full Financial Edge NXT license—and can even be integrated with PaperSave for one-stop access to both data and documentation.

This tool allowed us to:

• Automate report delivery with user-level permissions
• Restrict visibility by division, department, or project
• Eliminate redundant report requests
• Include financial snapshots in donor letters

Integrating Reporting Xpress and PaperSave further allowed users to view reports and documentation from one portal, with permissions narrowed by project and document type, increasing both efficiency and security.

An Iterative Approach

This transformation didn’t require a full system overhaul. We focused on solving one problem at a time, refining each process as we went:

• Leveraging tools we already had (like custom fields in Financial Edge NXT)
• Adding solutions only when needed (like Jotform and Reporting Xpress)
• Prioritizing integration and auditability at every step

The result was a cloud-based system with full audit trails, streamlined workflows, and drastically reduced paper handling.

USC Foundations’ digital transformation led to:

• Stronger donor transparency
• Smoother collaboration with departments
• Greater audit readiness
• More staff capacity for strategy and innovation

Their story proves that even in complex environments, meaningful transformation is possible, one step at a time.

Unlocking Possibilities: How Nonprofits Are Streamlining Operations with Financial Edge NXT

While no two nonprofits are exactly alike, many face similar challenges: complex fund restrictions, decentralized teams, and increasing demands for transparency. The good news? Financial Edge NXT’s customization and integration capabilities make it possible to build systems tailored to your organization’s needs without reinventing the wheel.

Here’s how organizations across the sector are using Financial Edge NXT to modernize their financial operations.

1. Smart Use of Custom Fields

Custom fields are one of the most powerful and underused tools in Financial Edge NXT. Nonprofits use them to track important details that might otherwise be buried in spreadsheets. Use cases include:

• Tagging related projects, such as linking endowed principal funds with their spendable counterparts
• Tracking reporting categories, regions, or administrators
• Classifying specific accounts as investment activity
• Storing permissions data for integrated systems like Reporting Xpress
• Embedding fund IDs from fundraising platforms to align data across systems

Used strategically, custom fields provide deeper visibility without altering the core chart of accounts.

2. Streamlining Reimbursements and Invoice Approvals

Managing reimbursements and invoice approvals is a vital function for finance teams, and Financial Edge NXT includes built-in tools to support this.

With Blackbaud’s Expense Management, organizations can:

• Accept online reimbursement submissions
• Route approvals through Financial Edge NXT
• Attach supporting documentation
• Track and reconcile Blackbaud Purchase Card (P-card) expenses
• Maintain a fully auditable workflow

For invoice approvals, Payment Assistant™ is available at no additional cost to all customers. It offers:

• Digital invoice review and approval
• Basic approval-chain setup
• Payments via check, ACH, or virtual card
• A low-risk entry point to workflow automation

For organizations with more complex policies or entity-specific routing needs, tools like PaperSave provide robust automation. PaperSave supports smart form workflows, project-level approvers, and routing logic based on policy thresholds, which is ideal for larger institutions with layered AP requirements.

The key is finding the right fit: for many, native Financial Edge NXT tools handle the job. But when complexity increases, integrations offer scalable solutions.

3. Strengthening Donor and Departmental Reporting

Everyone needs reliable data. For smaller organizations, Financial Edge NXT’s Queue or Schedule Reports may provide the tools needed to automate and distribute data. But options like Reporting Xpress make this manageable for large scale or complex organizations as well.

With Reporting Xpress, organizations are:

• Automating custom monthly reports to principal investigators, department heads, or development staff
• Including year-end fund summaries in donor letters
• Providing unified access to financial reports and documents
• Restricting visibility down to individual divisions or projects
• Using Xpress Analytics, a natural language AI tool, to let users explore data with plain-language questions

These tools streamline reporting, reduce staff workload, and empower teams to interact directly with their data.

4. Building Grant and Fund Tracking into the Chart of Accounts

Organizations managing grants or donor-restricted funds are also optimizing their chart design to improve visibility.

Tactics include:

• Using transaction codes to track principal and spendable balances simultaneously or associate grant IDs with transactions for detailed activity tracking
• Splitting spendable vs. non-spendable activity with account segments or account custom fields
• Using the Chart Organizer to group accounts for audit prep and internal reporting

These changes reduce prep time for audits and help organizations stay aligned with donor intent and grant requirements.

5. Optimizing Integrations for Cross-System Visibility

Financial Edge NXT integrates smoothly with other tools, helping nonprofits streamline their ecosystem. For example:

• Jotform can be used to securely gather and store sensitive data, such as EFT banking info and tax documents. While these are still manually entered into Financial Edge NXT, the process increases compliance and protects sensitive data.
• PaperSave takes this further by allowing vendor and invoice information to be imported directly into Financial Edge NXT through its smart forms and automated workflows.
• Integration between Financial Edge NXT and Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT® enables nonprofits to simplify gift posting and connect contributions with fund disbursements. By using custom fields or matching fund IDs across both systems, organizations can create hybrid reporting and gain a holistic financial view.

Tools like Reporting Xpress then bring these pieces together, offering division-level snapshots and cross-platform dashboards for leadership and auditors alike.

Start with What You Have, Then Build

Digital transformation doesn’t have to start with a new system. Many organizations begin by unlocking the full potential of Financial Edge NXT, using tools they already have in smarter ways.

When your organization does need new tools, integrations offer flexibility without fragmentation. Whether you’re automating reimbursements or building donor-ready reports, Financial Edge NXT gives you a strong foundation and scalable options to grow.

And most importantly? Each improvement builds momentum for the next. Want to learn more about how to start the digital transformation for your organization’s finance office? Check out the webinar, From Paper to Cloud: USC Foundation’s Journey to Digital Transformation.