Financial Edge NXT is a cloud accounting solution tailored for nonprofits that provides a general ledger, projects, grants, endowments, accounts payable and receivable, fixed assets, banking, and more. It offers real-time reporting, with one-click drill-down functionality and export capability.
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MIP Fund Accounting
Score 8.7 out of 10
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MIP Fund Accounting™ is a configurable fund accounting solution. The solution includes functionality for fund accounting, procurement, budgeting, payroll, human resources, timekeeping, fixed asset management, grant management, and dashboards for nonprofits and government agencies.
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Pricing
Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT
MIP Fund Accounting
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT
MIP Fund Accounting
Free Trial
No
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
Required
No setup fee
Additional Details
Blackbaud is currently offering the first six months of Financial Edge NXT free for new customers. Limited conditions apply.
All three of these applications can do internal calculations such as fringe pool allocations, payroll allocations, and facility allocations. NetSuite ERP has a great budget-building tool to create budgets within the system instead of just inputting data to project and object …
FE NXT was in place when I joined the organization and I was unhappy with it from the beginning as soon as it took longer than a moment for a report to generate and the reports were so unintuitive and we could not customize them to meet our needs. My team runs into issues …
They did not have NXT when we began with Blackbaud. While it also had its problems, it had some things that I liked better and some not so much. I think that is true with all integrated systems.
MS dynamics is a good program, however, it is general business software, so it is not
specific to NFP accounting. It is also expensive relative to MIP, and would have required require some customization or
workarounds to tailor it to specifically NFP accounting.
Financial Edge NXT and MIP Fund Accounting are both nonprofit-focused accounting solutions. Within the nonprofit market, Financial Edge NXT emphasizes its capabilities for higher education institutions, while MIP Fund Accounting is more focused on government agencies.
Financial Edge is a web-based accounting software designed to pair with other NXT products to unify nonprofits’ financial processes into one ecosystem. The platform is also more tailored to higher education institutions, which aligns with Blackbaud’s other product lines that focus on higher education. In contrast, MIP is offered on-premise or as a cloud-based product, and the platform is more scalable for midsized organizations. It also provides more emphasis on government agencies’ unique accounting and reporting needs.
Features
Financial Edge NXT and MIP Fund Accounting both provide robust accounting features for nonprofits.
Financial Edge is positioned as the next step up in scale from QuickBooks for nonprofits. As such, the software is relatively accessible for users who aren’t already accounting specialists, which can be impactful for smaller organizations. It also advertises some ERP-esque capabilities, such as cash flow forecasting and data quality management. These extended features enable users to unify all financial processes into one vendor’s ecosystem.
MIP Fund Accounting stands out for its robust nonprofit accounting service at scale. It excels at tracking funding sources, including funds and grants, to ensure compliance and accountability. Additionally, MIP is recognized by reviewers for its excellent customer support, which can be particularly impactful for scaling nonprofits who lack a robust accounting department.
Limitations
Both Financial Edge NXT and MIP Fund Accounting have some limitations worth considering.
Financial Edge NXT is less specialized for traditional nonprofits. Blackbaud provides capabilities tailored to specific verticals like education, which may trade off with other nonprofit areas. Users should also be prepared for a more intense learning curve in order to effectively administer the platform.
In contrast, MIP Fund Accounting has more difficulties in the extended accounting areas beyond fund management. The payroll functionality has been complex for some reviewers to use, as well as some reporting capabilities. Additionally, MIP’s pricing structure can also be confusing or cost-prohibitive for some organizations, depending on their accounting needs.
Pricing
Financial Edge NXT’s pricing varies with each customer. Concrete pricing numbers are available by quote from the vendor.
MIP Fund Accounting’s pricing is also specific to each customer. Pricing is available by quote from the vendor.
Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT is great for an independent/private school. It integrates well with enrollment and student information systems sold by Blackbaud. For example, you could send data from the student information system straight into the Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT. The caveat of course is that you would need to be using other Blackbaud products to leverage this integration. However, all Blackbaud products utilize open APIs so with a little programming, one can share data across many systems.
I do like the check register, it is easy to access. It is also easy to access information for bank reconciliations but some entries are difficult and I have had ongoing issues with duplicated entries. Those situations coming at times when I am not really sure how I have duplicated an entry and they are somewhat intimidating. It is also somewhat difficult to delete or void erroneous entries or those that need to be otherwise corrected. I do understand that it is accounting software, but feel again that it could be a little bit more user friendly, at least from a fairly "new" user's standpoint!
Uploading and inputting information is easy due to a clear format and outline.
Researching and finding past information is quick and easy to navigate due to searching and filtering options as well as the ability to name the files for quick searches.
Pulling project titles and accounts - you can have a large amount of projects and accounts and are able to know them through the system without having to memorize each individual title.
Being able to export a general ledger for an account to excel while still being formatted correctly.
Having the ability to filter in what transactions are pulled in the general ledger. You are able to easily look at all the activity or only activity in a certain time frame or other specific filters.
There is always access to help from Blackbaud services for any sort of difficulty.
Learning and the ability to attend Blackbaud classes are readily and easily available so you can increase your knowledge and ability to serve well in your organizations' role.
General Ledger processing, including journal entries and reports
Ability to download all reports directly to Excel and PDF formats
Use of Grant codes to enable grant reporting by month/quarter/year
Ability to have multiple departments and consolidate into groups for reporting
Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable cannot be out of balance
Multiple ways to use the product including Cloud and Classic options, Visual menu or Standard (Top of screen) menus to select processes, many options we are not using in our simple organization
With the payroll process, if there is an error in sending the stubs through email, there is no option to resend without a restore. That really needs to change.
Being able to void encumbrance at the same time as a PO would be an incredible time saver.
BB seems to forcing changes on customers at a faster rate. This company needs stability because it is understaffed in accounting. There isn't time to drop everything and work up workarounds or even try to judge effects. There also isn't the time to find a replacement suite unless things get really bad.
My company is pretty dug into our current day-to-day systems that serve our operations (ServTracker, Kantime, MicroMD). Without MIP Fund Accounting, we would have no choice but to figure out a way to consolidate those three accounting/operations programs into (ideally) one program, which is basically impossible if we want to salvage any historical data. MIP Fund Accounting is a great hub to bring all those pieces together in a palatable form.
I don't have much to compare it to but if I speak of just the reporting options; sometimes there are so many options I spend more time finding the "perfect" report when a basic report with minimal columns is needed. But I know I can always add to the report if asked.
I have used this system for about 12 years now and I still learning how to use it. It always surprises me how there is another report to learn to achieve my data reporting goals. It is great to have a system that you have used long enough to feel comfortable with but also a system that allows you to learn new ways to report and enter data into the system
I have rarely encountered any issues accessing MIP Fund Accounting over the years. On the rare occasions when availability was interrupted, the reasons were always found in-house when using the on-premises version. Since we have migrated to the MIP cloud, we have had no issues with availability. Any maintenance or updates are always communicated to us and are usually done outside of business hours.
This software is really good as you can run reports for various funds by Revenue Code or Grant code to capture all the data you need for specific revenue streams. Like I said before, this software is amazing for the tracking of grants if you set up your chart of accounts up correctly.
No one is perfect, but this support team is as close as it gets. They respond promptly and if the person I'm talking to doesn't have the answer they find someone that does. They also provide documentation and/or resources to support their responses to my questions. The online chat is awesome and usually all I need
I have not reached out to MIP for technical support; however, their website offers great help resources so I can solve an issue on my own. Another team member reached out to MIP for support and was helped quickly. The transition process took longer than expected due to a lag in communication.
There are no specifics on what happens if you make one choice or another to know which is the best selection. This is true for JVs and AP. In training we were not given specifics of what happens when one possibility is selected over another.
Denise O'Malley provided training for the HR module when we added it to our system. Denise also gave us a demo of the EWS module which we were able to see that it would not meet our needs. She was very kind about and understanding regarding the functions we needed with a time clock system.
The implementation can be easy depending on how familiar you are with Blackbaud products. It is cloud based so there is not a need for IT involvement but you do need to know your business requirement.
Don't waste your time with MIP. There are plenty of other softwares out there that will do the job better. Do your homework. Get references from actual users. Make sure that what you choose will truly integrate. Make sure that there is local support. Get training. You will be glad that you passed this one by. Trust me.
Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT is far superior to CYMA. We used CYMA for over 20 years. It was tough to transition because Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT follows GAAP, while CYMA did not the way we had it set up. Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT has more robust fund tracking and allows us to create custom reports.
The HRA used RealPage (I'm not sure if it is actually the one listed above), and it did not work well. I'm not sure if it wasn't set up well, designed for larger property management companies, or just not good software, but it did not suit our needs at all. We chose a different property management software and MIP for our accounting. We used Quickbooks for Heartland Lakes, but as our business is expanding and we needed a better true fund accounting software, we chose AccuFund to start with, but it was difficult to get set up how we needed. We did not trust the information we were getting out of it, and it wasn't easily customizable to what we needed. We canceled that software and chose MIP.
The flexibility to create certain features are helpful and are designed to be easier on MIP Accounting Cloud. It has been easier than the MIP Accounting classic version. I may have not fully utilized the software to deploy across multiple departments other than generating revenue reports or expenses. As well as developing budget worksheets for our departments. Which are great as it is, but have not gone farther than that.
The reporting features that include unposted entries and can be run on-demand to see a year to date budget comparison, have certainly made it easier to stay on task and within budget.
We have been able to integrate some of the fundraising features into Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT; consolidating to one system for tracking all key financial parameters, has been invaluable.
The budget partner (Zai?) is absolutely terrible and a huge waste of time and money; it does not integrate as advertised and is constantly "broken/down" on our end. It is not as advertised and honestly shouldn't be promoted by Blackbaud - it's that terrible.
