Esker offers their eponymous document automation platform, for paperless ordering and billing, and accounts payable / accounts receivable (AP / AR). It can be delivered as a cloud offering (as Esker on Demand), or on-premise (as Esker DeliveryWare).
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MIP Fund Accounting
Score 8.5 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.
Esker On Demand is great for Sales Order Processing order creation. We use it with web services. It can make table read calls, test order creations (simulate order), and help with order creation. They are also working on change order management, but if you have multiple order entry methods or touch points, this feature may not be usable for your company.
I tried a couple of other funds accounting software, and we had staff that was familiar with MIP. I then chose MIP for both companies. I know we get accurate information out of MIP as long as the information put in is good. MIP is a little clumsy for AR billing, but maybe it would be easier to use if it was available in the cloud module (or if it is, I haven't been able to see it).
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
We can't enter credit memos in Esker. Need to enter in SAP and then link.
PO invoices that were trained to go into the PO bucket, route into the non-PO buckets.
Freight invoices that have had hundreds going into the non-PO bucket have a tendency to route to the PO-bucket because a PO number is referenced on page 7.
My #1 request would have a report that can pull from all modules. There are some reports that I have to run in separate areas to compile the data I want. If there were a one-stop-shop report center, that would be fantastic.
I would love to have an option to make text size bigger in all parts of the system.
We are in CA; I would like to see call center coverage to account for the time change to Texas.
We have been using MIP for over 25 years. In the '90s, we used the MS-Dos version and subsequently changed to the Windows version in the 2000s. Our organization is still relatively small in terms of staffing and even transaction volume; however, over the years, the number of projects has increased and is projected to increase drastically in the next year or two. With the increase in projects along with the ability of MIP to cater easily to large organizations, it makes perfect sense for us to renew when that time comes.
Esker does everything that it promises to do, but it is very hard to figure out. I am a very tech-savvy person, but I needed extensive training to be able to use the basic functions of Esker. Once you know what you're doing, it's not too hard, but I don't understand why they couldn't make it easier to use.
I don't know what it would be like in the for-profit arena, but for the non-profit arena, it is an excellent product. I love how you don't actually have to close years and are able to get information that spans over the year-end. And the grant tracking is excellent too. It is just an excellent accounting system.
Mostly its available when I need it. I do get kicked out of the cloud while entering data at times. But I do not lose data and can often just open up the classic version to continue doing what I was doing. Only rarely is there no availability and when that happens, its a very short amount of time.
I feel that reporting is difficult to use. Copying existing reports for a new fiscal year is easy but often the data you want to display is not selected, even filtering for the correct data. We routinely have to call support for assistance with reports and most of the issues cannot be resolved during a phone call, a ticket has to be placed for more in-depth examination of the issue. Multiple users cannot run the same report at the same time; so if two people are trying to run an expanded GL, you will have to copy the report and save it with a new name in order to use it at the same time. This results in lots of unnecessary reports in the list. In addition, once you have been using the system for a while you wind up with hundreds of reports in your list of options; there may be a way to archive reports but we have not found that yet so we currently have reports in our list from accounts that are over 10 years old.
They have been very helpful and the online support site is awesome. They keep the site up to date with the latest changes and present challenges to keep learning the new updates to keep things entertaining. They are overall a great crew to work with
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.
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.
I have listed a few that we considered but there were many more in the initial assessment, Esker was priced well and had the best user interface. Was really easy to use and the implementation process was well designed. It was a system that could handle a two tiered delegations of authority for project expenditure and operational expenditure.
This is the first time I've worked in the non-profit world. Accounting is somewhat different so I am very glad to be using a product designed specifically for non-profits. Many accounting processes are similar of course, but it is nice to have them tailored to fit the requirements of a non-profit organization.
Not real sure what you mean by scalability. It seems to be able to handle all of the funds we are currently working with. If you mean the looks of it, some things are small and it would be nice to increase the size according to the user.
We now have reporting available down to the individual field level (changes, errors, etc) and can calculate cost to serve.
It replaced on-premise hardware with cloud SaaS that is more cost effective and risk adverse.
It is more intuitive; we can put new hires on order entry and experience less user errors. As a solution owner who fixes problems and answers questions, I don't find myself having to "think" about Esker and it has become a smaller part of my job now that end-users are more self-sufficient.
