This is a review of Abila MIP. The Review is Here.
August 02, 2016
This is a review of Abila MIP. The Review is Here.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Abila MIP Fund Accounting
MIP is used primarily by our accounting department, and we use it for all aspects of accounting - Accounts Payable, A/R, Payroll, budgeting, running financial statements, making journal entries, etc. It is our sole accounting software within the agency.
- The reporting is extremely customizable and easy to use. You have a great deal of flexibility with the reporting in MIP. For example, if you wanted each G/L account to appear on a different page, that's easy to do, or to break out reports by a department of contract, and do a total for each one individually. It's all possible and not at all difficult to create.
- Export/Import with Excel. This is a life saver on long journal entries! You can set up a report in MIP that is laid out exactly the way a journal entry needs to be, dump it out to Excel, make the changes you need to make, and then import it as a new entry. Very handy for things such as reclassing hundreds of employees to a different contract, all within minutes.
- Budgeting is made easy. Lay out your budgets in a spreadsheet and copy/paste them into MIP. Or make adjustments to existing budgets while being able to see what is currently in there and what the net change will be. Simple and effective.
- I like the export to Excel feature, but it would be great if this could be improved with better formatting options. For example, right now you have the option to have the header appear in a spreadsheet every time it would appear in the report (ie at the top of every page), or not at all. But these page breaks don't really come into play with a spreadsheet, so it would be better to just have the header once.
- Additionally, it would be nice if formulas carried over to Excel, instead of just values.
- Graphing / Dashboard reporting could be greatly expanded upon, and better integrated into the main system.
- Using MIP's reporting on specific programs has allowed us to locate under performing programs and make corrections to them.
- Being able to track expenses to contracts has made it possible for us to handle large restricted donations while staying GAAP compliant. This has allowed us to accept millions of dollars in revenue that might otherwise have been unavailable to us.
- The lack of real-time reporting functions has caused delays in some decision making, generally concerning budgets. Opprotunities have been lost due to always being a month behind.
Absolutely. The accounting structure (each revenue source has its own code) makes it very easy to code and track expenses to revenues. It is very quick to set up, and once it is, then it is just a matter of compliance, which no software can do for you. You can run reports focusing on a single funding source, or show a breakout of all of them side by side. It is very effective.
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.
The other software we looked at generally offered more robust reporting options, but also required a great deal more customization from the vendor for it to work with our organization. MIP was a lot closer to being ready "right out of the box".
In the end, MIP was a cost-effective solution that worked well with a lot of the intricacies of NFP fund accounting, even if it wasn't quite as good at reporting.
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.
The other software we looked at generally offered more robust reporting options, but also required a great deal more customization from the vendor for it to work with our organization. MIP was a lot closer to being ready "right out of the box".
In the end, MIP was a cost-effective solution that worked well with a lot of the intricacies of NFP fund accounting, even if it wasn't quite as good at reporting.