My experience with Abila MIP Fund Accounting.
Updated January 22, 2019

My experience with Abila MIP Fund Accounting.

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Abila MIP Fund Accounting

MIP Fund Accounting is used by our HR, Accounting, and IT departments to manage employee, payroll, benefit, and budget data across the entire organization. In my experience the chief problem it addresses and the reason for continued use is it is an accounting system designed directly for non-profits.

Pros

  • Managing employees is a breeze.
  • Payroll and direct deposit is very easy to implement using MIP.
  • Plenty of canned reports and the option to build custom reports.

Cons

  • MIP was originally designed as various modules. Even with the current unified UI, it still feels like you are navigating between modules.
  • Their sales team can be frustrating to work with, it seems the resources they have to give to potential customers are limited.
We currently have almost 150 funding sources and put zero thought into managing that data, using MIP is that straight forward.
In a non-profit entity, I have not seen a product as well conceived as MIP Fund Accounting.

MIP Fund Accounting Feature Ratings

Abila MIP Fund Accounting Training

  • Online training
  • Self-taught
Very little organization to the training received by official MIP training partners. Informal structure and scheduling, no outlines or agendas, more focused on getting hours counted towards invoice and band-aiding issues instead of teaching customers how to use the system properly.
Common sense, reviewing MIP resources, and a test environment has produced better results in our experience than training. The only value added we've seen from training was a high-level overview when adding modules, which can be achieved during the sales process.

Using Abila MIP Fund Accounting

Every software platform has issues and MIP is no different. There is plenty of room for UI improvement and streamlining workflow processes in the product, along with needed reform to the training and partner areas. However, we have used MIP for over a decade and have reviewed other products countless times. Nothing else we have found on the market fits our business model as well as MIP Fund Accounting.
  • Transitioning to paperless payroll and direct deposit was very intuitive using this system and the MIP documentation.
  • Forms Designer is a straight forward module with real value.
  • The built-in report designer is an amazing tool once you get past the learning curve.
  • Inventory management and depreciation seems to take more effort than necessary for such basic tasks.
  • The database is confusingly designed if you have a desire for direct access to your data.
ProsCons
Like to use
Relatively simple
Easy to use
Technical support not required
Well integrated
Convenient
Feel confident using
Lots to learn

Integrating Abila MIP Fund Accounting

The MIP database structure does not conform to most modern SQL best practices but is consistent across the database once you learn their design methods. The import/export module and SQL Profiler will help get you up to speed quickly.
  • Import budget data into MIP from an external system - flat time produced by system pulled into MIP
  • Real-time link to an external electronic timesheet system - basic data pull to system of employee information such as leave amounts
  • Real-time link to an external HR system - basic data pull to system of employee demographic data to avoid duplicate entry
The key to all of our integration projects is familiarity with the MIP database structure. Once we were comfortable with the SQL side of MIP, we have been able to leverage that data across a number of projects with little issue.
  • Further integration between in-house systems and MIP HR module
Unknown - the database is hosted on our equipment housing our data, so we treat it as such with no support requests.
  • File import/export
A strong comfort level with SQL is the only thing needed to start sharing data between MIP and any external applications. The Fund Accounting module will support test databases, the HR module license is linked to one database, unfortunately.

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