Item: MIP Fund Accounting
Rating: 8
Author: Kara Gonzales

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We are using MIP Fund as the shadow accounting system for the Kansas State University Housing and Dining Services department. By shadow system, we have to exchange all the expenses and revenues with the central accounting system used by Kansas State University.

Pros and Cons

Reporting capabilities - MIP has a wide variety of "canned" reports that can be changed and expanded on to meet the reporting needs for your business.
Being able to set up the system to meet your organization's business tracking requirements.
Ability to import/export data into and from the system. We have a wide variety and volume of expenses/revenues coming from various sources and having the ability to import created accounting transactions in MIP has been a very nice feature. On the flip side; being a shadow accounting system, we have to export expenses to another accounting system to create the payments.

Would like to see a more robust data entry process. An example would be for the user to only be able to see the options they have access to. Another feature that would be really nice is to only see valid options (account combinations) in the drop down list for each segment vs. letting the user select an invalid combination and then letting them know.
A more robust and technically supported API. Be able to easily interface with MIP.

Return on Investment

With budgets getting tighter, we had to be able to track expenses and revenues down to a very detailed level and extract that information in various ways. MIP Fund Accounting gives us that capability.

Effectiveness at Managing Multiple Fund Sources

MIP Fund Accounting does help manage multiple funds from multiple sources. Communicating that capability while only having one set of G/L accounts was the most difficult aspect of this process. My manager's eyes lit up once he saw the way MIP presented the cash account by Fund.

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft Dynamics GP, Microsoft Dynamics SL, Multiview Financial Software, NetSuite and QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions

After evaluating about 10 other accounting software alternatives; MIP was chosen due to the cost effectiveness; not having to host in the cloud; being able to maintain without having to hire consultants; and the product itself met our required needs.

Likelihood to Recommend

MIP Fund Accounting is well suited for meeting reporting needs. When we were exploring accounting systems, a requirement that was needed was the ability to build reports, have a budget be available at requisition time, and flexibility to set up the system to suit our business needs. MIP Fund Accounting met these requirements, plus was in our budget and didn't have to have consultants to set up and maintain the system.

An accounting system that can support both Higher Education accounting and Business accounting

Overall Satisfaction with MIP Fund Accounting (formerly Abila MIP)