The MIPpet SHOW
September 02, 2016
The MIPpet SHOW
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Abila MIP Fund Accounting
MIP Fund Accounting is used by Dane Co Parent Council for general ledge (GL) accounting, AP, and financial statements. It permits for accounting by grant funds and easy to set up statements. It maintains AP vendor accounts and allows for review of the general ledger, and bank reconciliations. It permits for individual financial statements and consolidated statements according to needs and selections. There are features for exporting reports to Excel if there are desires to make use of the database information in that format or statements can be designed to automatically develop in the desired format, making use of what comparisons are desired from a vast selection of criteria.
- Statements set up to suit your needs require only a few clicks to update the information to new periods, allowing easy budget to actual comparisons.
- The automated bank reconciliation process, through clearing posted items, allows for easy reconciliation each month.
- The ability to produce financial statements and reports with unposted activity permits for real time analysis of financial position.
- I like the easy process of taking information from the database, exporting to Excel, and easily refashioning the information in pivot tables for varying looks and comparisons.
- In the process of updating Distribution Codes starting with copying a previous code, the process for update requires getting out of the processing area and reentering to find the new code to proceed with updating.
- The look on-screen for vendor balances has information very scattered and difficult to read. An improved presentation would be appreciated.
- Under Combining Statements, reports cannot be run with unposted account activity.
- In filtering lookup for posted JVs under Reports, entries have Session Description, but under unposted in Reports they do not have that useful information. And within the JV entry, when copying a previous entry, selections appear in random order rather than sorted in order like within filtering for posted or unposted entries in Reports. It would be good to have a standardized presentation method -- filtering under Reports for posted transactions is the best.
- When running a statement using assigned groups, it would be good to receive some type of alert if there are expenses not captured within the statement because an account with expenses has not been assigned. As new account numbers are added, they aren't necessarily assigned to groups.
- MIP Fund Accounting's budgeting and financial statement capabilities permit keeping tabs on spending trends and keeping grant costs within budget constraints, forecasting and advising management in good business decisions.
- The GL module provides ability to distribute shared-costs according to grant approved methods to ensure a practice of meeting allowable costs for each grant and a fair distribution.
Through use of specific grant codes, grant expenses are easily segregated for financial reporting using the filtering features in reporting. In combining statements, grants may be represented individually. Distribution codes or allocations use the grant codes to distribute shared costs according to individual plans to the appropriate grants. Through the flexibility of filtering, our blended-funding situations may be combined in statements or presented separately dependent upon need.
The decision for MIP Fund Accounting preceded my experience in use of the product, however, I've found the product very usable and flexible for our accounting and financial reporting needs and we have as a result continued to decide to stay with the product and are looking into potential use of other modules and seeing if they meet our needs.