What You Should Know About Abila MIP Fund Accounting
Updated August 11, 2020
What You Should Know About Abila MIP Fund Accounting
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with MIP Fund Accounting (formerly Abila MIP)
It's used by the accounting department. We use it to maintain our general ledger, process accounts payable and produce financial statements. We produce financial statements for the board of directors, departmental reports for managers, and revenue and expense analyses for upper management. We use the budgeting module, but mostly as a reporting tool - we do the actual nitty gritty budgeting work using Excel. We also use MIP almost as a job cost accounting system. We're a public broadcasting organization with 7 different stations. We have to allocate expenses not only between funds but between stations, departments, activities and restrictions, and MIP gives us the flexibility to do all of that.
- As I just mentioned, the flexibility to allocate revenue and expenses in multiple ways is probably the biggest strength.
- Very user friendly - I was able to learn the system without any formal training.
- Very stable - never have any performance issues, even with our less than cutting edge technology!
- I would like to see a way to manage prepaid expenses. Microsoft Dynamics has a module that handles deferred expenses - you tell it where to charge the expense and over what period, and it sets up the batch. Then you just review the batch and post it. Saves a ton of data entry!
- Would like to have the option to select Unposted Transactions on all financial statements. Right now it's only available on some.
- There should be an Insert Line capability in the input screens, such as the Accounts Payable Invoice entry or Journal Voucher entry. Right now the only way that I know of to insert a line is to enter it at the bottom and move it up to where you want it, and that's very awkward. You should be able to highlight the line below where you want to insert, right click and have an option to insert, similar to what you do in Excel
- The flexibility and ability to record by department, fund and activity has made our accounting more efficient and streamlined. Fewer spreadsheets.
We do not use MIP very much for this. We are fortunate in that we don't have multiple funds to manage.
Ziegner Technologies - They have been helpful in training our new staff and in answering any user questions than come up. But MIP is so easy to use that we don't contact them that often!
I wasn't with the organization when the decision was made to choose MIP, but I have heard that the main reason it was chosen was its flexibility and the ability allocate revenue and expenses the way we needed to.
MIP Fund Accounting Feature Ratings
Support from Community Brands
MIP was implemented long before I came here so I can't answer this one.
We get our training from our local reseller, not from Community Brands.
I have never received support from Community Brands for this product.
We use MIP on-premise. It's more work for our IT department, but judging from some of the problems I've heard from others who have switched to the cloud, I'm glad we are on-premise.
Using MIP Fund Accounting (formerly Abila MIP)
1 - We just have an IT manager to support network connections.
- General ledger and reporting
- Accounts payable and bill pay
- Cash receipts reporting
- We are able to avoid journal entries and multi-month expenses such as insurance expense by entering all 12 months of expense at the time the invoice is entered.
- We are hoping to get the ACH module to start direct depositing payables payments.
3 - Accounting
MIP Fund Accounting Support
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Quick Resolution Good followup Knowledgeable team Problems get solved No escalation required Support understands my problem | None |
No - Has never been necessary. We seldom use support.
Using MIP Fund Accounting
- Accounts Payable
- General Ledger
- None, really
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Like to use Relatively simple Easy to use Technical support not required Well integrated Consistent Quick to learn Convenient Feel confident using Familiar | None |