As an accounting professional in the public sector, you’re well aware that government accounting needs are different than those of private organizations. Therefore, government accounting software must be different than generic accounting tools.
When it comes to government accounting, it’s vital to understand the difference between the private and public sectors. The private sector encompasses our traditional understanding of a business. These enterprises are privately owned and run by an individual. The public sector includes any government-owned operations. Often, public sector organizations prioritize accessibility over profit.
Accounting for the public sector involves more financial transparency than the private sector because of the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB). The GASB requires a certain amount of financial transparency to ensure organizations use their government funds properly. You can learn more about GASB on our dedicated blog post.
While a private sector business relies on its own revenue to support itself, a public sector organization needs to prove its validity and fund usage. Government processes are complex, and they require a close eye on all fund allocation to operate correctly. It’s crucial to stick to these financial requirements to keep your governmental processes compliant, which makes intuitive accounting software for cities and similar operations a necessity.
With capable public sector accounting software, you can follow all the requirements for your financial management. This software keeps you compliant, helps you manage your budget and can help you use your government funding more effectively. With the benefits of well-designed accounting software for municipalities, you can have peace of mind regarding adherence to government regulations.
MIP Fund Accounting offers a solution that takes into consideration the specific needs of government entities, and it includes all the tools needed for tracking and reporting on individual funds from multiple sources across varying budget periods.
Use the navigation below to learn more about the different features you’ll have access to with MIP Fund Accounting in your toolkit:
A Solution Built for Governing Entities
Tools that Encourage Data-Driven Decision-Making
Top-Notch Security for Your Software
Software that Helps You Manage Your Staff
Ready to learn more about how MIP Fund Accounting can lead your government entity to better accounting decisions? Let’s dive in!
Fund Accounting Software For Governments
Government fund accounting is more similar to that of nonprofits than that of the private business world. Private businesses have a single-entry accounting system, while public organizations like nonprofits and governing entities use separate funds to organize expenses and revenue.
Effective government accounting software like MIP can help your government entity save time recording grants, programs, funding sources, and more all according to their proper allocation in the different segments available with the system. This structure is key to manage all of the moving parts and unique aspects of your government entity’s accounting system.
With all of the intricacies inherent to fund accounting for governments, it’s important to find a software solution that is not only fully functioning (with plenty of government-specific features) but also easy to learn and use. This will help to prevent the siloing of technical knowledge for staff members as employment changes over time.
Luckily MIP Accounting software offers a government fund accounting software solution with application tasks and reports that are grouped according to function along with easy-to-use workflow diagrams and checklists. This minimizes the impact of staff turnover and makes it easy to learn and use the software.
Some of the modules offered by MIP include:
All of the government accounting software modules listed above work together to collect and streamline data from one tool to the next. They’re a part of the open database architecture of the MIP system, which allows users to access their data and use custom report tools.
In addition to the interconnectivity of the modules within the system, MIP Accounting tools also integrate with Microsoft Office applications so that you can send reports directly to Excel or export as PDF files without concern of changing formatting settings within the reports themselves.
Plus, the interconnectivity of the MIP integrated module government accounting software system enables governmental entities like yours to maintain budgets in the same system in which you collect and enter actual transactions. This makes it incredibly easy to analyze and compare your real financial data against budgets for accuracy.
Make Data-Driven Decisions with Government Accounting Software
As a government employee, each of the decisions you make impacts the lives of your constituents. Therefore, it’s important to ensure your financial decisions are based on accurate and complete information.
With MIP’s government accounting software, your organization will be able to track, report, and visualize all of the most relevant information you need in order to make informed decisions.
MIP Fund Accounting provides tools for your organization to:
- Build top-notch financial dashboards. Dashboards are immensely handy to provide your organization with immediate access to key tactical data for immediate decision-making processes. The Visual Analyzer module provides interactive graphs to make it easy to visualize and analyze different pieces of data.
- Easily create GASB-compliant reports. The built-in report writer by MIP provides feature options for pre-designed GASB-compliant, audit-ready reporting of financial statements. These documents are perfect for the public-facing documentation to ensure you maintain the required elements for each report.
- Manage cash flow. With MIP Fund Accounting, your organization can project cash balances and plan for future expenses. Make sure these balances are up-to-date with immediate updates to data as transactions are entered into the system. Then, create a pre-formatted cash flow statement to reflect these balances or create your own custom report as you see fit.
Streamline your data with the integrated modules offered by MIP Fund Accounting. Seamless integrations make it easy to track purchasing and accounts payable, electronic requisitions, and inventory in a single system.
Control processes with MIP’s requisition and PO approval process—with a budget check—for better management of expenses and funding.
With more organized data, you can be sure the decisions your governing entity makes are well-founded and complete.
Top-notch security through your government accounting software
The last thing your governing entity wants is to experience a security breach. The protection of your data should be of the utmost priority for you and your staff.
That’s why MIP’s government fund accounting software helps government entities protect their data with top-notch security features.
You’ll have access to complete system security features as well as effective internal controls to prevent any information from falling into the wrong hands. These features include:
- Complete system auditing. Access system information from audit trails about the transactions, user actions, and when and where the system was accessed.
- A choice in system hosting. Your organization can choose between hosting MIP’s fund accounting software either on-premise or in the cloud, whichever you are more comfortable with. Either option provides the same top level of security by MIP.
- Set permissions at the account level. Internal permissions will ensure that you’re in control of who on your staff has access to which financial information. This helps ensure that your staff has access to pertinent information, but not more than they need.
MIP provides tools and functionality that gives your administration the control they need to share and allow your team to access the important information they need to make important decisions. At the same time, MIP offers the security you need to maintain integrity and safety of the system as a whole. This allows for safety to be the first priority, while still ensuring fiscal transparency and accountability.
Governmental Accounting Software with Your Staff In Mind
Your government accounting software solution should do more than help your staff track the revenue and expenditures that you use for various ongoing and one-off projects. It should also help you manage operational expenses and the internal responsibilities of employing effective staff members.
MIP Fund Accounting also offers human resources management that will help your organization when it comes to various compensation and employment resources such as:
- Payroll processing
- Human resources management
- Employee self-service web access
- Tax preparation
As a fully integrated module in the software system, you can seamlessly calculate budgetary changes as staffing adjustments are made to meet your needs. Plus, the system is uniquely designed to take into consideration the specific reporting and accounting challenges that governments face.
Your government accounting system with MIP will be able to integrate with a number of utility billing and other government management software solutions. Plus, this accounting system integrates with your Microsoft Office applications, helping ease the transfer of information among all the involved departments and systems.
All of these integrations help streamline your staff members’ day-to-day activities. Plus, they make it easy to ensure everyone on your team is fairly and competitively compensated for their work in accordance with your budget and financial capabilities.
Ultimately, government fund accounting can help your governing entity run smoother, but only when it has all of the functionality that you need to succeed.
That’s why MIP offers a solution that provides all of the necessary features for the unique challenges that governments face. Effective fund accounting is only possible with the best solution. Here at MIP, we’re happy to say we’ve perfected our software to meet the needs of this unique market.
For more information about fund accounting and the organizations that use it, check out these additional resources:
- MIP Fund Accounting Demo. Did you like what you read here? Request a demo from MIP Fund Accounting for more information about our software.
- Bookkeeping for Nonprofits. Nonprofits are one of the other types of organizations that use fund accounting. Check out this comprehensive bookkeeping article about it!
- To Cloud or Not to Cloud. Choose where you want to host your software, in the cloud or on-premise, but only after researching and reading the helpful information in this article.
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