MicroEdge FIMS Software Review E-mail
Written by Scott Koegler   
Thursday, 30 August 2007 05:38
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MicroEdge's FIMS (Financial Information Management System) is a bit
different from most of the other fund accounting systems in that is truly a
system for managing funds. Specifically, FIMS is made for use by community organizations that award grants to agencies. In fact, according to
MicroEdge, the company supplies the lion's share of this market segment with something north of 85% market share.

If you are an organization that manages multiple sources of funds and
allocates those funds to multiple grant organizations, then it's likely you
are already be familiar with FIMS. And if you aren't familiar with FIMS,
you should be looking at it.

FIMS is a server based application, generally installed on a Microsoft
server. It can be run on a Novel server, though demand for it has declined
over the last few years. The system is used on Windows PCs connected to the
server's network. Like most all the other fund accounting systems I've
seen, this one also needs some kind of remote access service like Citrix in
order to allow remote users to access the application.

Some organizations might opt for the company's hosted system, called
Hostnet. MicroEdge doesn't publish pricing so I can't comment on whether
this is an economical plan, but if all else is equal, outsourcing the
technical duties to experts is a good thing. It means that all connections
are remote and that users can be located anywhere they can get an Internet
connection.

I was struck with the simplistic look of the user interface. It isn't a bad
design, but is very Spartan. Even so, (or maybe because of the design) I
found it easy to understand and consistent from screen to screen.

In Use

The Profile Module holds information about users, contributors, and
grantees. It is the central storage for much of the activity that takes
place in FIMS, and can be considered a CRM (Customer Relationship Manager).

It is used to record information about people and organizations. The main
screen begins with a data grid that includes extensive search functionality,
which makes a lot of sense. You can either add a new entry or search for
one that's already there. In the demo, the search was very fast and brought
up the contact we searched for immediately.

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