MIP Export

You can export transactions from your eTapestry, so you can them import them into MIP. For each transaction, the export file includes a credit and debit record. In order to run the MIP export, you must first set up funds with the appropriate account numbers.

In eTapestry, a fund designates the purpose of a donation. MIP uses several splits to categorize each transaction. Your accountant selects the number and types of splits that your organization uses. Your organization may have a MIP split called Fund, but it is not the same as an eTapestry fund. Other common names for splits are Project, Cost Center, General Ledger Account, Subaccount, Restriction and Department. For information about eTapestry funds, refer to Funds.

If there are only a few combinations of splits that you use to represent Gifts, Pledges and Payments in MIP, you may want to create separate eTapestry funds for each combination. If your data entry personnel have limited accounting knowledge, and you want to minimizes the number of fields that must be entered for each donation, consider this approach.

For some organizations, creating a fund for every combination of splits would result in too many funds. In this situation, consider using a user-defined field for one or more splits. For each donation, you enter the fund and user-defined field.

For example, your organization may have a split called Program Code, which it uses to designate which missionary group collected the donation. The donation can be made to one of several General accounts, regardless of which missionary group collected it. Since your organization may work with hundreds of missionary groups, there would be too many combinations of Program Codes and General accounts to create separate funds. For this example, it is better to use a user-defined field for the Program Code and separate funds for each General account.

eTapestry provides four user-defined fields which the MIP Export also recognizes: Location, Program, Department and Grant. To simplify data entry, create dropdown list for each feild, so your data entry person can quickly select the appropriate value. The values store in an eTapestry user-defined field must be identical to the value for the MIP split. Because the MIP values are usually codes, instead of names, it can be difficult for your eTapestry data entry person to identify the appropriate value. To help, consider use the code followed by the name or description for the user-defined field; for example, 60-Kenya, or U-Unrestricted. In order for the MIP Definition File to separate the code from the name or description, the code must be first.

Note: You cannot rename these four user-defined fields to match the names of your MIP splits. However, you should set up your MIP Definition File to ensure the data is imported to the correct split. For example, data in the Location field can be imported to a Cost Center split in MIP.