IMPak Review

IMPak seems to have been designed as an accounting system, first and foremost. It was built, from the ground up, to integrate with ISSI's accounting package, APak. Because of this, entering any data that includes financial information is a multi-step operation, and must be processed before it becomes visible in the person's record. Exacerbating this situation is the piecemeal approach that is also clearly visible in many places. IMPak's modules (i.e. Membership, Registration, Orders) don't work the same way and don't end up in the same place. This makes it cumbersome to learn and difficult to cross-train staff who do similar, but not identical, jobs. Getting information out of the database can also be quite difficult. Both tracking down information and analyzing it requires a high time investment. As with some other AMSs, it's beginning to show its age. The design is straight from the mid-2000's. Many of the member pages are perfectly functional but don't use current conventions and are difficult to use on mobile devices. Even before Impexium bought ISSI, browser compatibility issues were cropping up and remained unaddressed. On the plus side, I've never worried about data integrity. ISSI's staff are consistently knowledgeable about databases in general and IMPak specifically. While procedural issues may come up, the instances of data corruption are few and far between. They are also able to accommodate new requirements as they come up as modifications to our copy of IMPak.