TPS stands for Transaction Processing Systems and MIS stands for Management Information

Systems. This article will tell the difference between the two based on the type of users, activities,
report generation and type of data.

MIS provides information about internal operations to managers for decision making, planning
and analysis. The system helps compare this data to facilitate decision-making and answer
questions. TPS on the other hand, performs routine operations for supervisory executives which
include storing, retrieving, possessing, creating and formatting data. The users of TPS come on the
lower most level in the management hierarchy while the users of MIS are the mid level managers.

The activities performed by TPS are different from that of MIS. The input activity involves data
entry, transaction processing, TPS file and database processing and TPS documents and report
generation. The activities performed by MIS are taking high volume transaction level data as an
input and then processing this input based on simple models. The outputs of MIS are the summary
reports that are used by the middle managers.

It must also be noted that MIS uses compressed and summarized data provided by the TPS, while
TPS deals with raw data.

The documents generated by transaction processing systems and management information systems
also differs. TPS generates action documents (for example purchase orders and pay cheques),
information documents (for example sales orders and sales receipts), control listings that include
transaction logs and turnaround documents. All these documents do not help in decision making.
While the reports produced by MIS are scheduled reports (monthly financial statements) and
exception reports (for example credit reports).

TPS provides information to the MIS and DSS (Decision Support Systems) while MIS provides
information to ESS (Executive Support Systems) and DSS.