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Software Review: MYOB Accounting Plus v.13

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25th Dec 2005
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Chartered Accountant Nigel Harris takes a close look at the latest version of MYOB, and finds a lot more than he was expecting.

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MYOB's rather brash name hails perhaps from its Australian origin. It has become well-known as the leading Apple Mac accounting software and is now making its presence felt in the Windows SME arena. It comes in three flavours, a new entry-level version called BusinessBasics (bank, sales ledger and nominal ledger only), Accounting and Accounting Plus. The latter includes professional time billing, foreign currency accounting and jobs management. The installation CD contains Windows and Mac OS 8.6, 9.x and OS X versions.

MYOB's terminology seems a little unusual at first - the top level in each section of the program - accounts, banking, sales, time billing, purchases, payroll, stock control and card file (which lists customers, suppliers, employees and personal contacts) - is the Command Centre, from which you can access the particular tasks associated with that section. These are described in non-technical terms. For example, under banking you can "Spend Money" or "Receive Money", with sub-tasks such as "Print Cheques" and "Prepare Bank Deposit". Each Command Centre also has drop-down arrows to access four common applications that apply across the whole program - to do list (a quick list of all money owed and due, recurring transactions, contact and stock alerts and expiring discounts), find transactions, reports and analysis. The latter gives quick access to P&L, balance sheet, cashflow, sales and other key reports.

Data entry screens look similar to most other systems, with the addition of the optional job field. Job analysis has always been a strength of MYOB, enabling you to allocate income and expenditure to specific jobs for budgeting, costing and management reporting purposes in a way that Sage and Quick Books never did. The latest versions of MYOB now allow the use of sub-jobs too and provide a wider range of job reports.

I checked out the audit trail, my usual area of concern with small business accounts packages. MYOB scores fairly well here. You can set system preferences to prevent transactions from being changed (i.e overwritten or deleted without a trace) - they can only then be reversed, although there is a helpful 'reverse posting' facility to make this easy. Previous periods can be locked to prevent amendments prior to the date you have set. These settings can then be locked away from unauthorised users by use of a password. Full marks for achieving a manageable combination of flexibility and data integrity.

Version 13 of MYOB rather perversely succeeds verison 11, and there seems not to have been a version 9 or 7 either! This introduces:

  • Creative forms designer to customise invoices, purchase orders and other forms
  • More flexibility in the already powerful Jobs and Job reporting
  • Easy access to favourite reports
  • Flexible report field selection - allows you to include exactly the information you want on a report and leave out the information you don't want
  • Smart Account Selection, which makes account selection from drop-down lists a little more bearable - if you view accounts by number, you are automatically pointed to the most logical account type for your transaction. If you view accounts by name, they're sorting first by account type and then alphabetically within the type.

KEY FEATURES

ACCOUNTS AND REPORTING
The initial setup is made easier with the inclusion of 100 starter charts of accounts and the Easy Setup Assistant. You can track categories for fund or division accounting and you can use up to four levels of account detail. Accounts can be viewed by account name or account number, which will accommodate former Sage and Quick Books users. The multi currency accounting included in the Accounting Plus version, including realised and unrealised currency gains and losses, is one of the best I have seen in this level of accounting software, and makes MYOB a serious option for any SME needing this and thinking that only the likes of Sage upwards can supply this sort of functionality.

If you have clients using MYOB on Macs, you'll be able to open their MYOB Accounting or Accounting Plus company file in Windows and, if necessary make changes and return the data to them for import into MYOB Accounting or Accounting Plus for Macintosh. This is best done by email, given the notorious disk compatibility problems between these two platforms. There is also a specific export routine to transfer MYOB data to Caseware and from Quicken, although data can also be exported in general tab-delimited or comma-separated file formats.

On the reporting front, the program comes with 177 reports, including Statement of Cash Flows, Profit & Loss Statements and Trial Balance, and additional reports can be created or adapted from existing reports. Since most of us only ever use half a dozen different reports from day to day, MYOB have wisely included a favourite reports menu where you can save these. There is full drill down on Balance Sheet and Profit & Loss reports. One curious feature is the ability to view reports according to cash or accrual based accounting, not something I've ever wanted to do but someone out there obviously does!

The output from the reporting module is about as varied as you could imagine, including the export of reports to Microsoft Excel, fax, email or you can save them in a variety of formats including HTML, PDF, text and CSV.

BANKING
All the basic operations are covered as you would expect. You can import downloaded online bank statements into MYOB Accounting and Accounting Plus and match them up for fast bank statement reconciliation. I also liked the facility to reconcile bank accounts as of a past date, a feature not available in many 'real time' accounting systems, which can be a nuisance if a client has not kept a copy of the year end reconciliation. If you haven't posted them yet, you can enter interest earned and service fees from the Reconciliation screen to save time. You can even drill down from the Reconcile Accounts screen to original transactions if you need to check something.

SALES & PURCHASE LEDGERS
Sales can be entered as quotes, orders or invoices, or direct to the bank as cash sales. Transactions which start as quotes can be converted at the click of the mouse into an order and then into a sales invoice without the need to re-key any details. However, there is only one numbering sequence as orders and quotations are allocated an 'invoice number', so unless you override these manually you could end up with a mess of missing or duplicated invoice numbers.

Invoice design and layout is totally customisable. In Accounting Plus you can include Time and Materials on a single Invoice. If you receive cash sales you can print a receipt, which is a neat touch. Sales forms can be emailed to customers direct from MYOB. In fact, the customer (and supplier) database is very extensive. You can customise data presentation and calculations for each customer and supplier, including credit terms, invoice format, delivery method, volume discount, late payment penalty, customised pricing and more, and store five delivery addresses along with three phone numbers, an email and web address and fax number for each of the five addresses! In addition there are custom fields and note taking areas to record marketing, debt collection and other information on customers and suppliers. You also have one-click access to Microsoft Word and a range of letter templates for debt collection, etc.

The purchase ledger features mirror those of the sales ledger.

STOCK CONTROL
For a package at this price level the stock module is surprisingly versatile. It is fully integrated with the sales and purchase order processing modules. There is a full stock audit trail of how you arrived at current stock status. You can price the same item differently with 30 different prices per item, including 6 user named price breaks and 5 user defined quantity breaks, buy, build or backorder low stock items automatically, build finished goods from components and set automatic low stock warnings. If you want to improve the visual appearance for the users, you can even place a high resolution graphic of each stock item on the stock cards.

PAYROLL
The Accounting and Accounting Plus packages come with a fully-featured integrated payroll module, integrated with the nominal ledger, with virtually unlimited wage, deduction and accrual categories and no apparent limit on the number of employees. Electronic filing of year-end forms is not included yet, but may well be available by the end of 2004-05. To keep tax rates and allowances up to date you need to buy the optional payroll support plan at £69 pa, or £228 pa as part of the full technical support package.

Two advanced modules are available only in the Accounting Plus version. Firstly, Professional Time Billing is a basic time recording tool which will track chargeable and non-chargeable time, write-offs, recoveries and productivity per employee. Reporting is fairly limited and is unlikely to satisfy the requirements of a firm of any size, but for a sole practitioner this is an extremely cheap and effective all-in-one accounting solution. The second is Jobs Management, which gives enhanced control and reporting on jobs. You can track job revenue, direct costs, expenses, profits and losses. The use of the job field is optional, although you can set a preference to require job numbers on all cash transactions and there is a Jobs Exception report which lists transactions that did not get a job allocation. Since MYOB can be set up to allow transactions to be edited, you can then go back and add any missing job details. Time billing can be tracked by jobs, so more advanced time reports can be obtained by a careful use of jobs against each time sheet entry.

PRICE
MYOB Accounting Plus costs £299 + VAT, or £179 for an upgrade from an earlier version. Full technical support package including tax table updates costs £228 per year. Network multi-user licences are available.

CONCLUSION
I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. This is a serious software package, it's well priced and includes some important features that are not available in other packages around this price. It is fairly intuitive to learn, but it comes with a decent printed manual and extensive help both on the CD and via MYOB's website. If you are familiar with other SME accounting software you won't have any difficulty in finding your way round MYOB, and I suspect most IT-literate newcomers would also find it an easy first accounting package to use. I certainly won't be as worried as I used to be if a client tells me they are using the latest version of MYOB.

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By mikeopolo
25th Jul 2004 10:09

Re invoice comments
In the latest version (2004), there are memo fields on each line of cash payments, cash receipts and general journals, which is a nice improvement.

However, David Carter's comment re invoices still applies; even though you can add text descriptions on each line of a (service) purchase or sales invoice, this text does not post to the general ledger; the single journal memo is the only information which goes through.

Regards

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By David Carter
11th Mar 2004 21:04

It's the Macintosh pedigree
MYOB was originally an American package. It first appeared in the UK around 1992 and was marketed by a company called Soft Numbers in Hertfordshire.

It was originally designed for the Mac and it was just so elegant compared with the the chunky first generation Windows packages. Also the drill down features were simply fabulous for that era. I was writing for the Weekend FT at the time and gave it a rave review.

MYOB never really got the marketing clout behind it to become a major player, but it has always been a thoroughbred. However, I have noticed one fault which seems to me fairly major - which is that there is only one narrative field for the whole invoice. So if you analyse an invoice to several cost centres, you have the same single narrative against all the transaction lines whereas you really want each line to have its own narrative.

Has this been sorted?

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By User deleted
03rd Mar 2004 21:05

MYOB Comment
I have just read the report on MYOB and concur with the reviewer's comments. I have used it for 4 years in my relatively small business and still cannot believe the functionality and ease of use one gets for the money. I would say it's almost bug free (well I haven't found any bugs as yet). As I'm not using payroll I have felt no great desire to upgrade so do not pay support & I am still on version 10 which works trouble free. I did have payroll for one year and the 100% integration with the nominal was great.

What is so nice although I do not need this feature is that it's multi company for the same price. The multi currency is especially useful although this is one area that you have to get your head around initially as setting up the master controls is a bit tricky but once done is fine.

The way any report can in literally one second be exported straight into excel and it's right there opened up for you is terrific.

I love it as a package and would highly recommend it to anyone.

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By mikeopolo
04th Mar 2004 19:12

Origin of the name MYOB
I recall speaking in New Zealand in about 1995 with Chris Lee, the founder of the USA company (Bestware?) which developed the original MYOB program. He said they had tested many different names, but chose MYOB (Mind Your Own Business) as the one which more people remembered.
I think that the development rights were subsequently sold to MYOB Australia, now a public company, but this may be a greatly simplified version of the real story.

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