MYOB Essentials

Opmerkingen: Windows based product with very easy to use menus. It has all the bells and whistles of modern accounting software. I particularly liked the Payroll and Budgeting. Its a product that I believe needs to be tested by accountants. I think some aspects would be tricky for bookkeepers whereas other aspects accountants pull their hair out and the lack of reporting options and some silly rules that make it harder to use. I don't get the impression that they listen to your feedback. Sadly the organisation has some arrogance. I noted this particularly when being trained in the product. The organisation would benefit greatly from listening to feedback and improving its report options. For example. No comparative Balance Sheet. No reports which can be produced relating to staff hours. The journal report is woeful, sadly you have to use journal more than you would want. No Fixed Asset Register. On the other hand I love the budget reports, very easy to manipulate. The graphs which come with the budget are useless. The ease to enter pay roll data is awesome. I love the bank feeds and many more aspects of this package. I think if they combine the best aspects of Account right and Essentials to target medium sized entities, MYOB would be hard to beat.

Pluspunten: Payroll and Budgeting and very easy to use. Nice features with Invoice design also.

Minpunten: The Journals report is awful, no Fixed Asset register. No reports on Payroll hours worked.

Opmerkingen: For a small firm with limited reporting requirements it is okay but for any jobs with Work Breakdown Structure requirements it comes up short and becomes a limiter for the company. I get very frustrated with the after sales support system. It is not customer focused and leaves you wondering why you pay for it.

Pluspunten: Good basic internal controls so novice bookkeepers can run day to day.
Easy to install and set up.
Reasonably cheap for what you get.
Handles GST well.

Minpunten: Not the best for Job costings.
Payroll system ordinary serious reporting drawbacks as far as information flow to the General Ledger.
Tends to freeze in reporting production which can lock out users.
Support service is very poor, you get the feeling the staff could care less in resolving issues.
Interactive screen supports not used you have to send a file and wait for a response.
Wait time on the phone for support is very bad.

Opmerkingen: I have been a business user of MYOB for other companies using bigger MYOB packages for over a decade and find it fairly good although it has serious bugs which are reported by the truckload by all the accountants I know and they are NEVER fixed even after a decade. Like how the excel file download makes all the numbers text and the "manual calculation" field is auto set meaning you have to reformat each and every download twice (format numbers and turn on auto calc) to use the spreadsheet to add up. Designed and run by non accountants

Pluspunten: Nothing. completely useless. Doesn't comply with ATO requirements unless you have no employees and what business has no employees? Misleading advertising and advice.

Minpunten: I am a small business with single employee. Noting that one touch payroll was becoming mandatory next year I decided to put my accounts on a basic package to comply. I rang up and they sold me MYOB essentials telling me it would fully comply. After upteem dozen attempts to create a single employee which failed I ring up and they tell me well actually this entry level despite having all the menu structures and appearing online to do payroll does not do payroll at ALL and I need to pay almost double. I found the set up very very nonintuitive in its coaching. You start one entry set up the field, then it takes you away to a whole different menu you need to complete and then doesn't take you back to where you were. There are heaps of bugs and going online you see everyone else having the same problem.

Opmerkingen: Great accounting, and always updating with new features. Our accountant could just log in and do our end of years immediately.

Pluspunten: -Highly customisable for invoicing and parts inventories.
-Has great reports. We found if you knew what you wanted to keep an eye on in the business, then you could design a report for it. Not all accounting programs or workshop software can do that so easily.
-once it was set up for our workshop, it worked amazingly. Very intuitive

Minpunten: -We were new to this software, and it took a long time to set it up, (6 mnths), specifically for how we needed it to work. (automotive workshop), You almost needed to be a trained accountant i felt.
-Support used to take at least 1 day if not 2 to get back to you.

Opmerkingen: We have been using MYOB accounting plus for over 10 years and recently upgraded to the new Accountright 2013.
The new version is very similar to the old and this makes it relatively easy to adjust to. There was a bit of dancing converting 10 years of accounting data to the new format and eventually we got that done and away we went.
The first thing that struck us was how slow it seems in comparison to the previous software. (MYOB Accounting plus v14). Data entry is not fluid and constant delays in processing. We contacted MYOB support regarding this and "they are working on the problem" so it appears it is a common problem.
It is updated with the latest reports and payroll taxes and supposedly compliant with the ATO.
There is a greater range of reports available but still the customisation options are limited. What you see is what yo get, give or take a field or two.
The "cloud" idea is novel, but due to the speed restrictions it is of little real benefit.
Payroll is the biggest change complying with the new regulations, and taxes, but unfortunately MYOB doesn't allow upgrading of the tax tables without paying for an endless subscription which equates to approximately $800 per year.
Overall if you like the early MYOB and can handle the speed reduction then its an okay upgrade. If it wasn't for the reliance on MYOB data for the previous 10+ years and the swift talking sales rep that convinced management to upgrade, I would personally be looking at alternatives.

Pluspunten: Compatible with earlier versions.
Interface is very similar to previous versions.

Minpunten: Expensive for what it is!
Slow!!!!! For small or casual use it MAY be okay, but for any real data volume, its just too slow. (Even on the latest PC)
Relies heavily on the internet (could be cause of part of the speed problem)
Limited customisation