Version 16 of MYOB Accounting Plus appears to be an incremental step on from version 15. There have been some useful improvements over the years, and users of earlier versions can check these out on MYOB’s website. There
Accounting Plus is the top of the MYOB range, and carries a modest price tag of £349 for such an impressive collection of features. Accounting Plus is aimed at the more demanding business user who requires professional time billing, a multi-user setup, multi-currency and/or multiple stock locations.
MYOB Accounting Plus version 16: Key points
MYOB’s top-of-the-range small business acounts package is gaining fast on mainstream rivals and provides a good collection of features to meet the needs of most small businesses - an excellent option for sole practitioners or small professional services firms who bill for time and projects. Those who need fewer facilities should check previously reviewed cheaper packages: MYOB Accounting and BusinessBasics editions.
Strengths
- Highly customisable accounts, with excellent reporting to different job and sub-job levels
- New automated sales quotation to order conversion routine
- Automated bank reconciliation using online banking data downloads
- Good features for professional firms, including ability to include time and materials on the same invoice
- Payroll and basic customer relationship management modules included
- Compatibility between Windows and Mac versions and good import/export facilities
Weaknesses
- While easy to use, MYOB also makes it easy to enter errors that are less straightforward to correct. Bank reconciliation has been improved in this respect, but there are still question marks over VAT
- MYOB Accounting Plus allows users to post outside of VAT quarterly report dates, and subsequent errors can make it difficult to reconcile the VAT account.
- Some of the advanced features, for example bank reconciliation, may be beyond the skill levels of less experienced users
Pricing
- £349, a very good deal for such a fully featured product, especially with the built-in payroll module.
For £100 less the MYOB Accounting version probably meets the needs of most small businesses. Both editions include stock control and integrated payroll. However, MYOB’s biggest attraction over the years has been that it is the leading mainstream SME accounting system available for Apple Macs. An MYOB Accounting Plus for Windows company file can be opened across platforms in MYOB Accounting Plus for Macintosh and vice versa, a facility we use regularly in our office as we support Mac users on MYOB, but only run the program under Windows in the office.
New features in MYOB Accounting Plus Version 16
- Turn a sales order directly into a purchase order without re-keying the sale, which would be handy if you are buying goods to order
- You can now undo bank reconciliations if you make a mistake
- New payroll verification report
- Should you need to, you can now pre-date recurring transactions and search recurring transactions by name, amount or next due date
- Print or email remittance advices to suppliers, which is useful if you are using electronic payments and need to tell the supplier which invoices you have paid
- A new utility allows you to synchronise MYOB contacts with Outlook (Windows) or AddressBook (Mac)
- The import and export functions have been improved for payroll, customer, supplier and stock data.
Main features
Accounts in MYOB are highly customisable, allowing you to track categories for fund or division accounting and track four levels of account detail. The ability to create and track accounts for jobs and sub-jobs has always been a strength of MYOB and this feature remains easy to set up, use and report on in Version 16.
Entries in the bank account can be posted via the Bank Register, which works similarly to the equivalent screen in QuickBooks, although there are also Receive Money and Spend Money windows if you need to enter a batch of transactions or record more detail for each item.
If you use online banking you can import electronic bank and credit card statements directly into MYOB and the system will perform an automated reconciliation using cheque numbers and amounts as the matching criteria and allow you to add any unmatched transactions – typically direct debits and bank charges and interest. I have no idea whether other accounting packages offer this facility, but I have yet to see any clients using it. Businesses which struggle with bank recs could improve the accuracy of their accounts by using this simple facility.
The sales ledger in Accounting Plus copes well with the complexities of billing on the basis of time spent, and can combine time and materials on a single invoice. As with all the current accounting packages, you can design professional sales invoices for printing on plain paper by adding boxes, shading, background graphics, logos and so on.
There is basic CRM functionality in the contact management module and customer records. Missing from other basic accounting packages, but nicely incorporated here is the facility to change quotes and orders to invoices and switch back and forth, a very basic requirement that Sage has failed to introduce in its Instant Accounts software. MYOB will also track the source of your sales.
The purchase ledger has similar features, with the necessary additional options to facilitate multiple stock locations and a comprehensive set of tools for stock and purchase order control and reporting.
MYOB has clearly targeted the professional time billing module in Accounting Plus at small professional firms that do not currently use a computerised time and fees package. From my experiments with the software it looks like an excellent option for a sole practitioner or small firm. You can bill for time spent with a client or on a project and write off or carry over unbilled time; expenses can be automatically charged to specific jobs. The reporting module offers a good range of customisable reports and these can be output to both email and fax as well as exporting them to Word, Excel, or as PDF or HTML files.
VAT remains my main concern with MYOB. One of the biggest strengths of Sage Instant/(Line) 50 is the very robust VAT reconciliation which picks up errors such as postings made to prior periods. The VAT reconciliation report in MYOB is totally date-driven and since the software allows the user to override ‘out of range’ warnings when posting dates it is easy – as a number of my clients have demonstrated – to find that you cannot reconcile the VAT account. Admittedly QuickBooks has the same weakness if you use VAT cash accounting. Running the month end routine may reduce this risk, but in practice few users ever do this. For unregistered businesses and those who I can trust to enter and control their data meticulously I am happy with MYOB, for the others I still recommend Sage or - provided they are VAT invoice accounting - QuickBooks.
The integrated payroll module is included in the Accounting and Accounting Plus versions and is a real bonus. In the latter it also includes the employee timesheets section, so time can be recorded for both pay and client billing purposes. There appears to be no limit to the number of employees on the payroll, unlike other suppliers who charge for additional blocks of, say, 10 employees, which quickly ramps up the cost of the software. The annual licence is only £63.83, so it must be one of the cheapest payroll systems. Since it includes Revenue-approved online filing of P35s, etc you can effectively have this software free while the online filing incentives are available!
Conclusion
I liked version 13, and this looks like an improvement. But as an incremental release on the previous edition, there are no big surprises and I can’t see anything that would make a satisfied version 15 user want to rush out and upgrade to the new edition.
Although I am still unhappy with the VAT reconciliation, I am a lot less worried when clients come in with MYOB these days. It is fast catching up with QuickBooks and has a lot of features missing in the cheaper versions of Sage. The payroll is exceptionally good value.
At the moment MYOB accounts software also comes with a free voucher for £50 of Google AdWords and for a limited “Summer Offer” period, all the accounts packages and payroll are half price. So if you agree with me that they look like good value for money, they are currently twice as good!
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