The MYOB line of accounting products for small business goes back to the early 1990s, has always competed well with QuickBooks, and, because of its Mac origins, has always matched that product in usability—yet many people still don't know about it. The latest package, MYOB Premier Accounting Small Business Suite 2007, omits online banking, regrettably, but still comes on strong, with direct deposit, credit card processing, and electronic vendor payments.
The big news in this version includes integration with Microsoft Outlook (2000 through 2003 only), payroll import and preview, error correction in bank reconciliations, and easy migration from sales orders and quotes to purchase orders. The developers have also made a passel of smaller, useful changes. It looks great, too: I've yet to find a screen in the latest MYOB interface I wouldn't consider cleanly designed, easy to understand, and detailed.
The setup tool walks you through creating the program's building blocks, helping you set preferences that shape such facets of your finances as the default pricing type (normal or discount, say), payroll categories—base salary and overtime, for example—and whether to accept multiple currencies and log contacts. The program builds in a conversion process for Quicken/QuickBooks data and will also let you import business data in text files.
If, however, you choose the formidable task of entering data from scratch, MYOB simplifies the chore with a terrific help system and a support plan (which includes free upgrades for a year). Contact records for customers, vendors, and employees provide enough fields to build comprehensive profiles. Transaction forms, such as invoices and purchase orders, offer plenty of detail and flexibility, and, with over 200 reports, you have more than enough for exhaustive management overviews. Exporting of reports works well with Microsoft Office 2007, as does mail merge. The product also competes well with its most formidable peers, such as PeachtreePremium Accounting and QuickBooksPremier, in its ability to track time-billing, jobs, and inventory.
Using an ODBC tool, you can manually share some MYOB data with the suite's other applications, but the components don't automatically synchronize their information. The Staff Files HR application works well but duplicates much of the existing MYOB data. Staff Files does offer some extras, though; you can use it to keep employee evaluation information and documents such as resumés. Ultimate Financial Forecaster does more financial analysis and projection than MYOB but would be more effective if it could import from MYOB. The Logo Creator provides useful templates and editing tools for creating corporate insignia. But the Customer Appointment Manager, a scheduling product, has an interface that harkens back to 1997 (and the app wouldn't do mail merge with Microsoft Word 2007).
The suite applications other than MYOB Premier add some value, but I'd like to have the option of purchasing just MYOB Premier. You can't (though you can upgrade to it), but no matter. MYOB Premier Accounting Small Business Suite 2007 still comes at a reasonable price, and it gives you a commendable product that falls somewhere between the Pro and Premier versions of QuickBooks, but closer to Premier. This is a very good product; it's a shame more people don't know about it.
The setup tool walks you through creating the program's building blocks, helping you set preferences that shape such facets of your finances as the default pricing type (normal or discount, say), payroll categories—base salary and overtime, for example—and whether to accept multiple currencies and log contacts. The program builds in a conversion process for Quicken/QuickBooks data and will also let you import business data in text files.
If, however, you choose the formidable task of entering data from scratch, MYOB simplifies the chore with a terrific help system and a support plan (which includes free upgrades for a year). Contact records for customers, vendors, and employees provide enough fields to build comprehensive profiles. Transaction forms, such as invoices and purchase orders, offer plenty of detail and flexibility, and, with over 200 reports, you have more than enough for exhaustive management overviews. Exporting of reports works well with Microsoft Office 2007, as does mail merge. The product also competes well with its most formidable peers, such as PeachtreePremium Accounting and QuickBooksPremier, in its ability to track time-billing, jobs, and inventory.
Using an ODBC tool, you can manually share some MYOB data with the suite's other applications, but the components don't automatically synchronize their information. The Staff Files HR application works well but duplicates much of the existing MYOB data. Staff Files does offer some extras, though; you can use it to keep employee evaluation information and documents such as resumés. Ultimate Financial Forecaster does more financial analysis and projection than MYOB but would be more effective if it could import from MYOB. The Logo Creator provides useful templates and editing tools for creating corporate insignia. But the Customer Appointment Manager, a scheduling product, has an interface that harkens back to 1997 (and the app wouldn't do mail merge with Microsoft Word 2007).
The suite applications other than MYOB Premier add some value, but I'd like to have the option of purchasing just MYOB Premier. You can't (though you can upgrade to it), but no matter. MYOB Premier Accounting Small Business Suite 2007 still comes at a reasonable price, and it gives you a commendable product that falls somewhere between the Pro and Premier versions of QuickBooks, but closer to Premier. This is a very good product; it's a shame more people don't know about it.
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