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MYOB AccountEdge 2009

Great product that's easy to use and set up

Written by TA

May 28, 2009

Year after year after year, AccountEdge wins MacWorld's awards for good reason. This year, AccountEdge received 4 1/2 mice from MacWorld! AccountEdge is easy to use, plays well with other software and more.

Always developed for the Mac (and loyal to the Mac) from it's roots in New Jersey (not Australia or New Zealand), AccountEdge focuses on bringing clients what they want and need each year. This year's upgrades are many: For multiusers (it's a great Mac multiuser product), there were very major speed improvements! I personally took advantage of these. Additionally, they listened to their clients like me, and added in really useable features to already fairly strong budgeting - in their Accounts area, you can now use the Business Insights feature, and really begin to understand your business from the perspective that your CPA and banker do. Even better, you get this in a graph if numbers isn't your first love.

AccountEdge makes it easy to track purchases and sales using Registers rather than other methods for accessing valuable info you always want at your fingertips. It's easy to work with Quotes, orders and invoices. Banking is easy - and they let you treat your credit cards like bank accounts too, so that data can be easily tracked through both types of accounts. These are things you expect in any accounting package, though. Banking in AccountEdge and QuickBooks is almost the same because it's just something that you don't reinvent.

Another thing I use a lot is all of the integration features. One feature I waited for a long time is integration between my productivity package, Daylite, and AccountEdge. You can get a connector from Marketcircle (Daylite's parent), and it syncs in all the Daylite customer data you want into your AccountEdge. It will also bring over any quotes you do in Daylite, which I love. Also, it plays well with almost every bank in the US, unlike QuickBooks (which sometimes requires a fee for you to do your downloads). Also, it has a very nice merchant services system, which I use and love. I've never had one issue. If you're squeamish about payroll, which I don't like doing, you can either do it with the built-in payroll (which QuickBooks for Mac does not have) or you can use their full service payroll (which works for either MYOB customers OR Quickbooks customers). I use their full service payroll, and my staff love it. All the connectivity is soooo easy to use.

Finally, my CPA loves that I use AccountEdge. He got the free CPA copy for his PC. He likes that it's easy to lock down any period end needed and next to impossible to change any period end once it's closed out. He also likes how clean my books come in to his office, so we don't waste any time fixing stuff, but rather we focus on tax planning and more.

I'd recommend this great piece of software to any small business on a Mac (or a PC, frankly - there's a PC version, too).

18 of 24 people found this useful

MYOB AccountEdge 2009

Unimaginably Bad Software

Written by JG from Westport

May 19, 2009

As a small business owner, we recently switched to MYOB AccountEdge from NetSuite because it was "overpowered" and overpriced. However, NetSuite did what it was supposed to do, albeit not always in the simplest fashion.

Prior to NetSuite, we used a multi-user version of QuickBooks, which, unfortunately, only runs on a PC platform (there is a single-user version for Mac). We expected MYOB to be similar to QuickBooks and, perhaps, even easier to use. We could not have been more disappointed.

This software falls short in every single area - How about this one: on frequent occasions, when you go to open your file, you get a message saying that it is not an MYOB file (their help desk says they don't understand why but if you change the name of the file, it will open (which it does)).

That should be scary enough to keep you away from this software but it only gets worse. Entering most information defies logic. There are often not enough characters in a field to enter a name that makes sense. Customizing estimates and invoices requires so many work-arounds that you want to take a hammer to your computer (btw, you still won't get it the way you want, even if after hours of time). I could go on and on but suffice it to say that this is the most convoluted, amateur piece of software imaginable.

So, who should buy this software? In a word, nobody. It is simply bush league (no pun intended to its Australian roots).

Perhaps, Apple can solve the small business accounting problem on its own (there is no good multi-user version available for Mac), by customizing its FileMaker software. That would be a big win for Apple - and for Mac users. Come on Apple, help us out here.

44 of 59 people found this useful