25th March, 2021
MYOB’s head of solution consulting and partners, Dale Dixon, discusses the evolution of AccountRight, and how advisors can achieve more flexibility than ever.
MYOB AccountRight has been supporting small businesses across Australia and New Zealand for decades.
Now, with browser access to MYOB AccountRight, businesses can take advantage of modern cloud technology, enabling them to collaborate with advisors, invoice on the go, capture receipts from their mobile device and reconcile accounts quickly and accurately with bank feeds — from within your browser, whether you’re on mobile, Mac or PC.
“Our partners already know this is a comprehensive product, featuring inventory options, multicurrency and much more for small business clients, but previously it’s only been available on a Windows computer,” explained Dale Dixon, MYOB’s head of solution consulting and partners.
“That situation is OK, and suits those advisors already operating these workflows, but people are increasingly expecting to be able to access their information anywhere, on any device and by multiple means.”
And that meant delivering a feature that allows you to access much of the functionality directly through the browser.
The launch of the current version of MYOB’s entry-level product, Essentials, into a fully-online format has “unlocked” the way forward for AccountRight, Dixon said.
“The same browser interface we’ve developed for Essentials is also now available in AccountRight, which means that advisors are now able to work with clients using either product in the same place.’
It also means that as new tax updates, patches or other enhancements are released for one product, they can also be automatically launched in the other.
Examples of new enhancements include the ability to support QIF files, which allows you to easily reconcile bank accounts that don’t have a bank feed, MYOB Team for employee onboarding and time tracking, and the inclusion of a ‘find and replace’ tool, which makes it easier to enact bulk changes to records.
“In the future, as we continue to add more and more functionality, those features can be delivered to the entire MYOB customer base rather than delivering different features to different products and at different times,” said Dixon.
Adding the browser option to AccountRight offers a much greater level of flexibility and freedom, both to advisors and to their clients.
That’s because a truly cloud-based product can be accessed on any operating system or current device. In that sense, it no longer matters whether you’re using Mac, PC or mobile.
“Accountants and bookkeepers need common workflows to complete their work efficiently.”
“Take transaction processing, so you can complete a client’s BAS, as an example. In the past, advisors would have to do that on their desktop PC environment and then in the browser for Essentials-based clients.”
“Today, advisors can learn the one workflow and use it across all clients. All their reports can be pulled from the one interface, which allows them to save a lot of time.”
And if you need to work with AccountRight files on your desktop?
“If the browser’s not right for you yet, you don’t have to change,” confirmed Dixon. “You get the best of both worlds.”
An unfortunate byproduct of the way software is regularly updated means that advisors often end up needing to maintain various versions of a product when working from desktop.
“This creates a scenario that you could call ‘version creep’,” said Dixon. “In this situation, some partners end up with twenty, thirty, or more versions of a product installed in order to manage all their clients.”
When version creep occurs, efficiencies gained from being able to service clients remotely are offset by the additional admin required to manage multiple versions of the product.
With AccountRight’s new automatic update functionality, new versions can be automatically installed as soon as they’re available without effort from the user, bringing client files up to date and eliminating the burden of maintaining multiple product versions.
Even better, this will even work for customers without a current subscription.
“We can now roll out free updates to all clients, regardless of whether they have an active subscription or paying us today in any way.
“This means everyone is always on the same version. And it’s the subscription that unlocks features such as cloud access, tax table updates, PaySuper, MYOB Capture and more.”
Features advisors will love in the latest AccountRight online:
Learn more about all the new features available in AccountRight online, as well as how to start using them today, with this downloadable guide.