MYOB product updates for advisors – September 2020

The end of September brought the launch of a new product in New Zealand, an important update to JobKeeper for Australians and super time saving shortcuts introduced to Essentials.

Between the End of Financial Year and the introduction of JobKeeper 2.0, the third quarter for 2020 has been a huge one for accountants and bookkeepers, as it has also been for MYOB.

Here’s a recap of everything that MYOB has delivered in its products for this time period.

Essentials and Connected Ledger updates

1. Chart of Accounts updates

The month of September has seen some enhancements to the workflow for the Chart of Accounts screens within Essentials.

A few of the major updates you’ll see there are as follows:

• A bulk delete button has been added in the ‘Chart of Accounts’ screen to allow users to select multiple account codes to delete in one transaction. This gives your practice more customisable reports. 

• 

  Export Chart of Accounts file added. Previously, when a user generates an export file for ‘Data for your accountant’ or ‘Chart of Accounts’, the file name did not mean anything to the users. We have updated the auto generated export file name so that it becomes more meaningful to the user.
• We have added the ability for users to update their Opening Balances in bulk under the ‘Edit Accounts’ screen of the Chart of Accounts.
  • Being able to add opening balances in bulk will allow users to enter their opening balances quickly without having to export the chart to Excel or by going into each account code that needs to be updated.
• When in the banking screen, users can now tab across the screen to select the ‘Possible match found’ column. When they press F2 or Alt + L (PC) | Opt + L (Mac) on their keyboard and the ‘Possible match found’ link will switch to ‘Account List Dropdown’ mode, saving you more clicks and more time.

2. Keyboard shortcuts for simple allocation

Everyone loves a shortcut to save time, especially bookkeepers and advisors.

In September, MYOB introduced a series of keyboard shortcuts within the Bank Transactions screen to allow users to use keyboard shortcuts to quickly fly through their un-coded transactions without needing to reach for the mouse.

For the full list of new shortcuts, see here.

3. Report Settings – Business Settings & User Preferences

Users can now set defaults for how they would like to view their reports, saving them time as they no longer have to set their preferences each time the report is generated.

These settings can be applied under ‘Business Settings’ and will apply for all users. Here, you can set the preferred business settings when all users generate a report under this company file.

User Preferences Tab

The settings you apply under ‘User Preferences’ will apply for your user login only.

Here, you can set the preferred business settings when you generate a report under this company file. Other users can set their own user preferences.

For more information, please refer to this MYOB Online Help Guide.

4. Other enhancements to Essentials

MYOB has added in a feature to show the GST/Tax amount on the Bank transaction > Allocate tab. This important and highly requested feature will allow users to check and make sure the correct GST/Tax amount is calculated correctly at the time of allocation.

You can also now assign a job code from within the ‘Create bank feed rule’ screen for ‘Spend/Receive money transaction’ rules.

Even better, a commonly used feature in AccountRight Live has just been rolled out to Essentials users in Australia to allow negative values to be included in pay runs making payroll adjustments easier.

5. Practice User Management for Essentials

When advisors allocate practice user access from Manage Online File Access in my.MYOB for MYOB Essentials, the practice users will not be listed under the Users Menu in MYOB Essentials.

This will keep the practice users hidden so the SME will not see who has access to the file if the advisor doesn’t want them to as they could have different people working on the files.

MYOB Essentials Accounting upgrade (NZ only)

The launch of Essentials in New Zealand is focused on customers who have not previously used accounting software and don’t require payroll but are now wanting business software.

Benefits for SMEs: Vastly improved mobile experience on your computer, tablet or phone, job costing, user access controls, better help right in the product.​

Benefits for Partners: Faster and more consistent workflows, ability to manage access, better budgets, extensive reporting upgrades, time-saving tools like calculator and NZBN lookup in product.​

Note: Essentials Starter and Essentials Accounting does not include Payroll. Essentials Accounting + Payroll and Connected Ledger + Payroll are not available in the new version yet.

MYOB Practice enhancements

What’s new?

MYOB has enhanced the MYOB Practice Transaction Processing Dashboard to have the capability to remember column preferences applied by the user. This will be a time saving feature for users who use different browsers, are changing computers and navigating out of the window.

All of your column choosers will now retain until a new setting/reset is applied manually.

JobKeeper 2.1 update (AU only)

MYOB has also updated the Payroll Reporting Centre in its core products, including MYOB AccountRight and MYOB Essentials to help our MYOB Partner and clients to manage these changes.

Changes include:

• Adding additional columns within payroll screen that allow start and finish fortnights to be selected through to 28th March 2021
• Help customers identify each employee’s tier
• Report the employee tiers to the ATO on the customers behalf
• Added a turnover calculator
• There’s also a checklist to help partners and clients set up for JobKeeper and pay employees under the scheme (find it in MYOB’s online help articles under ‘JobKeeper’

Employer eligibility criteria explained:

• Processing JobKeeper in MYOB AccountRight
• Processing JobKeeper in MYOB Essentials
• Processing JobKeeper in MYOB New Essentials