Xero/MYOB and your thoughts on these?

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JokezNZ

144 posts

Master Geek

#142706 21-Mar-2014 11:47

Hey guys,
So i've pretty much just secured myself a job as a graduate accountant and my role is going to revolve around accounting information systems and in particular Xero and MYOB. I thought it would be a good idea to see what you guys think about these accounting packages? What do you like/dislike? What do you find hard to do? Were you with one and switched to the other, and how are you liking the change? Pretty much any discussion really as I will most likely be having the same talks with my future clients.

Anyway thanks for your time :)

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#1010532 21-Mar-2014 12:13

Dealing with accountants day-in and out and working in the space I just want to raise a few things:

Compliance accounting will near-on disappear in perhaps 5 years
Management accounting is the future
Accountants are becoming it seems software integrators and business process instigators as part of that "management accounting" move

Both Xero and MYOB have their strengths and weaknesses. MYOB has more features integrated whereas Xero you need a heap of add-ons to get the same functionality. While Xero's model of using addd-ons to develop what they don't have is smart, I have heard many stories of people with add-on overload hence MYOB, Infusion, MoneyWorks etc. may all be a better fit. Remember there are heaps of solutions - not just Xero ro MYOB

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freitasm

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#1010558 21-Mar-2014 13:00

Moved to correct forum.

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JokezNZ

144 posts

Master Geek

#1010597 21-Mar-2014 14:09

Zeon: Dealing with accountants day-in and out and working in the space I just want to raise a few things:

Compliance accounting will near-on disappear in perhaps 5 years
Management accounting is the future
Accountants are becoming it seems software integrators and business process instigators as part of that "management accounting" move
Both Xero and MYOB have their strengths and weaknesses. MYOB has more features integrated whereas Xero you need a heap of add-ons to get the same functionality. While Xero's model of using addd-ons to develop what they don't have is smart, I have heard many stories of people with add-on overload hence MYOB, Infusion, MoneyWorks etc. may all be a better fit. Remember there are heaps of solutions - not just Xero ro MYOB

When you say compliance accounting will disappear, do you mean a human's interaction won't be required?

I've just been looking at some of Xero's add-ons, I wonder how much work they do together before they can become 'partnered'.

wasabi2k

2092 posts

Uber Geek

#1010600 21-Mar-2014 14:14

As a small consulting business - Xero with Bank Feeds from ASB is AWESOME.

I do all my day-to-day bookkeeping, with high-school accounting knowledge and a few calls to the IRD.

GST returns are super easy.

Accounts do my end of year accounts (as I am a LLC) and it is super easy to create the required reports for them.

Granted I am very small (2 people) and not very complicated, but beats the hell out of spreadsheets.

JokezNZ

144 posts

Master Geek

#1010710 21-Mar-2014 16:25

wasabi2k: As a small consulting business - Xero with Bank Feeds from ASB is AWESOME.

I do all my day-to-day bookkeeping, with high-school accounting knowledge and a few calls to the IRD.

GST returns are super easy.

Accounts do my end of year accounts (as I am a LLC) and it is super easy to create the required reports for them.

Granted I am very small (2 people) and not very complicated, but beats the hell out of spreadsheets.

That's cool Wasabi thanks for the reply :)

So you find Xero very user friendly? How did you learn how to use it?

morrisk

340 posts

Ultimate Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#1010727 21-Mar-2014 17:03

I have been using Xero for around 18 months now for my small consulting business.

I tested both MYOB and Xero before choosing Xero. Using MYOB was not easy for me - it felt like I needed to be an accountant.
Xero on the other hand used terms like Money coming In and Money Going Out. I immediately felt I understood what was what.
I have had no trouble using it and my GST and tax returns have been very easy to do.

JokezNZ

144 posts

Master Geek

#1010728 21-Mar-2014 17:09

morrisk: I have been using Xero for around 18 months now for my small consulting business.

I tested both MYOB and Xero before choosing Xero. Using MYOB was not easy for me - it felt like I needed to be an accountant.
Xero on the other hand used terms like Money coming In and Money Going Out. I immediately felt I understood what was what.
I have had no trouble using it and my GST and tax returns have been very easy to do.

Thanks for sharing :)

webwat

2036 posts

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#1011421 23-Mar-2014 15:46

JokezNZ:
morrisk: I have been using Xero for around 18 months now for my small consulting business.

I tested both MYOB and Xero before choosing Xero. Using MYOB was not easy for me - it felt like I needed to be an accountant.
Xero on the other hand used terms like Money coming In and Money Going Out. I immediately felt I understood what was what.
I have had no trouble using it and my GST and tax returns have been very easy to do.

Thanks for sharing :)

Xero is unsuitable for self employed people who do 2 to 10 invoices a month, they are more oriented to locking you into a paid monthly subscription where its easier to just pay than searching for another software system. I would be interested in some of the open source cloud options though. Still its not easy to find a system that does stock management and subcontracting etc so I just stick with the nasty one I use now.

Time to find a new industry!

Stu

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#1011422 23-Mar-2014 16:02

A client of mine is looking at CCH iField for their accounting practice, and there's an accompanying package called iBizz that seems similar to other online invoicing offerings. Will have a look myself during the week. Not sure of it's abilities or limitations.

mattwnz

19378 posts

Uber Geek

#1011423 23-Mar-2014 16:08

webwat:
JokezNZ:
morrisk: I have been using Xero for around 18 months now for my small consulting business.

I tested both MYOB and Xero before choosing Xero. Using MYOB was not easy for me - it felt like I needed to be an accountant.
Xero on the other hand used terms like Money coming In and Money Going Out. I immediately felt I understood what was what.
I have had no trouble using it and my GST and tax returns have been very easy to do.

Thanks for sharing :)

Xero is unsuitable for self employed people who do 2 to 10 invoices a month, they are more oriented to locking you into a paid monthly subscription where its easier to just pay than searching for another software system. I would be interested in some of the open source cloud options though. Still its not easy to find a system that does stock management and subcontracting etc so I just stick with the nasty one I use now.

Have you looked at wave? Although one problem I found with it, is that it doesn't email invoices as PDFs or in HTML, it only sends a link to click on, which is annoying.

Ford

330 posts

Ultimate Geek
Inactive user

#1019544 6-Apr-2014 18:09

I use MYOB Accountants office. I also use MYOB Account Right Live the online version. I prefer that over Xero mostly because MYOB gives you the option to work both offline and online and I can store local backups.
Business records need to be kept for seven years so I can have control of that.

Xero doesn’t allow you to store your own backups. If they went bust and what would you do if you can’t access your data on their website.

I also use document manager with AO. My client has a use for DM but I mostly just fix or configure it and install updates. Wouldn’t use it myself as I don’t like it and if you have it set up to capture outgoing emails you can’t just easily turn it off to send one email without going through DM first.
I’m still using MYOB 19.5 myself because it works. Obviously I have to take care of my own backups but that’s OK. I prefer that. I have RDP setup so I can use it when I am away from my machine.

If clients don’t want to worry about backups then that would be a good reason to use an online programme, and hope of course they can still access data 7 years later if they need to.

I don’t like the phone support that MYOB provides it is very poor they are clearly unskilled and often I end up fixing issues myself with firewalls or Client frameworks when MYOB cannot solve the issue with their own software that is outside of their stock standard answers to uninstall and reinstall.

MYOB software is not error free but I still prefer their software to Xero.

wasabi2k

2092 posts

Uber Geek

#1019559 6-Apr-2014 19:22

JokezNZ:
wasabi2k: As a small consulting business - Xero with Bank Feeds from ASB is AWESOME.

I do all my day-to-day bookkeeping, with high-school accounting knowledge and a few calls to the IRD.

GST returns are super easy.

Accounts do my end of year accounts (as I am a LLC) and it is super easy to create the required reports for them.

Granted I am very small (2 people) and not very complicated, but beats the hell out of spreadsheets.

That's cool Wasabi thanks for the reply :)

So you find Xero very user friendly? How did you learn how to use it?

high school + first year Uni level accounting to get the concepts - their help function for the rest.

Zeon

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#1019570 6-Apr-2014 19:45

JokezNZ:
Zeon: Dealing with accountants day-in and out and working in the space I just want to raise a few things:

Compliance accounting will near-on disappear in perhaps 5 years
Management accounting is the future
Accountants are becoming it seems software integrators and business process instigators as part of that "management accounting" move
Both Xero and MYOB have their strengths and weaknesses. MYOB has more features integrated whereas Xero you need a heap of add-ons to get the same functionality. While Xero's model of using addd-ons to develop what they don't have is smart, I have heard many stories of people with add-on overload hence MYOB, Infusion, MoneyWorks etc. may all be a better fit. Remember there are heaps of solutions - not just Xero ro MYOB

When you say compliance accounting will disappear, do you mean a human's interaction won't be required?

I've just been looking at some of Xero's add-ons, I wonder how much work they do together before they can become 'partnered'.

Speaking as a Xero "partner' its pretty darn easy. Show them your app, show them your landing page and that's about it.

By compliance accounting I mean doing GST returns, doing tax returns at the end of the year etc. - the number crunching as most of that is all done for you now.

I personally use Xero and its decent although I don't know what else I could compare it to as I've had no other experience. It was a bit frustrating as I spent about 5 hours figuring out why the bank account balance and Xero balance were off for 2 bank accounts and finally figured it out. I pretty much use it mainly to reconcile or use as a ledger as the AR side is handled by our billing system (which then syncs to it) and our AP side is handled by well... us!

The data loss thing is a risk, although they are unlikely to go out of business you are screwed if they do and you lose access. There probably is a business potential for a "Xero backup" add-on to use the Xero API to keep backups of all your Xero data. Ha well there's a business idea!

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pih

558 posts

Ultimate Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#1019602 6-Apr-2014 20:22

mattwnz:
webwat:
JokezNZ:
morrisk: I have been using Xero for around 18 months now for my small consulting business.

I tested both MYOB and Xero before choosing Xero. Using MYOB was not easy for me - it felt like I needed to be an accountant.
Xero on the other hand used terms like Money coming In and Money Going Out. I immediately felt I understood what was what.
I have had no trouble using it and my GST and tax returns have been very easy to do.

Thanks for sharing :)

Xero is unsuitable for self employed people who do 2 to 10 invoices a month, they are more oriented to locking you into a paid monthly subscription where its easier to just pay than searching for another software system. I would be interested in some of the open source cloud options though. Still its not easy to find a system that does stock management and subcontracting etc so I just stick with the nasty one I use now.

Have you looked at wave? Although one problem I found with it, is that it doesn't email invoices as PDFs or in HTML, it only sends a link to click on, which is annoying.

Wave is great, but their biggest problem by far (for much of the rest of the small biz world) is that they don't & can't yet do cash based accounting. It was designed for small businesses in Canada where the accrual method is virtually the only method used. There are some hacky workarounds, but in spite of dozens/hundreds of requests it's still not on their roadmap.

I have used many other accounting solutions, small and large, commercial and OSS, I even did some dev work for MYOB for a time, but I have to admit that using Xero is a breeze. Yes, expensive (especially if you're a small biz that needs multi-currency like I do), but worth it if you value your time.

Ford

330 posts

Ultimate Geek
Inactive user

#1019638 6-Apr-2014 22:46

Invoice plus is quite good software for the novice user but its missing lots of useful features.
Banklink is also quite good and you can import it into AO. But when software allows for user data entry there are bound to be mistakes with miss-coding of items but its better than trying to read a scrawly handwritten cashbook that has calcuation errors.

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