RRP: AU$525
MYOB Accounting Plus is a couple of levels above FirstAccounts and while the latter is designed to handle a small business of up to three employees, Accounting Plus can happily cope with up to 30 employees. In addition, Accounting Plus includes enhancements and additional features (such as Payroll) that we did not test.
Installation
MYOB Accounting Plus software installation is similar but includes additional features such as OfficeLinks' to Excel, Word, Corel WordPerfect and Small Business Tools for Office.
When starting for the first time, the user is presented with an "Easy Setup Assistant" window the extra features and complexity of Accounting Plus requiring this additional step above and beyond FirstAccounts. Each of the buttons elicits a simple step-driven question and answer process for example if Customise is selected the user is presented with options to configure the underlying workings of the software such as "print packing slips when invoices are printed" or "apply customer payments automatically to oldest invoices first". There are, of course, useful defaults (that can be changed if you wish) to warn if customers have an outstanding credit before payment. Aging, which by default is 30, 60, and 90 days, can be set to monthly if required. While the software configuration steps are more long-winded than FirstAccounts they were nevertheless drama free and even the most accounting-fearful among us will not be put off by the terminology used.
Interface
There is not a lot to say about the interface, as it is functionally identical to FirstAccounts' but more function rich.
Documentation
Again, in common with FirstAccounts, documentation is absolutely brilliant. There are three manuals in total all with the same attention to detail and layout as FirstAccounts' manual. The first manual, the User Guide, totals 462 pages and, while it is not quite as friendly as FirstAccounts' User Guide (it launches straight into the guts of General Ledger forgoing the handholding of "your first day" and the "tutorial" chapter), it is nevertheless an easy and informative read.
Where you do find the handholding is in the Getting Started Guide, a separate 144-page tome that includes a comprehensive guide to the setup procedures and a 65-page tutorial chapter. The final bookshelf filler is the Professional Time Billing and Payroll Guide totalling 170 pages, which most importantly contains the chapter "Paying your Employees".
In Use MYOB FirstAccounts' features are a subset of Accounting Plus' and as they both utilise the same control structure the latter, even with its additional power, is just as easy to drive as FirstAccounts. In some respects, as we mentioned for the previous package, Accounting Plus's actually a little easier to use, with the added features in some cases speeding up or automating processes.
Given the substantial difference in price between FirstAccounts and Accounting Plus you would justifiably expect a significant increase in features above and beyond just streamlining a few processes. And you do get it. Accounting Plus includes Payroll, Inventory, and Time Billing. The time billing is particularly useful for our consultancy scenario and in MYOB it is quite simple to use. The employee, client and projects are all maintained in databases, which can be accessed via the drop down menu button at the side of the relevant fields. This cuts down on the input time-a bugbear for many employees who constantly grumble at the time wasted with timesheets in general.
With your staff utilising the electronic timesheets, it's a simple matter to look up a projects time log and then generate invoices. Invoice generation is just as simple as FirstAccounts and does include the option to select between various styles when printing an invoice.
The other useful feature, particularly if you are not just a service provider and must therefore maintain stock, is the Inventory. The inventory has all the standard features you would expect and enables your company to keep track of item quantities and transfers. Pricing control of your stock is also another important concern and MYOB does not let you down in this regard. The data is displayed with the current price and either the average buy price/cost or the last buy price/cost. A shortcut button allows the user to apply pricing shortcuts to all the inventory items or selected items.
You can apply pricing rules such as percentage margin, percentage markup, make price end in, and rounding to name a few. In this regard MYOB Accounting Plus is more flexible and sophisticated than QuickBooks Pro that simply includes the option to mark up an item's price by a percentage value based on either the current sale price or unit cost. Accounting Plus' reporting is more robust than FirstAccounts' and includes an additional 50 reports on top of the latter's 80.
Conclusion
With the exception of payroll, MYOB Accounting Plus is pretty much a head to head product on a feature basis with QuickBooks Pro although straight MYOB Accounting would be a better match. The package below Accounting Plus is MYOB Accounting, which we did not receive to test, and while less expensive then Accounting Plus does lose the time billing feature as well as payroll and as a consequence both products bracket QuickBooks Pro.
Inside this feature:
| MYOB FirstAccounts | MYOB Accounting Plus |
| QuickBooks Pro 7 | Sage Instant Accounting 98 |
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