MYOB’s flagship cloud accounting program AccountRight Live had the best feature set in the market but was hampered by speed issues, concluded an informal discussion among 20 members on the Institute of Certified Bookkeepers‘ LinkedIn group.
“I really like that it offers just about everything a small to medium size business needs, and as a result it means the business is not having to pay out extra for add ons, as they do with other online packages,” said Eileen Fagioli, owner of EDF Australia. “Once I work out the slowness problem, I will be more than happy to recommend this product.”
Several bookkeepers and their clients had struggled to use the new program on older, less powerful computers. Although MYOB recommended a minimum of 4 gigabytes of RAM memory, some users said they had best results on machines with 16GB.
“I have been testing the (AccountRight Live) pilot and the program and new format are great but soooo terribly slow,” said Genevieve Hilton, a bookkeeper at Sydney business Access Piering.
MYOB had suggested using AccountRight Live on a local PC for speed-sensitive tasks such as deleting lines on recurring general journal entries and then uploading the file to the cloud, said Pam Pitt, director at Bookkeepers4U.
The advantages of cloud software such as remote access and easy information sharing with clients were attractive but not at the cost of features, bookkeepers said. “Cloud is good, but unless the functionality of the software offered on cloud is excellent, then cloud is no benefit. MYOB IS excellent software for small business, so IMO worth waiting for,” Pitt said.
“I am waiting for the cloud product, as my team span from Western Australia to Victoria – the cloud will eventually be a great solution,” said Elizabeth Haverfield, director at OfficeLink Learning.
One bookkeeper expressed frustration that MYOB’s cloud service only worked with a copy of its desktop accounting software. “I was … frustrated when I found out you still have to have the software installed on whichever computer you want to access the datafile from – so it’s NOT truly a cloud product. Not to mention the fact that you can’t access it from a Mac platform,” said Deborah Hawke of Hawkes Business Services.
What do you think of MYOB AccountRight Live?