MYOB leaps ahead with smart bills

Monday 9 February 2015

MYOB’s leading small business solution leaps ahead with smart bills
Feature-rich online solutions prompt SMEs to switch to MYOB

New Zealand’s leading accounting solutions provider MYOB continues its war on paper for the benefit of SMEs with the introduction of its time-saving smart bills feature to AccountRight clients. The new feature will deliver immediate benefits to larger SMEs, and follows on from the successful addition of smart bills to MYOB Essentials late last year.

MYOB announced the new feature will be a free addition to all its SME cloud accounting solutions in Melbourne today at the launch of the company’s annual Roadshow – the biggest accounting industry event series in Australia and New Zealand, with over 9,000 partners registered.

MYOB SME Solutions General Manager James Scollay says smart bills provides a benefit to clients that no other accounting solutions provider has delivered in Australia and New Zealand – the ability to capture key data fields from supplier invoices and enter it into the software. The data is then fully integrated into the workflow of AccountRight, to enable easier compliance and better cash flow management. It also allows for greater collaboration between SMEs and their trusted accountant or bookkeeper because the transaction is visible to both parties.

“This feature allows users to simply email or drag and drop a supplier invoice into AccountRight, which can be used to create a bill, or easily linked to an existing bill,” says Mr Scollay.

It includes Optical Character Recognition [OCR] software, which is designed to save even more time when it comes to data entry, Mr Scollay says.

First introduced into Essentials Accounting, MYOB’s entry-level cloud accounting solution, in late 2014, the smart bills feature is already making a difference to small businesses.

Margaret Whitfield of My SOS has been using smart bills as part of MYOB Essentials Accounting and is thrilled with how much easier managing her business has become; processing has been reduced and the margin for error has decreased as a result of smart bills being introduced.

“Getting bills emailed straight in means that our data entry just happens. This will be great at the end of the year – everything is just there, nothing is lost or misfiled,” Ms Whitfield says.

Mr Scollay says the smart bills feature will make AccountRight even more compelling for SMEs, who also benefit from MYOB’s commitment to creating an easy and seamless experience for its customers.

“The smart bills feature is another way our online accounting products are helping to make business life easier. The ongoing innovation that bolsters feature-rich online solutions such as AccountRight is the reason a rapidly growing number of SMEs are switching to MYOB’s subscription services,” Mr Scollay says.

Harding Steel owner, Richard Harding, says he became an MYOB customer because inventory is a critical part of his business, and he couldn’t find the same easy-to-use capability in other solutions currently on the market. He decided to make the switch to AccountRight after being initially persuaded to try MYOB’s nearest online competitor.

“I was told that it was the next MYOB, so I took a dive and spent a long time setting it all up. There were many support issues that we tried to overcome but critically, it had no inputted inventory. I couldn’t get a packaging slip and that’s something we need in our business.

“I wished I had just gone with MYOB in the first place. It is so straightforward. Everything is on the main screen right in front of you – inventory is just part of the programme and it’s so important to us,” says Harding.

Many accountants and bookkeepers have done the features versus cost comparison between MYOB AccountRight and its nearest online competitor, and hands down MYOB is better value, says Debra Anderson of Legally Counts.

“While both have the ability to have add-on solutions to provide extended functionality through APIs, with MYOB’s nearest online competitor clients have no option but to add these solutions on at additional cost simply to match the functionality already available in MYOB AccountRight, which is available at a lower monthly fee. MYOB is much better value than its competition, and easier to use as all the functionality is already in the product with no need to learn multiple systems.”

Mr Scollay says a number of MYOB partners offer seamless migration services from other cloud accounting products to MYOB, making it an easy transition. “We’re seeing a growing trend of clients switching to MYOB because they recognise that our feature-rich SME solutions provide better value.”

Smart bills is available at no extra cost to MYOB clients using AccountRight Standard and above from later this month.

For MYOB product information, research results, business tips, discussions, client service and more visit the MYOB website, or its blog, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube sites.

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