Re: Has Anyone Any Suggestions? MYOB AccountEdge

[Neil Houghton]

No problem Jewels,

Obviously you have already tried the "simple" step by step instructions for the 
MAC on   I cannot say 
that I am surprised that when you actually try to implement this it is not as 
"simple" as they like to make out - unfortunately it seems to be a standard 
marketing tactic to try and sell all these things as quick and easy and reality 
ends up being a bit different.

Hopefully someone else on the list may have some real experience of this - good 
luck.

Cheers



Neil
-- 
Neil R. Houghton
Albany, Western Australia
Tel: +61 8 9841 6063
Email: n...@possumology.com


-Original Message-
From:  on behalf of Julie 
Bedford 
Reply-To: WAMUG 
Date: Wednesday, 19 June 2019 at 14:00
To: WAMUG 
Subject: Re: Has Anyone Any Suggestions?  MYOB AccountEdge

Hi Neil,

Many thanks for your detailed email and you have done well to accomplish 
what you have achieved so far.  

Problem for me is that I work for myself - my biggest client (who is also a 
friend) has a large roofing company and employs around 13 guys, so that 
definitely puts me in the category of having to be on this new STP system 
unfortunately.  I have spent hours on the phone to MYOB who flatly say there 
are no webinars for training for Account Edge.  They have suggested I do the PC 
version, but have been warned it will not help me set my Mac up for this - I 
guess only to gain an understanding of the system in general.  They did put me 
onto people who could help, but when I called them I was told they had no 
experience in Mac, so that was a waste of time.  

Every year I pay Mac for the upgrades and their support and have been told 
this webinar will cost $150 (for the PC training).  When I speak to anyone at 
MYOB, they do not appear to have any experience in MYOB.  I am most definitely 
not a happy person about this.

I have tried all the alternatives you suggest, including the MYOB 
community, without success.  I recall a few years ago a member of WAMUG sounded 
as though he had good experience in MYOB and was hoping he would pick up my 
initial email and respond.  Sadly, I cannot recall his name though.

I’ve been using MYOB for years and work alongside a firm of accountants who 
also use MYOB, so I cannot really move to another system.  Also, I really do 
not have time on my hands to learn a different system before the end of this 
month.

I guess I’ll continue hunting for someone to assist me.  Many thanks again 
for taking the time to reply to me Neil.

Cheers
Jewels

> On 19 Jun 2019, at 1:00 PM, Neil Houghton  wrote:
> 
> Hi Jewels,
> 
> First off - I do not have any experience of MYOB - so this is just more 
general thoughts on your problem.
> 
> I run my own SMSF and do my own investing and accounting (except I need 
an independent audit) but I am not an accountant (pre-retirement I was an 
engineer.)
> 
> Since I try and do everything paperless, I have had to learn how to 
interface with the ATO to lodge tax returns, do TBAR reporting etc (but no 
payroll reporting).
> 
> 
> So some thoughts:
> 
> MYOB Resources:
> I presume you have already checked out the MYOB resources on this:
>  seems to be the MAC specific help 
centre and 
>  seems to cover 
STP and gives step by step instructions for the MAC which SEEM quite simple - 
though I realise ( and have experienced) that things often become more 
complicated when you actually try and follow simple instructions ;o(
> I also see that the MYOB community has an STP Q page 
 which 
includes MAC related Q
> I also see that they offer online support and live chat options
> 
> STP alternatives:
> I have no idea how big an organisation you run or how committed you are 
to MYOB. If you already have a firm commitment and a lot of time/effort 
invested in your MYOB accounts then I can see that persisting with MYOB and 
using it for STP is probably your preferred option.
> I notice that if you have four or less employees, the ATO is offering no 
cost/low cost STP solutions: 

> This may not be an option/choice for you but I mention it because I took 
a similar path with my SMSF - my accountant died and, rather than find a new 
accountant, I decided I was happy doing the accounts myself (I pretty much did 
this anyway - the accountant just checked it and lodged the return). I had 
decided against dedicated SMSF software (tried it, didn’t like it) and have 
used a series of Excel workbooks to handle everything ( not an approach I would 
suggest for most but it works for me) - so my problem 

Re: Upgrading many thanks

[Neil Houghton]

Hi Peter,

 

I’ve taken the liberty of replying back through the list – it works better to 
keep these discussions “on list” as lots of others find these issues 
interesting too.

 

So, a couple more comments:

 
I actually preferred Snow Leopard as the last OS where Apple & I seemed to be 
on the Same page ;o)   - However I found that more & more services I relied on 
would no longer work – eg Dropbox, which is essential for me, is no longer is 
compatible with Snow Leopard – so I needed to upgrade.
You do have another option – cheaper than a new laptop/computer – to move as 
far as El Capitan whilst still being able to work with your legacy apps and 
that is to buy an external drive and set it up as a boot drive.
By being able to boot into Snow Leopard or El Capitan, as required, you can 
continue to work with your legacy apps on Snow Leopard and move forward to El 
Capitan to get used to the changes and access services/sites/apps that no 
longer work in Snow Leopard.
This is an approach that I use – in my case I HAVE updated MS Office and spend 
over 90% of my time in El Capitan – however, I still have a bootable clone of 
my old Snow Leopard system which I occasionally boot into as required – eg to 
do some image editing on my old Photoshop Elements app.
In my case I actually replaced my failed internal drive with a new 3TB internal 
drive and also fitted an SSD so I setup my old SL clone on a separate partition 
on the internal drive – however I expect that the internal drive on your old 
iMac(s) are much smaller so an external drive would be the way to go.
You basically have two different ways to do this, depending on how you see 
yourself working:
Clone your existing Snow leopard system to an external drive and update the 
computer to El Capitan – this is the way to go to move forward to the new OS 
but still be able to reboot into SL to use your old Office & Adobe apps.
Keep the computer running Snow Leopard but setup the external drive as a 
bootable El Capitan drive – this allows you to carry on as before but boot into 
El Capitan whenever you need to access services/sites/apps that no longer work 
in Snow Leopard.
 

Given how cheap external drives now are this will let you use old and new 
systems as you want/need.

 

Just a thought.

 

 

Cheers

 

 

Neil

-- 

Neil R. Houghton

Albany, Western Australia

Tel: +61 8 9841 6063

Email: n...@possumology.com

 

From: Peter Faulks 
Date: Wednesday, 19 June 2019 at 08:14
To: 
Subject: Re: Upgrading many thanks

 

Many thanks Neil,

 

I really do a lot of work using Office 2004 and Adobe CS3  which I am 
comfortable with,  so I do not think I will upgrade my computer, I will just 
continue as I am and let technology go its own way, or purchase a lap top for 
the new operating systems. I did think it would be a complete restart so now I 
know, thanks to you,  I will just have to survive as I am.

 

Cheers Peter

 

Hi Peter,

 

I just went through a similar exercise (but with the added complications of a 
hardware rebuild/upgrade). I have a few comments:

 

· Whatever you do - make sure you have everything backed up!! 
Personally, as a minimum I would have both a bootable clone of the HD AND a 
full Time machine backup (some would say that is  a bit over the top). 
Hopefully your upgrade will go smoothly but, if it doesn't, you need a full up 
to date backup  to avoid losing precious data. 

· I went to El Capitan - OSX 10.11 - I think that this is also as far 
as you can go on a 9.1 model iMac 

· The last version of El Capitan is OSX 10.11.6 - so this is where you 
will want to end up. 

· Whilst El Capitan will run on only 4GB of RAM, I would definitely 
recommend a RAM upgrade for much better performance - on a model 9.1 iMac you 
could go to 8GB max - see https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/iMac/DDR3_2009 

· You will be unlikely to do this without needing to upgrade some 
software - best to check what versions you have, what versions your new system 
will require and your preferred upgrade path before you start. 

· I have never used Eudora so I can be of no help there. 

· If you are running MS Office 2011, I think that this will still run 
on El Capitan. 

· I had to update MS Office from my old Office 2004 and I decided to go 
with an office 365 subscription - I wanted Outlook included, I wanted to run on 
3 computers  and I could use the 1TB of online storage included. 

· It is much cheaper to buy an Office 365 subscription from Officeworks 
< 
https://www.officeworks.com.au/shop/officeworks/p/microsoft-office-365-home-up-to-6-people-12-months-download-mof365hesd>
 than direct from Microsoft ($99 vs $129) -  when your renewal is due you can 
also renew much cheaper by buying another Office 365 subscription from 
Officeworks and then applying that to renew your existing subscription. 

· Jumping from MS Office 2004 direct to Office 2016/Office 365 

Re: Has Anyone Any Suggestions? MYOB AccountEdge

[Julie Bedford]

Hi Neil,

Many thanks for your detailed email and you have done well to accomplish what 
you have achieved so far.  

Problem for me is that I work for myself - my biggest client (who is also a 
friend) has a large roofing company and employs around 13 guys, so that 
definitely puts me in the category of having to be on this new STP system 
unfortunately.  I have spent hours on the phone to MYOB who flatly say there 
are no webinars for training for Account Edge.  They have suggested I do the PC 
version, but have been warned it will not help me set my Mac up for this - I 
guess only to gain an understanding of the system in general.  They did put me 
onto people who could help, but when I called them I was told they had no 
experience in Mac, so that was a waste of time.  

Every year I pay Mac for the upgrades and their support and have been told this 
webinar will cost $150 (for the PC training).  When I speak to anyone at MYOB, 
they do not appear to have any experience in MYOB.  I am most definitely not a 
happy person about this.

I have tried all the alternatives you suggest, including the MYOB community, 
without success.  I recall a few years ago a member of WAMUG sounded as though 
he had good experience in MYOB and was hoping he would pick up my initial email 
and respond.  Sadly, I cannot recall his name though.

I’ve been using MYOB for years and work alongside a firm of accountants who 
also use MYOB, so I cannot really move to another system.  Also, I really do 
not have time on my hands to learn a different system before the end of this 
month.

I guess I’ll continue hunting for someone to assist me.  Many thanks again for 
taking the time to reply to me Neil.

Cheers
Jewels

> On 19 Jun 2019, at 1:00 PM, Neil Houghton  wrote:
> 
> Hi Jewels,
> 
> First off - I do not have any experience of MYOB - so this is just more 
> general thoughts on your problem.
> 
> I run my own SMSF and do my own investing and accounting (except I need an 
> independent audit) but I am not an accountant (pre-retirement I was an 
> engineer.)
> 
> Since I try and do everything paperless, I have had to learn how to interface 
> with the ATO to lodge tax returns, do TBAR reporting etc (but no payroll 
> reporting).
> 
> 
> So some thoughts:
> 
> MYOB Resources:
> I presume you have already checked out the MYOB resources on this:
>  seems to be the MAC specific help centre 
> and 
>  seems to cover STP 
> and gives step by step instructions for the MAC which SEEM quite simple - 
> though I realise ( and have experienced) that things often become more 
> complicated when you actually try and follow simple instructions ;o(
> I also see that the MYOB community has an STP Q page 
>  
> which includes MAC related Q
> I also see that they offer online support and live chat options
> 
> STP alternatives:
> I have no idea how big an organisation you run or how committed you are to 
> MYOB. If you already have a firm commitment and a lot of time/effort invested 
> in your MYOB accounts then I can see that persisting with MYOB and using it 
> for STP is probably your preferred option.
> I notice that if you have four or less employees, the ATO is offering no 
> cost/low cost STP solutions: 
> 
> This may not be an option/choice for you but I mention it because I took a 
> similar path with my SMSF - my accountant died and, rather than find a new 
> accountant, I decided I was happy doing the accounts myself (I pretty much 
> did this anyway - the accountant just checked it and lodged the return). I 
> had decided against dedicated SMSF software (tried it, didn’t like it) and 
> have used a series of Excel workbooks to handle everything ( not an approach 
> I would suggest for most but it works for me) - so my problem was how to 
> actually lodge the returns myself. A similar ATO webpage for SMSF reporting 
> solutions led me to find a free online accounting system which allows me to 
> lodge the tax returns direct to the ATO. I don't use this system for my 
> accounting (still with Excel) I just enter my return figures manually the 
> lodge the return. I see that they also say that they offer STP - see 
>  however this is 
> not a recommendation - my only experience with them is to lodge my annual 
> SMSF return which works fine for me - I have no idea how their STP would work 
> for you. I have also found their systems can change from year to year - last 
> year I had to move from browser based to their desktop app and install Java - 
> and not just the standard OSX deployment - from memory Java Runtime 
> environment (JRE) and Java Development Kit (JDK) were required.
> As I say, this may have no