MYOB and Quickbooks have made incredible development over the last few years. This has enabled what was previously full-time bookkeeping and accounting roles, to ones that can be performed in a couple of days per week.
This is great for most small and medium size businesses but let's face it, once you reach a certain size there are some limitations that may require you to step up to the next level of software. MYOB and Quickbooks are off-the-shelf packages that try to be all things to all businesses.
On the whole, they do a pretty good job of it and due to their popularity, there is a whole industry of IT developers that have written add-on products to integrate with your file to provide more comprehensive features where the off-the-shelf software has shortcomings. These add-on products are authorised to integrate with the original files and address such areas as:
- Cashflow forecasting
- Detailed budgets by job
- More comprehensive inventory control (ie. serial number scanning)
- Mobility solutions to enable you to produce invoices remotely direct from your software
- Setup excel reports where the cells read directly from your data file
- Consolidation tools that read multiple company files and perform automatic integration
If you think your company has outgrown MYOB or Quickbooks you should first have a good look at all of the add-on products available. The next step up from these off-the-shelf packages often requires an initial investment of over $10,000 and substantial annual fees whereas most of the add-on packages available are usually less than $1,000.
