Give your business an edge with AccountEdge
Updated December 23, 2015
Give your business an edge with AccountEdge
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
Pro
Overall Satisfaction with AccountEdge
I use AccountEdge for my company's accounting, including billing, accounts receivable, and retainers, accounts payable, and payroll. As a 'lone eagle,' I don't have any staff doing this, I do it myself. I started with it back in 1995, when it was called "MYOB" for "Mind Your Own Business." While the program is available both for Windows and Mac computers, I have always used it on a Mac. I have some clients who have used the PC version; I can work with their data file on my Mac without having to do special backups, because the data file itself is completely cross-platform compatible, unlike some competitive products.
Pros
- Some of my clients have had international activity. For them keeping track of transactions in currencies other than the US dollar has worked very well, though it does mean having to have a history of exchange rates handy to get the correct rate for a transaction date.
- The new "Retainers, Escrows, and Trusts" feature (since 2013) has been a welcome addition. I use it for clients who have prepaid for my services.
- I make extensive use of the ability to export reports to Excel templates. Creating an Excel table from the export file, and then using Pivot Tables, I can summarize data in ways that expand what AccountEdge can do. For example, I can summarize cash receipts by payment type, and tie to the Forms 1099-K that the credit card companies send.
- Another new feature I have started using is "Pay Payroll Liabilities." It provides an easy "check-off" of the taxes or other payables to specific agencies.
- I love the ability to custom-design the chart of accounts. In most circumstances having four levels of detail is sufficient. But sometimes it would be nice to have another level or two, especially for manufacturing businesses. And when a client has put something that should be a "Cost of Sales" account into the "Expenses" section, it would be nice to be able to change the account type to get it to the correct section, so that the income statement puts it in the right place.
- A feature I learned about some years ago can be very helpful if you discover that a correction needs to be made in a prior year — for example, sometimes a client will set up a purchase order, with a payment, and forget to convert it to a bill. If that conversion is done the next fiscal year, it puts the cash basis expense into the wrong year. But by "starting a New Fiscal Year" and choosing to go BACK a year (i.e., from 2015 to 2014) instead of the normal forward, you now can fix that mistake in the correct period. Then go back to the current fiscal year for ongoing transactions.
Cons
- My biggest frustration, and one that I've mentioned to Acclivity for many years, is that it only permits opening nine windows at a time (plus the home window). I hit that limit almost daily, and then I have to decide what do I close so I can complete the transaction that needed the "9th" window.
- The Accounts section includes two quick reports, "Analyze Profit and Loss" and "Analyze Balance Sheet. These can be filtered for the current month or any prior month in the current fiscal year. And that's fine most of the year, but at the beginning of the next year, when I haven't yet started the new fiscal year, these only go to December of the prior year. The regular reports for these can select "next year;" why can't these?
- It would be helpful if the journal entry number would have one or two additional digits available. For example, when I am entering journal entries for a client, I would like to use a number such as CPA2014001, CPA2014002, etc. to distinguish what I enter from the "automatic" entries that AccountEdge does. But that's one more digit than AccountEdge allows, so if I had over 100 adjustments, I would run out of entry numbers.
- If I didn't have AccountEdge, I would have to make do with Excel spreadsheets, or go back to paper, as I did before 1995, and I wouldn't be able to access client information as easily as I can here.
- It allows me to manage cash easily, so if clients are slow-paying, I can borrow funds to meet expenses, without incurring overdraft fees, until they come through.
A number of my clients use QuickBooks, mostly on PCs, so I'm quite familiar with what it does. I'm just glad I'm using AccountEdge for my own accounting, because it's more straightforward and doesn't create 'hidden' transactions. Some years ago, a client on QuickBooks discovered to her dismay that when she didn't buy the next year's payroll service, it put zeroes in the tax calculation! I know that was to "protect" her from using the wrong payroll tables, but she had written several pay periods before she noticed. I switched her to AccountEdge (MYOB at the time).
Priority AccountEdge Feature Ratings
AccountEdge Implementation
- Implemented in-house
I've used AccountEdge and its predecessor MYOB since the early 90s (version 1). Always the Mac version, though some of my clients have used the PC version.
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