MYOB LiveAccounts is a browser-based double-entry book-keeping system for the Australian market. It's aimed at small businesses with basic requirements (less than ten people for example). The name "live accounts" probably refers to the linked bank statement included in the monthly fee. This is a read-only link. MYOB Live Accounts will track what happens in your linked bank accounts, but it's can't initiate any transactions (such as paying a supplier). Bank account links are included in the price. They take a week to two weeks to setup. We use NAB: it works fine.

MYOB LiveAccounts provides an Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable module, a banking module, GL, a central contacts module and a reporting module. A payroll module was recently added. If it was not online, it would be a basic entry level small business accounting package, offering real double entry accounting and Australian localisation, probably costing around $400 (which would not include the links to bank accounts).

Compared with Xero:

Xero is a somewhat more sophisticated system, but it costs more. You would expect that MYOB Live accounts would see a constant flow of new features, since that's one of the main advantages of hosted solutions. However, apart from the introduction of Payroll, I have not noticed substantial functionality improvements.

The internet experience

Availability has been good: during business hours, we only experienced small periods of downtime. Speed of response has improved and is at least adequate. High volume data processing was initially a nightmare, mainly because the interface was not designed for it. There have been good improvements. It doesn't match a dedicated traditional PC client, but it's now adequate.

What you do get is strong multi-location support. Compared with traditional MYOB, this is a huge difference. Running traditional MYOB remotely is complex. Keeping it on a laptop is fraught with danger, and brings you back to a one-user system. For any small business which wants a small team to access the accounting system at multiple places, a web-based solution is very compelling. This is even more true of a business which has already embraced other cloud solutions such as gmail, Drop Box etc.

Invoices

You get to set up one default payment term; apart from that, you need to manually intervene when creating an invoice. An invoice can have multiple lines. It's possible to process partial payments, but when created an invoice has only one due date, which is fine for a simple system. There is no quote module, no customer-deposit functionality and no job support. GST and Australian compliance handling is good out of the box. Surprisingly, Xero also doesn't allow credit terms per customer.

Expenses

The Accounts Payable module is called "Expenses", which I find confusing since cash expenses are not booked in this module: that's "Spend Money" under Banking. In traditional MYOB, the AP modules seems to be called Payments. Which is also confusing. Perhaps I could suggest calling it "Accounts Payable". (Xero calls AR and AP by their correct names).

Receipts

You'd be mad not to link your bank account to MYOB LiveAccounts, since it costs nothing extra (a paper form must be mailed). When you do this, customer payments are matched against open invoices quite well. (Xero offers the same functionality, except that the form goes direct to the bank; MYOB handles the paperwork).

Payments

Cash expenses are booked as 'spend money", familiar to MYOB users.

Payments of invoices entered in the "Expenses" module are created in Expenses. You then pay externally to MYOB LiveAccounts. There is no EFT link: you can't instruct your bank to make payment from within LiveAccounts. But after you do make the payment, it will automatically appear in LiveAccount's bank statement, auto-reconciled with the payment journal created by the "Expenses" module.

Transfers: There's a bank transfer function, which creates entry waiting to match when the transfer shows up in the linked bank statement.

High volume data entry

I have not tested high volume data entry (sitting down to enter 50 supplier invoices, for example). Originally, MYOB LiveAccounts exited the invoice entry screens after each document entry, which was very annoying; this is fixed now, making repetitive data entry at least acceptable. Xero works nicely with keyboard entry.

Bank reconciliation

MYOB of all flavours has good bank reconciliation capabilities. Since LiveAccounts strongly encourages linked bank accounts, it's pretty easy. It automatically matches transaction where it can (such as payments received for invoices) and is effective. Manual reconciliations are also possible and the interface is sophisticated enough to allow correction of mistakes. The 'look and feel' is close to MYOB. Bank recs can get complicated; the LiveAccounts module is a success.

Home Page: The dashboard

The home page uses a few simple graphics to show the main expense categories, overdue invoices (AR aging) and bank balances. This is a screen where the keep-it-simple philosophy is clear. Xero is equivalent, but a bit more sophisticated.

Reporting

Reporting is basic. Reports are usually exported as PDFs. There is usually no export to Excel feature in the reports.Above all, It misses a cashflow report (which Xero does have). Some businesses will miss cash-based P&Ls (which the PC version of MYOB provides).

Data Export

Transactions can be exported to a spreadsheet. The format is designed to read well for humans, but it's very difficult to use for data processing. This is really dumb of MYOB. A simpler, record-based option would be greatly appreciated; a user could then work around reporting deficiencies.There is no API. It supports export to your accountant's MYOB, like the desktop versions.

Customer support

Customer support is good. I've used live chat a number of times. Response has been fast and effective; waiting times of less than a minute are typical (this is for the live chat option). Xero does not have live support. Xero's email response is fast but a live dialog with support who will log on to your system and investigate with you is much better; turnaround time for problem resolution is only minutes.

The Good

Enough similarity with MYOB to provide users with a feeling of comfort. $25 monthly fee includes live bank account links at no extra cost. Sufficient basic accounting functionality for a small business. Pricing model is not limited by how much you use it: some competing products charge differently according to how many invoices you generate per month. So it's cheaper than Xero. For Australian clients, the BAS reports are convenient.Dynamic connection to bank accounts is a huge plus over non-Australian competitors.
Support is quite fast and usually helpful.

The Bad

Slow and cumbersome user interface (although it is getting better). Reporting is clumsy, and results in non-interactive PDFs. No Statement of Cash Flow. Data export and import options are very limited. Invoice flexibility is almost not existent. You can't take prepayments or progress payments, or have different terms per customer. Many small businesses may grow in complexity faster than MYOB LiveAccounts is adding functionality.