MYOB dashboard rework catches businesses off guard as accounting giant defends changes

A major redesign to MYOB’s small business dashboard has caught some users off guard just as the Christmas trading period gets into full swing.

Payroll and accounting software provider MYOB has revamped its Essentials offering over several years, with the company pledging “new features and more frequent updates, improved workflows and a cleaner, mobile-responsive experience” on the updated platform.

MYOB states it has provided notifications of the most recent upgrades via email and within the program itself, alerting small business users of necessary pre-upgrade tasks.

The platform also offered online training videos, walking users through some of the more significant changes to payroll and menu settings.

But SmartCompany has learned of user concerns regarding the most recent upgrade, including the apparent removal of the prior ‘cash at hand’ listing in favour of a new ‘equity’ reading.

“There is now no visibility of cash at hand on the dashboard, and we are still yet to work out how this can be easily looked up anywhere in the ‘new look’,” said Phill Bevan, an advisor to vocational education and training providers.

“Hasn’t MYOB heard ‘Cash is king’?” he asked.

“I appreciate equity is important, but [do] MYOB’s UX designers think it is a good idea to hide the visibility of cash balances of every small business user, and replace it with empty space and a single equity reference?”

Bevan says the fresh banking menu has struggled to show the status of multiple accounts at once, making it difficult to get a quick read of its cash at hand.

The new look was also introduced without adequate warning, Bevan says, leaving him “furious”.

“The main user email address comes to me, and I use MYOB daily,” he claimed. “I had no awareness there would be a major change.”

Users vent on MYOB community forum

Other users have vented their concerns about the Essentials update on MYOB’s in-house user forum.

Subscribers have complained of separate issues impacting invoices, with one user complaining the system added the wrong date and invoice number when creating a new file.

“I do not understand how it can be that there has been a downgrade in usability with a purported system upgrade,” another user posted on Friday.

“MYOB Essentials used to be simple, quick, and easy. Now it is gawdy, tedious, and missing features that I took for granted.”

“I have started calling it the “Downgrade”, not upgrade,” a third subscriber wrote on Saturday. “It is a truly terrible and defect ridden product. How this was released to customers is beyond me.”

MYOB says upgrade will better suit business users

MYOB has backed its reworked dashboard, claiming the system is now better suited to the needs of business subscribers.

Collette Betts, MYOB’s Australian corporate affairs manager, says the decision to replace the cash-at-hand reading from the Essentials dashboard was the result of user feedback.

“The dashboard change is based on feedback that customers generally want to view their cash on hand on an account-by-account basis, as many businesses have bank accounts for things like GST or PAYG owing that they don’t want to see in any consolidated totals,” Betts told SmartCompany.

“Customers can easily see their latest bank account balances by selecting an account from the drop-down list on the dashboard or on the bank transactions screen.”

Subscribers still learning how to navigate the new MYOB landscape can access a set of how-to guides, she says.

While users like Bevan have filed complaints with MYOB about the new-look dashboard, the company says there are no current plans to allow subscribers to swap back to the prior version.

“As this update is part of our ongoing transition to a business management platform, users cannot pivot back to the previous generation product.”

However, Betts did leave the door open for further amendments down the line.

“Our business management platform evolution means that we will continue to iterate our product to best suit our customer needs, and so we welcome their feedback as our product evolves,” she said.

Accountants now used to significant platform changes

While a small number of business users have aired their concerns online, SmartCompany understands accounting professionals see such software upgrades as a frustrating necessity, with improvements to program performance initially counteracted by the time it takes to learn new systems.

The swap from annual upgrades, usually in the form of new CD packages, to cloud-based updates means that software providers can effectively roll out new patches whenever they see fit.

Nevertheless, accounting leaders have broadly welcomed the flexibility and power of cloud-based solutions, even if revamps force users and bookkeeping professionals to adjust to new processes.