MYOB AccountRight 2011: Upgrade issues

Bottom line: I can’t use the new version of MYOB!

I held off upgrading my business accounting package (MYOB) until the Christmas break. I wanted to have time to do the upgrade (MYOB suggested 1 hour outside normal work hours), and time to learn about some of the new features. I’m glad I held off — within a few days of releasing their v2011, they had released a service pack (SP) for it, addressing ‘issues’ presumably related to the upgrade process and things that just didn’t work once your MYOB files were upgraded.

So, come Boxing Day (December 26), I was relaxed enough to do the upgrade and had set aside half a day for it. I read through the Release Notes (yes, people actually read these!), which included the steps for the upgrade and what to do both before and after. I backed up my two MYOB files, installed v2011 and then the SP, as instructed. I upgraded my two MYOB files. All this took about 45 minutes or so.

And then I came to a screeching halt.

One thing that MYOB does when you do an upgrade (and about every 6 months thereafter) is activate and/or confirm your files and your installation of the software are legitimate. I don’t have an issue with that… as long as it works! But it didn’t work for me. And nor did a few other things.

Fortunately, I made a backup and didn’t uninstall v19, so I can continue to use that until MYOB open their customer support lines on Wednesday 28 December.

Here are my issues with this upgrade:

• I can’t confirm either of my MYOB data files via the internet. Without confirmation, I CAN’T USE MY OWN DATA. I have a legitimate installation of MYOB and pay almost $500 a year for their upgrade/support, yet I can’t access my own stuff and I can’t contact them as they’ve closed their support lines only a short time after releasing this new software. I understand that their staff need a Christmas break too, but even a skeleton staff would help — there must be many businesses that take advantage of the holidays to upgrade their business software. Also, there’s no ‘grace period’. Even Microsoft allow you to use their Office products for several days/instances before you must activate.
  
• I can’t confirm via phone either as the phone # and serial # is not displayed, as documented in the Release Notes. I just get a blank screen with a title.
  
• I couldn’t choose a network location for my library folder. I got error messages no matter what I put in for the network path. For example, I tried these \\<servername>, \\<servername>\myob (yes, that folder exists and is shared), and the IP address of my server, all as instructed. None worked, so I ended up choosing the default My Library.
• When I selected My Library, there’s no indication of the file path for the installation of your MYOB files and no option to change the location! What other software does this?? I only discovered the file path by doing a Windows search; the path in Windows XP is the Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents\MYOB… folder. (see this Support Note for the locations for other operating systems: http://myobaustralia.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/myobaustralia.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=33728&p_sid=JdhaHxMk&p_lva=33830) One user on the Forum said it most eloquently: “Libraries. Fixed location does not work for me and others. I want to keep my data where I want it. Remember it is my data, not yours. Makes backing up all my data simple.”

Other issues documented in the Release Notes are of concern:

• Many existing features in v19 and earlier are not yet available in v2011. I don’t use any of these listed in the screen shot below, but if I did, I’d be mightily annoyed with MYOB that they seem to have released a half-baked product. Perhaps they were under pressure to get it out before the end of the year. Personally, I’d rather they waited and got it right and did the proper testing before releasing software that LOSES features people have come to rely on.
  
• All your custom reports are gone. Phhttt. Gone. Just like that. And you can’t get them back or convert them — you have to set them up again. Platitudes like ‘…making this task a lot easier’ are worthless if you’re the poor bunny who relies on custom reports and has to set them all up again. I don’t have many — perhaps 6, only 1 of which I use regularly — but I’m still not happy that there’s no conversion option for these and that I’ll have to spend time setting them up again.
• User accounts become inactive and you are forced to assign users to roles. They sell the package I use to small businesses only and sell it as a single user system. Often the only person using MYOB is also the owner of the business. One user. So why is MYOB forcing these small businesses to use roles? That seems like overkill. Sure, I can understand it for their medium to large business and enterprise packages, where many people can be using the same MYOB file. But not for the single person small businesses.
• Any images you’ve used in your previous MYOB installations have to be relocated to a new folder and they CANNOT BE MORE THAN 200 KB is size! 200 KB? What year are we in — 1992??? What a ridiculous restriction. And there’s no explanation as to why, either.

Other potential issues reported on the MYOB Support Forum:

• It’s dog slow (I can’t confirm this as I can’t get into my files, but it’s a common thread on the forum; many users have reverted to using v19)

For all sorts of other issues, see the MYOB Support Forum topics on the November 2011 upgrade: http://community.myob.com/t5/AccountRight-November-2011/bd-p/AccountRighNovember2011Upgrade

I don’t think I’ll be trusting my business and personal accounts to the latest version of MYOB for some time… It’s WAY too buggy. I wonder if I can send them an invoice for the 6+ hours I’ve wasted today on their forums and trying to get their software to work.

Update: I decided to open the sample file in the latest version of MYOB, and did some quick speed tests against the same sample file in v19. Here are my results:

• Open Mary Jones’ card: v2011 – 10+ seconds; v19 – less than 1 second. (I re-opened it in the new version two or three times in case there was caching going on — each time it took more than 10 seconds to open)
• Open the Spend Money window: v2011 – 7 seconds; v19 – less than 1 second
• Enter a different date on the Spend Money window: Can’t overwrite existing and use periods as dividers in v2011, as you’ve been able to do in ALL previous versions of MYOB. You have to use ‘/’ separators or choose a date from the drop-down calendar. For those who do a LOT of data entry, this will frustrate the hell out of them.
• Entering time billing information takes forever…
• Generating an invoice: v2011 – 10+ seconds; v19 – 2 seconds
• Processing payroll: v2011 – 30+ seconds; v19 – less than 5 seconds

The program is definitely MUCH prettier. But its functionality and performance leave a LOT to be desired. Pretty NEVER trumps performance, in my book.

Update 27 December 2011: It took nearly 5 minutes to get my Desktop displayed after booting up and logging on this morning. I recall seeing something about slow boot times as a result of installing MYOB AccountRight 2011 in the forums yesterday, so will restart my computer again to see if that was a one-off. If it wasn’t, I’ll try a system restore back to where I was before I installed MYOB…. The restart was at normal speed, so I’ll hold off on that system restore.

[Links last checked December 2011]