What with my recent move to Mac-istan, I'd really like to be able to ditch my last two remaining PC dependencies, namely Visio and an accounting package which generally works well and has some remote comprehension of the vagaries of the irish tax system.
Thank you, and yes, I have looked at Gnucash. Or should I say no, thank you: it's unusable crud. Which is to say that it's based on Gnome - one of the primary reasons I switched to using a Mac in the first place, but more importantly, I just don't really want to use an accounting package which proclaims "any 2.1.x version might crash unexpectedly at any point during runtime", followed by hints on how to save your work regularly.
From an extensive trawl through the web, appears that outside some trivial packages, there are two main contenders: MYOB and Quickbooks for Mac. Most of the rest of the packages are either not double-entry or else are only barely functional at all, and what little functionality they have is directed at another country.
Actually, I'm just joking. There is a US version of Quickbooks for Mac, but not an Irish / UK version, which means that if you're a Mac user, you have but one choice: MYOB.
Not looking good
The trial download process is relatively painless and completely automated, which means that there's no need to wait for a human being at the other end to confirm your details. The package weighs in at 67Mb for MYOB Business v15, which took all of a couple of minutes to download.
But why version 15? The commercial version is version 16, which includes a number of things I might have considered very basic (bank reconciliation undo and printing remittance advice slips).
Installation was reasonably painless, but incredibly slow. 5900 files to install, and it looked like the system installed about 10 per second. I didn't time it, but was slightly taken aback by the speed.
Apart from the speed, the first thing that hits the casual user is the slightly ancient look-n-feel. Uh oh. It continues, and yes, the full package is a Mac Classic program, no less.
Ranting about this sort of thing is probably pointless, but it is worth pointing out that Max OS X has been available in one form or another since 1999 (desktop availability since March 2001). Worse still, because I'm using an Intel Mac, the whole thing is running under PPC emulation, and that's not good. It feels very sluggish overall, and the look-n-feel is pretty ugly. Did I mention that I never liked the Mac Classic look-n-feel? Well, I didn't ever and still don't. It's ugly, ok?
Payroll
The package's initial configuration is relatively straightforward. Ledger import is there, which is nice for my accountant, although they seem to want to call them "accounts" instead of "ledgers". Customer and Supplier imports too, all good. However, the payroll threw up a few surprises - the package seemed to think that company payrolls go from April to April. This was changed in Ireland in 2002 be aligned with the calendar year, so there is no excuse for MYOB not to support this now. The system then started asking for Tax District Name and Number and a Tax reference, and whether the company qualified for Small Employer's Relief. Relevant to UK, perhaps, but not Ireland. But it doesn't stop there: the entire payroll system is completely UK based, with not a hint of any hibernian influence.
So payroll is basically useless if you live in Ireland. That's just great.
MYOB in use
MYOB has an interface which is widely regarded as being very user friendly and simple for inexperienced people who have no desire to understand what goes on under the hood. The flip side of this is that accountants tend not to like it because it uses non-standard terms everywhere and, the argument goes, is difficult to do the sort of things that accountants like to do. I don't know - I'm not an accountant.
Like any sane accounting package, it uses a double booking system. If you add something to one ledger, you must subtract it from another. No surprises there. It also appears to have some hacks to support cash accounting instead of accrual accounting (the former deals with your book-keeping on the basis of money entering and leaving your bank account; the latter manages it all in terms of invoices sent and received. Accountants all use the latter, but cash accounting is handy for very small businesses when dealing with VAT obligations). My current package support cash accounting more-or-less natively, so this could be viewed as a mild regression.
Unlike my current package, MYOB has basic support for stock control. It's a nice extra, but to be honest, I really don't need it that much. Against that, however, MYOB Accounting has no support for foreign currency. It's supported in MYOB Accounting Plus, but that costs a bunch more sponduliques which I'm really not prepared to pay at the outset.
Overall, it's a competent accounting package which has options to do all of the normal sort of things that most accounting packages do. However, there's nothing in there that makes me want to upgrade. My current package is getting old and runs in XP under Parallels, but is MYOB going to solve the non-native package problem? I don't think so.
At a slightly more mundane level, MYOB appears to have all of the really irritating features which made me dislike MacOS 9 and before. Standard "OK" style dialog boxes don't go away if you press <ESC> or <Return>, which means navigating with your mouse if you want to make them disappear. Piles of notice-style dialog boxes pop up and play the squidgey OS X error noise. Thanks, but I really don't like packages which make noise, unless they're games.
MYOB's Response
I called up MYOB support about these issues, and they were both friendly and helpful. Native Intel OSX support would happen soon, but there were no plans for an Irish payroll system. No mention was made of carbonisation or migration to a cocoa interface, and the trial version was stuck at V15 for the time being, as the differences between V15 and V16 were pretty small overall.
Verdict
Installing a new accounting package takes time and effort - from dealing with supplier and customer lists, to customising invoices and remittance slips, to getting your nominal ledger descriptions and opening balances correct. Changing systems costs money and there needs to be good reasons for making changes.
I have a strained relationship with my current accounting package, but we appear to have achieved an uneasy peace over the past couple of years. Certainly, it would be an exaggeration to say that I love it in any way. So there is some motivation to upgrade, but only if I'm actually going to see a return on forking out a couple of hundred euros on something newer, particularly considering the effort involved.
MYOB has failed to impress. There's nothing outstanding about it and in its current form, it's little more than a side-grade from my current package. Certainly, there's no way I'm going to part with €375, particularly when the payroll module is useless and the user interface is going to antagonise me at every turn. I have to be honest, it's a bit much to expect to be able to realistically flog Mac Classic software in 2007.
Verdict: for accounting packages in Mac based businesses, you're going to end up using Parallels or else that old 486 in the corner. That sucks.
