MYOB Business Basics

Easy business and accounting software for small or home-based businesses

Thinking of running your business on dedicated business and accounting software?

Then MYOB Business Basics is a great place to start. You've probably been running some of your business on computer already - keeping track of income, expenses and GST in a spreadsheet, or issuing your tax invoices from a word processing program.

Well Business Basics brings all of your basic business functions together in one easy-to-understand application. MYOB Business Basics simplifies the way you quote, track and invoice your jobs, simultaneously tracking your transactions and GST, and providing you with over 70 reports and graphs to help you understand your business.

If you do your banking online, you can download your business bank and credit card statements and import them straight into MYOB Business Basics. Where the transactions match, they'll automatically appear as cleared - saving you the time and the tedium of line after line of manual bank reconciliation.

Setting up MYOB Business Basics for your business

Before you start, it's important that you have a clear idea of your business needs and the accounting information you want to track. For example, your main areas of income and how your customers pay for your goods and services.

You should plan right from the start to use Business Basics to handle your invoicing, so it's worth preparing a list of your customers and their outstanding balances (see below).

Up and running within 30 minutes

You should set aside about 30 minutes for the initial setup of your MYOB Business Basics company file. There's an Easy Setup Assistant to guide you step by step through the process. As with any task, it helps to have all the information you need close at hand before you begin.

You'll need to make a list of your accounts and their balances, including your cheque and credit card accounts, accounts for tracking income, and expenses such as office rent, utilities and advertising. If your accountant can provide you with an accounts list, or your accounts list is in another program, you can import it into MYOB Business Basics if it's in a tab-delimited or comma-separated format.

You should also make a list of your customers and their contact details. Again, if your customer list is in another program, you can import it into MYOB Business Basics if it's in a tab-delimited or comma-separated format.

If you employ staff, you should consider investing in a product with an integrated payroll such as MYOB Accounting Plus rather than MYOB Business Basics. An integrated payroll will save you hours of work a month, as well keep track of all your payroll obligations, so even if you have only one employee (and that could be you!) it's better to invest in the right product now. (Of course if your business expands, you can always upgrade your Business Basics product to something more advanced).

If you don't have all the information you need immediately at hand, don't worry; you can always go back and add the rest later. In the meantime, you can start using Business Basics.

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