A company can be connected to its MYOB AccountRight company file. Once it is, a claim you have served can be raised as a tax invoice in your own books, payments recorded against that invoice in MYOB come back to the claim, and a head contractor can record the payment schedules they issue as bills. Nothing is sent to MYOB until somebody confirms it.
Before you connect
Connecting is done from the company's Settings page, on the MYOB card, by an owner or admin of the organization. MYOB is open to some organizations ahead of the rest, so if your company's settings have no MYOB card, contact support. Four things have to be true first:
- You sign in to MYOB as an Administrator of the company file. MYOB refuses anyone else. If you are not one, ask whoever is to connect it.
- The company file is an online file. A file kept on your own server (AccountRight Server Edition) cannot be reached, so it cannot be connected.
- The organization and the company file are Australian. New Zealand files cannot be connected yet, and a file that turns out not to be Australian is refused after you sign in to MYOB.
- You have two-factor sign-in turned on. Connecting MYOB requires it of every member of the organization from then on, and that stays in place if MYOB is later disconnected. See when two-factor sign-in is required.
Choose Connect MYOB, sign in to MYOB, approve the connection and pick the company file. The card then shows the file's name and its lock date as it was when you connected: MYOB refuses anything dated before that date, and it can only be changed in MYOB. Sending anything checks the file's current lock date.
If category tracking is turned on in the file, it still connects, with a warning. The platform does not set categories on what it creates yet, so check them in MYOB.
One accounting system, one file
A company uses one accounting system. A company connected to Xero has to disconnect Xero before it can connect MYOB, and the other way round.
A company is connected to one company file. To move it to a different file, disconnect the first one, then connect the new one.
A company file can be connected to one company. If you connect a file that another company in the organization already holds, the platform refuses it. MYOB also cuts off a file's earlier connection when the same MYOB login connects it again, so that other company may need reconnecting afterwards. The same thing happens if a file is refused after you have signed in to MYOB: any earlier connection your MYOB login made to that file stops working.
Setting up MYOB
The MYOB setup card lists what is still to set before a claim can be raised as an invoice. Only owners and admins can change it.
Retention accounting decides how retention reaches your books:
- Recognise on claim. The full certified value is income when the claim is certified, and the retained portion sits in Retention Debtors as money still owed to you.
- Defer to release. Only the amount payable now is income. The retained portion is held as a liability and becomes income when it is released.
This choice locks once the first document has been sent to MYOB under it, because changing it afterwards would change how documents already in your books were posted. If it needs correcting after that, contact support. A company that has already posted to Xero under one of the two keeps that choice for MYOB.
Accounts. Each choice needs its own accounts from your chart:
- Sales, for the claimed work.
- Retention Debtors, for retention still owed to you.
- Cost of Goods Sold, where a written-off retention balance is expensed, under Recognise on claim.
- Retention Defect Liabilities, for the retention you are holding as a liability, under Defer to release.
If your chart has no Retention Debtors or Retention Defect Liabilities account, Create this account in MYOB creates one, under the header account you choose.
Tax codes. Choose which of the file's tax codes each claim line's GST treatment becomes: Standard GST, GST free and No GST. The platform checks the code's rate in MYOB against the claim's before it sends anything.
When the tax invoice is raised is either On certification or When the claim is served. It decides when a claim can first be sent and the date suggested for its invoice, and it never locks. Under On certification, a claim waits for its payment schedule, or for the deadline to respond to pass without one. Under When the claim is served, it can be sent as soon as it is served, and corrected if the schedule certifies something different.
Linking customers and suppliers
Every head contractor you invoice needs a MYOB customer card, and on a company that issues payment schedules, every subcontractor needs a MYOB supplier card. The MYOB customers and MYOB suppliers cards match your counterparties to the cards already in the file, by ABN first and then by name.
- Link N confident matches links every match on ABN or exact name at once.
- A close match on name is offered as a suggestion, and nothing is linked until you confirm it. Where several cards in the file share an ABN, nothing is linked automatically and you choose one.
- Choose a MYOB customer (or supplier) links a counterparty by hand, and Unlink undoes it.
- Create in MYOB creates a new card in the file for a counterparty that has none.
An invoice or bill cannot be sent for a counterparty that is not linked.
Sending a claim to MYOB
On a claim you have served, the MYOB panel offers Send to MYOB. It shows the invoice before anything is sent: its subtotal, GST and total, MYOB's GST beside the claim's where the two differ, and the invoice date. Owners, admins and members can send a claim.
The invoice date is yours to choose. It is the date GST is attributable on. The platform suggests one: the date the payment schedule was received, if one was; otherwise the date the claim was served or the date the deadline to respond passed, depending on when you chose to raise the invoice. Change it if your books need another date.
What lands in MYOB:
- One tax invoice, raised from the claim's certified values, or from its claimed values where no payment schedule has been recorded. The work is grouped into one line for each account and tax code, under the job's name, and the retention comes off on lines of its own. The claim itself is where the items are listed. Each line posts to the account your retention accounting needs, so under Defer to release only the amount payable now is income.
- MYOB numbers the invoice. The claim's number and the contract's reference go in the customer's PO number, so the two can be matched.
- The total is always the claim's total, but the GST can differ by a few cents. MYOB works out GST for each tax code rather than for each line, so it can state slightly more GST than the claim. When it does, the panel shows both figures. Report MYOB's figure from your own books.
- Nothing is attached. The claim itself stays with paymentclaims.ai, which is still the document you served. A payment claim and a tax invoice are different documents, as why a payment claim is not a tax invoice explains.
Once it is in MYOB, the panel shows the invoice number, its total, what is outstanding and MYOB's own status, with a link to MYOB's PDF of the invoice. Tax invoices in the sidebar lists every claim's invoice in three groups: those that need attention, those not yet in MYOB, and those issued. Below them, MYOB activity records everything the platform has done in MYOB for the company over the last 12 months, newest first: every invoice, correction, bill and write-off journal, whether it went through, and any invoice it later found changed or deleted in MYOB. A failure stays in the history after it is fixed, and the history stays after the company disconnects.
When a claim cannot be sent
The panel says why, and what to fix. The common reasons:
- No payment schedule has been recorded yet, under On certification. Wait for the schedule, or for the deadline to respond to pass, after which the claim can be invoiced at its claimed values.
- The setup is incomplete, or a tax code chosen in settings is no longer in the file, or no longer at the claim's rate. Fix it on the MYOB setup card.
- The head contractor is not linked to a MYOB customer. Link them on the MYOB customers card.
- The date is in a locked period. MYOB refuses anything dated before the file's lock date. Choose a later date, or ask whoever keeps the books to reopen the period in MYOB.
- The claim already has a tax invoice, in MYOB or in Xero. A claim has one tax invoice.
- The connection has stopped working. See when a connection breaks.
If MYOB's answer is lost on the way back, the panel says the invoice needs attention and the platform looks for it in MYOB before it would send it again, so the claim is not invoiced twice.
When MYOB refuses an invoice, or the platform cannot confirm what happened to one, owners, admins and members are emailed once about it, with what to do. The same goes for a bill.
When an invoice is changed or deleted in MYOB
Each time the platform reads an invoice, it checks it against what MYOB stated before.
- Changed in MYOB. Somebody edited the invoice in MYOB after the platform raised it. The claim panel and Tax invoices mark it Changed in MYOB and say what moved. The platform adjusts nothing and offers no correction, because a correction puts right a claim that changed, not an edit made in MYOB. Check whether the claim and the invoice still agree.
- Deleted in MYOB. The panel marks it Deleted in MYOB and shows what MYOB last stated. The platform stops reading its payments, so record any payment on the claim yourself. The invoice is not raised in MYOB again from here.
- Found in MYOB again. If a deleted invoice turns up in MYOB again, its payments are read from MYOB again, and a payment you recorded on the claim yourself stops counting while the invoice is in MYOB. If MYOB does not have that payment, record it in MYOB.
Owners, admins and members are emailed once when an invoice is found changed or deleted in MYOB. These emails, and the ones about a refused or unconfirmed invoice, are switched off with Accounting system problems on your account page, or from the link in the email.
Correcting an invoice
If the claim's certified values change after the invoice was sent, for example because the payment schedule was corrected, the panel marks the invoice out of date and offers Correct the invoice. It shows what will change before anything is sent, in one of two ways:
- Correct in MYOB updates the invoice in place to the claim's certified values. It keeps its number. This is used where the company file allows a transaction to be changed.
- Reverse and raise again credits the invoice in full with a credit note, settles the credit note against it, and raises a new invoice for the certified values. The new invoice gets a new number. This is used where the file is set to reverse transactions rather than change them, where MYOB does not say or will not allow the change, or where the invoice is dated in a locked period.
An invoice with money applied is never changed from here. If MYOB shows a payment or credit already applied to it, the platform refuses either correction. Remove the payment or credit from the invoice in MYOB and correct it here again, or adjust the invoice in MYOB yourself. A correction dated in a locked period is refused too, naming the lock date.
How payments come back
Once a claim has a tax invoice in MYOB, MYOB is where its payments are recorded. Apply the customer payment or credit to the invoice in MYOB as you normally would. Each one appears in the claim's Payment panel as a payment of its own, marked MYOB, carrying MYOB's receipt or settlement number, once the platform next reads the invoice. It reads it regularly, and again whenever the claim or Tax invoices is opened.
While the claim has a live invoice in MYOB, payments cannot be recorded on it by hand, because the same money would be counted twice. An invoice deleted in MYOB is no longer live, so its payments are recorded here. A payment that came from MYOB is changed in MYOB rather than here. If a payment's date is changed in MYOB and its amount stays the same, the new date shows the next time the claim is opened. A payment you recorded here before the invoice reached MYOB stops counting once it does, so apply that payment to the invoice in MYOB too.
A credit note the platform raised itself to reverse an invoice is not a payment, and never appears in the panel.
Retention write-offs
When retention you were owed will not be recovered and you record a write-off on the contract page, Send to MYOB posts it to your books as one general journal, so Retention Debtors stops counting money you cannot get back.
The confirmation shows both sides of the journal in your own accounts before anything is sent. The written-off amount comes out of Retention Debtors and goes to Cost of Goods Sold, or, under Defer to release, to Retention Defect Liabilities. The journal moves no cash and bills nobody. Its date is the day the write-off was recorded unless you change it, and it cannot be before the file's lock date.
The journal carries no GST. Under Recognise on claim, GST may already have been paid on the retention you are writing off, and the confirmation says so: the platform does not make any GST adjustment for it, so ask your accountant.
Reversing a write-off that is in MYOB asks you to confirm first, then deletes its journal in MYOB before the write-off is removed, because MYOB has no way to void a journal. If the journal is dated in a locked period, the reversal is refused until whoever keeps the books reopens the period. If the file does not allow transactions to be deleted, reverse the journal in MYOB yourself, then contact support to clear the write-off here. If the company is now connected to a different file, delete the journal in the file it was posted to, then contact support.
A write-off that already has a journal in Xero is not sent to MYOB as well, and the other way round, so it is never written off twice.
Bills for payment schedules you issue
If your company issues payment schedules to subcontractors, it can also record what each issued schedule certified as a bill from the subcontractor in its own MYOB file. Set up bills once on the MYOB setup card, under Bills for payment schedules you issue: the account subcontract work is a cost in (Subcontract costs), and the liability account for the retention you hold (Retention Creditors). A bill also needs the three tax codes under Tax codes on the same card, the ones a claim uses.
Once a schedule is issued, the claim's Bill in MYOB panel offers Send bill to MYOB, which shows the bill and its date before anything is sent. Work is at the amounts you certified and the retention you withheld comes off against Retention Creditors. Nothing is attached and nothing is sent to the subcontractor: recording a bill is not serving the schedule or paying it.
A schedule has one bill, in MYOB or in Xero, never both. A schedule you recorded as issued outside the platform is not sent, because its bill is most likely in your file already.
A file connected before bills could be sent has to be reconnected, by an Administrator of the file, to approve the two extra permissions bills need. Its invoices keep working in the meantime. The head contractor's side of a schedule is covered in its own doc.
When a connection breaks
A connection can stop working for one of three reasons. A daily check finds it, owners and admins are emailed unless they have turned off Accounting system problems, and the MYOB card and the claim panel say which:
- MYOB no longer accepts the connection's authorisation. It may have been removed at MYOB, or gone unused for too long.
- The company file was connected again with the same MYOB login, which cut this connection off. That happens, for example, when the same person connects the file to a second company.
- The connection is missing a permission the platform needs.
Nothing can be sent to MYOB until it is fixed. In each case the fix is the same: an Administrator of the company file chooses Reconnect MYOB on the MYOB card. Nothing already in MYOB is affected.
Disconnecting
An owner or admin can choose Disconnect MYOB on the MYOB card. The platform deletes its access to the file and keeps its record of what was sent there. MYOB gives apps no way to remove themselves, so to remove paymentclaims.ai from MYOB as well, sign in at secure.myob.com and remove it from your connected apps. Two-factor sign-in stays required for the organization after a disconnect.
A claim already invoiced in MYOB keeps that invoice. Its payments stop coming back once the file is disconnected, and they still cannot be recorded here by hand.
Who can do this
Owners and admins can connect, reconnect and disconnect MYOB, change the setup, and link customers and suppliers. Owners, admins and members can send claims, corrections, write-offs and bills to MYOB. paymentclaims.ai staff cannot do any of these on your behalf, including when they are helping set your account up.