MYOB

Stocktake with MYOB AccountRight.

Export the Inventory Count Sheet from MYOB and load it into the stocktake — the spreadsheet as it comes, not saved as something else first. Count with scanners. The variance report puts what your accounts say next to what was actually on the shelf, line by line, and tells you which of the two is missing a part.

Start to finish

What actually happens.

Five steps, and the only file you handle is the one MYOB already gives you. If you are working out how to run the count itself, that is a separate guide.

Export the Inventory Count Sheet from MYOB

It is a standard AccountRight report — the one with nine rows of your own letterhead at the top and the items starting further down. Save it as .xlsx and that is the whole of your side of it.

Load it into the stocktake, as it comes

On the portal dashboard, "Your accounting file", choose MYOB AccountRight — Inventory Count Sheet (.xlsx) and pick the file. No converting to CSV, no deleting the letterhead, no moving columns into the right order.

The portal finds the columns by reading the headings Item No. and On Hand, not by counting across to column B and column D. That is on purpose: hard-coded positions work on the export in front of you and break on the next version of the report, or the moment somebody adds a column.

Check the preview before anything is saved

You see the row count and the first rows read out of the file before you commit. If it is the wrong report you are told so in those words — could not find an "Item No." and "On Hand" heading in that file — rather than getting a silent import of nothing.

Loading a file replaces the one before it, because two exports taken at different moments describe a shelf that never existed. And nothing you load here changes a count. It is the other half of the comparison; the counts stay exactly as the operators made them.

Count

Scan the bin, scan the part, say how many. Your people, your aisles, however many days it takes. Nothing about the count changes because a MYOB file is loaded — the operator never sees an expected quantity, which is the point. A number on the screen is a number people count towards.

Read the variance

Part by part: what the file expected, what was counted, and the difference. On screen, printable, and exported to CSV with part number 000731 still spelled 000731 when Excel opens it.

The variance report

Six answers, and the ones nobody else reports are the useful ones.

Most systems will tell you what is short. The interesting part of a stocktake is usually the other four.

SHORT

Less on the shelf than the accounts say

The count found fewer than the file expected. Stock that has gone somewhere.

OVER

More on the shelf than the accounts say

The count found more than the file expected.

AGREE

Counted, and the figures match

Worth being able to see, and worth being able to filter out in one click when you are working through the ones that do not.

MISSED

In the file, never counted

The accounts expect these and nobody scanned them. Either they are gone, or nobody went and looked — and the difference matters. This is the report that decides whether a stocktake is actually finished.

UNKNOWN

Counted, and not in the file

Found on the shelf, and the accounts do not know it exists.

ORPHAN

In the file, and not a part we have

Reported separately rather than thrown away, because it cannot honestly be compared with a count of anything. Usually a part that was never loaded.

The thing you will hit first

1,746 items, and 1,655 of them are at zero.

That is our own MYOB file, not an example we made up. A count sheet lists the whole catalogue, and most catalogues are mostly discontinued.

Keep all of it and ninety-one lines that matter are buried in sixteen hundred that say the accounts had none and nobody counted any. So leave out items the accounts have at zero on hand is ticked by default when a MYOB file is loaded.

Nothing is lost by leaving them out. Count something the accounts hold at zero and it still appears — as counted, and not in the file, which is the same finding in different words and arguably the clearer one. The lines that were left out download as their own CSV if you want to look at them.

The honest bit, and there are three parts to it.

There is no live connector into MYOB, and we will not pretend otherwise. Nothing logs in to your accounts. You export a file and you load it, and that is the entire link between the two systems.

It is one-way. We read your file and report the difference. We do not write an adjustment back into MYOB, and nothing we do can alter your accounts. What you do about the variance is your accountant's call, made in MYOB, where the audit trail is.

Counts are whole numbers. MYOB will happily hold 13.8 of something — metres of cable, kilos of powder — and the file will say 13.8. A scanner cannot enter that, so the closest a count gets is 13 or 14, and the line reads short or over every single time. If you stock anything in decimals, take those lines out of the file before you load it, or know which ones they are when you read the report. Decimal counting is on the list and is not built — and a variance figure that can never be right is worse than no figure at all.

Not on MYOB

Xero, QuickBooks, Reckon, Cin7, SAP Business One, or a spreadsheet.

MYOB's count sheet is the one we have built for by name, because it is the one we are asked for most. Everything else loads as CSV, and two columns is usually all it takes.

2 COLS

Part number, quantity on hand

Any stock or inventory export that can produce those two columns will compare. Tick or untick "first row is a header" and the preview shows you what it read before anything is saved.

3 COLS

Part number, bin location, quantity on hand

If your system holds stock by location, use this and the variance comes back by bin as well as by part — which is the difference between "we are twelve short" and "we are twelve short in aisle four".

Not sure your export will do it? Send us the file. We will tell you whether it loads and what the columns need to be, before you book anything. A real export from your own system beats any amount of guessing on either side. Send it through →

Before you ask

The questions this page gets.

Do I have to load an accounting file at all?

No. A stocktake works perfectly well without one — you get totals by bin, by site, by operator, and a report of what was missed. The accounting file is only there if you want the count compared against what the books think you have. Load it before the count, during it, or after it is finished; it makes no difference to the counting.

Which MYOB report is it, exactly?

AccountRight's Inventory Count Sheet, saved as .xlsx. If you have a different report with an Item No. column and an On Hand column it will very likely load too, because the portal looks for those headings rather than for fixed columns. If it cannot find them it says so and imports nothing.

Can you write the adjustment back into MYOB?

No, and we are not planning to. Writing to somebody's accounts is a different kind of responsibility to reporting a difference, and the adjustment belongs where the audit trail is. You get the variance on screen, printed, or as a CSV, and it goes into MYOB the way your accountant wants it to.

What happens to a part in the file that we have never heard of?

It is kept and reported, not thrown away — under in the file, and not a part we have. It is stock the count could never have found, and that is worth knowing. Most of the time it means the reference data was loaded before the last batch of new items went into MYOB.

Does loading a file change anything we have counted?

Never. The counts are what the operators scanned, and nothing in this part of the portal touches them. Load a file, load a different one over the top of it, or load none at all — the counts are the same either way. A count is only ever changed by the person who made it, and a deleted one leaves its row behind so an admin can see that a figure was withdrawn.

What does it cost?

The comparison is part of the stocktake, not an extra. Software is $66 a scanner with a $110 minimum, per stocktake, and sites cost nothing. There is no annual licence and nothing to cancel. See the pricing.

For bookkeepers, accountants and MYOB advisers

If you do this for other people's businesses.

A client who counts once a year does not own scanners and should not buy any. Between you and us that is a solved problem, and you keep the client.

You stay the adviser

We supply the scanners and the software and set them up. We do not do the counting, we do not do the accounting, and we do not go looking for the rest of your client's work. Thirty-five years of selling barcode systems and we have never wanted to be anybody's bookkeeper.

One stocktake, one invoice

Priced per counting event, not per year. A client who counts at 30 June pays once, in June, and owns nothing in July. Hire the scanners for the week and that is the whole of it — there is no subscription for you to explain, chase or cancel.

You get it back in a shape you can use

The variance as a CSV, part numbers intact, in the same week the count happened. Short, over, never counted, and counted but not in the books — separated, so the write-off conversation starts from evidence instead of a total.

How to try it without risking a client. Send us one real export — a client's or your own — and we will tell you whether it loads and what comes back. It takes us about ten minutes. If you would rather see it working first, ask for a look at the portal with our own 1,746-line file in it.

What we pay, and who we pay it to. We do not run a partner programme and there is no tier to reach. What there is: send us a client, and we will take it off their first stocktake — so the saving shows up on the invoice you hand them, with your name on the reason. If you would rather it came to you instead, say so and it will, disclosed to your client in writing, because the alternative is not a position we would put you in.

Ask before you send the work and you will get the actual figure in an email the same day. It is a real number, it is not a percentage that moves with the size of the job, and it does not change because you asked twice.

Send us your count sheet.

One real MYOB export, and we will tell you exactly what the comparison gives back — before you commit to anything, and before your count is a week away.

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