MYOB Accounting 17

As with previous versions of the program, there are several flavours of Accounting alongside the standard version reviewed here. These range from the budget BusinessBasics to Accounting Plus, which includes multi-currency, payroll, professional time billing and advanced stock control features.

Many improvements are restricted to the Accounting Plus version, with changes to the standard version paling in comparison. We welcome the changes to Accounting's help files, which make it much easier to locate topics, and the fact that MYOB will now highlight potential spelling mistakes when you attempt to record a transaction.

But these are hardly the sort of features that will determine whether you should trust your company's finances to this application over others.

So is Accounting still the best option for small businesses? There is little in this release that will tempt upgraders, but even for those looking for their first accounting application, MYOB Accounting is no longer the relatively straightforward choice that it might have been a year ago.

Yes, it remains easy to use, but the landscape has changed. The similarly priced Microsoft Accounting offers multi-currency and payroll support (although the latter as a £10 per month add-on), as well as better Office integration. There's even a free version, which for many will be a better bet.

Author: Tom Gorham