21 May 2006

Progressing with MYOB

We're at the point where we want to start using MYOB as a production management tool. Previously we only used it as an accounting tool, and simply updated stocks from time to time. Needless to say this makes it difficult to allocate costs to products as one is basically expensing components in a given period. Over the last six months we've been getting all the components correctly coded and cross-referenced to all our production drawings, and getting bills of materials set up for all of our products. Now we're about to go live using it to 'create' electronic stock as a mirror of the actual workshop floor. This functionality is what makes MYOB so much more powerful than the competitor products in its class. Basically the equivalent SAGE product costs £20k minimum.

Over the last three days we've stock-checked about two thousand unique items (SKUs) and on Monday we go live.

But the bad news of course is that MYOB still does not like being networked. In practice we manage to keep about three users on line for about two hours between system crashes. More news to come in the next few weeks ! If I owned MYOB the networking issue is the one and only thing I'd have the development team working on.