Creating a new company file in MYOB

What is a company file?

With MYOB, all financial information about your business is saved in a file.

Each file is unique to each business. If you have more than one company, you will need an MYOB company file for each of them.

Before you start, you should have the following information ready:

• Your MYOB serial number.
  The serial number can be found on the CD sleeve.
• Your company’s business registration number
• Your company’s financial year end.

Of the three, the first and second can be changed after you create your data file. THe financial year end, however, cannot be changed.

Step 1 - Introduction

To create your new MYOB company or data file, launch MYOB. There are 5 options in the MYOB welcome screen, Open, Create, Explore, What's new and Exit. Click on Create to start the process

MYOB's New Company File Assistant guides you through setting up your company file in 6 steps. The first screen is an introduction. Click on Next

Step 2 - Company information

In the second screen, you will need your MYOB serial number, company name and business registration number, the last of which is a required field, i.e. it cannot be blank. If you are trying out MYOB, then you can leave the serial number blank. Note however that the trial version is valid for 30 days from the date you create your new company file.

Note that the company name and company number are used on your business documents like Invoice.

All other information is optional at this point, and can be entered later.

Step 3 - Accounting information

This is where you specify your accounting period, i.e. when your business closes it's accounts. Enter the year you wish to close your accounts, then select the last month, and the month you wish to start entering accounting data. The last, called Conversion month can either be the first month of the financial year, or any month after that if you are start using MYOB some time in between. Note though that you will not be able to enter any data prior to the Conversion month.

As an example, if your financial year is from 1st March 2012 to 28th February 2013, then enter 2013 in the first field, select February in the second field and March in the third field.

Step 4 - Confirmation

In the next screen, review the accounting information you entered in Step 3. If you wish to change the information, click on the Back button. If everything is in order, click the Next button

Step 5 - Accounts list

In MYOB, the Accounts List refers to your Chart Of Accounts. There are 3 options for you to choose from:

• A list provided by MYOB,
• Import your own list
• Build your own

The list provided by MYOB, although comprehensive, is not particularly suited for Asian businesses as accounts that are not relevant will be created, and you will need to do some clean up to avoid it being messy.

If you already have a chart of accounts that you would like to use, you can list it out in a tab delimited text file and import it into MYOB using the second option

On the other hand, if you prefer to define your accounts, select the third option - Build your own. With this option, MYOB creates a minimal number of accounts, some of which are required for MYOB, and others which can be edited or deleted if you choose

If you do decide to go with the list provided by MYOB, in the next screen, select your Industry as well as your Type of business. Note that the list of accounts shown changes as your selction changes.

Step 5 - Create your file

In the previous steps, you provided all the necessary information required to create your MYOB company file.

This step involves where you would like to save your company file. By default, MYOB will name the file using the company name you provided in Step 2, and will save it in the application directory, e.g. in C:\Accounting19 or C:\Premier13. You can change this if your prefer. Click on the Change button toedit the file name or the location where you would prefer to save the company file to.

Note that MYOB file names end with the extension "myo". This identifies the file as an MYOB company file. Do not change the file extension. Also, if you do change the location, make a note of where you are saving it to so you can find it later to open it.

Step 6 - Congratulations

That's it. Your new company file has been created and you can start using MYOB for your company's accounting

This how-to guide is also available as a video tutorial.
Creating a new company file in MYOB