Important changes in AccountRight 2020.2

AccountRight 2020.2 is more secure and easier to use - especially when wrapping up payroll at the end of the financial year. Here’s what you need to know.

Microsoft no longer supports some of the backend technology (SQL Server CE 3.5) that AccountRight uses. As a result of this decision:

• we’ve removed the ability to check in, check out or synchronise an online company file.
• when you back up an online company file, any other users that are signed on to the file will now have to sign out.

These changes ensure that your accounting software isn’t exposed to the risk of unsupported, obsolete technology. Indeed, some users have raised just this point with us.

Changes to how you back up

We know that creating a backup might be a hard habit to break, so you still have the option to backup your company file, if you want.

However, another change we’ve had to make as a result of the Microsoft announcement is to the way backing up works in online company files. From AccountRight 2020.2 onwards, nobody will be able to work on the file during a backup.

But don’t worry, when you start backing up, you’ll receive a message letting you know who else is signed in.

This gives you a chance to let the other users know they need to save their work and sign out. Once you start the back up, anyone who is signed in will be signed out.

Your data held through MYOB is highly secure in state-of-the-art data centres and cloud servers. These facilities automatically back up your data online weekly, retaining these for 6 months from the backup date.

No more checking in and out...

In previous versions of AccountRight, you could choose to temporarily work offline with your company file. In AccountRight, working offline means that you ‘check out’ the file to your computer—this locks the online file from being modified by others, although they can still view the file.

From AccountRight 2020.2 onwards, we’ve removed the ability to check out or check back in your file. We've done this because Microsoft is no longer supporting the technology that enables you to do this. Your business data is too sensitive to be exposed to unsupported, obsolete technology.

Working offline also means that you miss out on many features that are only available when you work online. 

So, when you open AccountRight 2020.2 or later, you’ll notice that options to check in and check out your file are no longer available in the File menu or in the status bar menu. 

Because of this change, we recommend that you check in any checked out company files prior to updating to AccountRight 2020.2 or later.

...so no more syncing

With the removal of checking in and checking out, there’s no need to synchronise anything.

Syncing was a resource hungry process where changes to an online company file were copied to a file on your computer. It was like trying to maintain the same information in two places.

This process relied on the same technology as checking in and checking out, so we’ve removed it. Besides, your online company file will still be accessible from anywhere, anytime, and will always be up to date.

This change means the sync option has been removed from both the File menu and status bar.

Simpler end of payroll year

Australia only

There are some exciting, time-saving changes coming to payroll that’ll make your end of year a breeze.

For starters, you won’t need to install a compliance update to get the new tax tables. Let’s say that again...no need to load new tax tables.

From AccountRight 2020.2 onwards, the right tax tables will be used based on the pay date. So if you process a pay on June 30, the 2019-20 tax tables will be used. Process a pay on July 1 and the 2020-21 tax tables will apply. Hard to believe it ever worked any different.

This also means you won’t need to close (roll over) the payroll year. Not only is this a time-saver, but it means you can make adjustments in the previous payroll year.

Therefore, both these options will be removed from AccountRight.

And finally, because STP finalisation has replaced the need to prepare payment summaries, we’ve removed the Prepare Payment Summaries function from the Payroll command centre.

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