Filemaker Pro to MYOB Premier

[danbeebee]

Hi Guys,

The company I'm buying are using "Filemaker Pro" which I'm really not a fan of and don't intend on using.

I'm going to be using MYOB Premier. Has anyone made the switch to and from the above mentioned packages or have any advice as to what would make the changeover less painful?

I know I can manually add customer cards and historical data but they've been trading for 10 years and certainly don't have the time to sit there and key data!!

[Warren Cottis]

Hi

Some more information would help ... if you are going to use the data for marketing I would bypass MYOB totally and export straight into some decent CRM software like Salesforce. Then you only have to enter the data into MYOB as you actually have a sale which will presumably be only a percentage of the database.

Regardless, MYOB support is cheap and if there is a way they will tell you though I still wouldn't use MYOB as my marketing database

[danbeebee]

The current owners purchased the wrong system. They really needed an accounting package such as Premier but managed to get hold of Filemaker Pro and just continued to use it...sadly!

I'm not after a CRM or any type of marketing software. The basic contact management in Premier is more than sufficient. I'll just need to bring over customer details and whatever financial data they have in there.

The more and more I look into it the more I realise that it's unlikely I can export data via CSV which is what I'd like to do.

[David Head]

FileMaker Pro is capable of exporting data in csv and a range of other formats. Whether it will be useful to you will depend on the data structure in the FileMaker Pro database and the structure required for import into MYOB. I can assist if required.

[Adam Randall]

Sometimes the only way to do it is to run two side by side for a while, I did that after going from MYOB to Quickbooks.

The only thing that will cause problems here is late payers which mean you have to keep your old system open for longer unless you rewrite all your invoices or can find an easy way to import.

Should be easy to import companies and contacts into MYOB (relatively & its still time consuming)

Recreate the Chart of accounts in MYOB and import all products via CSV if required.

MYOB is very good at importing/exporting data through CSV unlike Quickbooks which is harder to transfer anything into or out of.

The bigger the company, the more likely it will be worth your while to get a contractor or other business to do it for you.

What I mean by that is 50 companies might take a day to recreate by hand, 5,000 and you will be there till next christmas, so the benefits of getting someone who knows what they are doing is greater.

[@HeatherSmithAU]

Hi Danbebe,

I have imported from other databases into MYOB.

As mentioned earlier you can export from databases in csv format and import into MYOB.

This is the order you need to import the data into MYOB. After each import back-up the file, and check the MYOBLOG. After each import the MYOBLOG will overwrite the last one, so you need to check it each time. Importing data To avoid import errors, the data must be imported using the sequence below. After each import, read the import confirmation dialogue box and if necessary, check the MYOBPLOG.txt error log.

Tax Code List – Non-consolidated Codes must be imported before Consolidated Codes. (Note I believe tax codes has to go in before the account list – though the support note has it the other way around)
Accounts – We recommended you don’t import the Balances. Before importing any other data, manually determine and enter the account Opening Balances.
Cards – If your customer cards include a linked Salesperson, import your employee cards first.
Jobs – If you use jobs in any of your transactions, you will need to import them before those transactions.
Items, Activities, then Activity Slips. Immediately after importing your items, use Count Inventory to enter your item balances as at the new data file’s Conversion Date.
Purchases and Sales – Item purchases must be imported before the item sales.
Disbursements and Receipts – Import both Spend Money and Receive Money transactions.

Unless the Pay Bills or Receive Payments export files were created with another application, they cannot be imported and will need to be manually entered.
General Journals.

Once you have done all of that - you can put your opening balances in.

Now if you are looking for CRM that fully integrates with MYOB - look at yougrow (remember to mention my name 'Heather Smith' as there is a commission/finders fee in there!) I have heard a lot of positive comments about it - but you will need to be prepared to pay for it.

Feel free to get in touch if I can be of further assistance.