Author Topic: OT: MYOB threaten to delete my records  (Read 4711 times)

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Online EEVblogTopic starter

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OT: MYOB threaten to delete my records
« on: October 08, 2020, 12:24:25 pm »
For those who don't know, MYOB is an online small business accounting system in Australia, the defacto standard here.
I just got notice that my account is shut down, presumably at my request, which of course I didn't.
I can't login to access any of my accounting/tax data except for invoices, two of which were unpaid because they failed to inform me my credit card had expired. So presumably that's the reason the account was shut down. Ok, fair enough. But I can't pay for those outstanding invoices, it doesn't let me!

And the attached email informs me that they don't hold backups of my data, and that they may take steps to "delete your file permanently from our servers after a short period. "
And of course I can't backup my data because I don't have access to it any more  |O

 :wtf:

How is a company like this still in business in this market?

AND they deleted my Facebook post on their page complaining about this!
« Last Edit: October 08, 2020, 12:27:32 pm by EEVblog »
 

Offline asmi

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Re: OT: MYOB threaten to delete my records
« Reply #1 on: October 08, 2020, 01:27:02 pm »
This is exactly why I use offline accounting system which is running on a laptop purchased specifically for this function and not used for anything else. And continue resisting attempts by QuickBooks to move me to online version. No way am I going to trust them (or anyone else for that matter) with safety of the data that I'm mandated by the government to preserve for 7 years and present to them on short notice if audit shows up at my door.
« Last Edit: October 08, 2020, 01:29:49 pm by asmi »
 
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Offline TerraHertz

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Re: OT: MYOB threaten to delete my records
« Reply #2 on: October 08, 2020, 01:42:13 pm »
Sounds like the 'games as a service' scam all over again.

My ex-wife (recently deceased) was signed up with a self-managed superfund. They provided an account in which to keep the funds. She finally read the fine print and discovered a clause that the SMSF company reserved the right to simply take all the money if they felt like it. She wasn't amused, and went to a great deal of trouble to convert the whole thing to a different form, in which the funds sat in a real bank account only she could access. But with the SMSF still providing the legal and accounting support.

I didn't have the heart to tell her that banks have such 'bail in' clauses too.

Oh, and if you own any actual physical gold? The government has a law in place by which they can take that too, any time they decide they want to. Check out the Australian Banking Act, section about gold.
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Offline mag_therm

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Re: OT: MYOB threaten to delete my records
« Reply #3 on: October 08, 2020, 02:26:44 pm »
I tried on-line accounting services , but for many years I have been using gnucash locally.
It is a bit clunky but reliable, and I only use the functions really needed.

The data from business bank accounts etc is transferred via downloaded csv etc files , so it is well isolated from them.
It make a single backup file after each use, which I transfer to backup media from time to time.

By the way, Terra's reference to  "superfund" in Australia means  a qualified retirement account.
In USA it refers to legislation requiring contaminated industrial sites to be cleaned up. (!!)
 
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Offline edy

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Re: OT: MYOB threaten to delete my records
« Reply #4 on: October 08, 2020, 03:15:04 pm »
I second the opinion... Stick to offline open-source software multi-platform software which you have absolute control over. Personally I am using GNUCash (https://www.gnucash.org/), because it is available for Linux which is my main working environment... but it is also available for BSD, Solaris, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows. Best of all, it is completely FREE and Open Source licensed under GPL.

At first your accountant may scoff or raise an eyebrow at GNUCash as they can't believe free small-business level accounting software is any good. Your bookkeeper may also complain because they are used to using other stuff (like Quickbooks). However, once you have learned how to use it (and there are lots of free books available) it is quite powerful. I've been running 2 quite large businesses on it no problem for several years. My accountant or bookkeeper can install the Windows version if needed and I can easily send them my files that I use on Linux, and we can interchange files.

The best (but biggest) book out there is:

https://www.packtpub.com/product/gnucash-2-4-small-business-accounting-beginner-s-guide/9781849513869

If you Google "Gnucash 2.4 Small Business Accounting PDF" you will probably find some ebooks floating around to browse but please consider compensating this author for this excellent book. Note that GNUCash is up to version 4.0 now but all of the basics are still applicable and everything you learn on v2.4 will help you still on 4.0.


« Last Edit: October 08, 2020, 03:17:23 pm by edy »
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Offline Brumby

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Re: OT: MYOB threaten to delete my records
« Reply #5 on: October 08, 2020, 10:52:38 pm »
There are two main reasons why I avoid online services wherever possible.  The first is trusting security to a third party (especially when it has global exposure - as with anything cloud based).

The second is this.
 

Online EEVblogTopic starter

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Re: OT: MYOB threaten to delete my records
« Reply #6 on: October 09, 2020, 01:51:56 am »
My ex-wife (recently deceased) was signed up with a self-managed superfund. They provided an account in which to keep the funds. She finally read the fine print and discovered a clause that the SMSF company reserved the right to simply take all the money if they felt like it.

 :wtf:
Who was that?
They would have to be a signatory on the account.

Quote
Oh, and if you own any actual physical gold? The government has a law in place by which they can take that too, any time they decide they want to. Check out the Australian Banking Act, section about gold.

My gold was lost in tragic boating accident officer.
 

Online EEVblogTopic starter

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Re: OT: MYOB threaten to delete my records
« Reply #7 on: October 09, 2020, 02:29:42 am »
Spoke to support this morning, they said they permanently delete all account info after 1 month if you fail to pay. Scary because systems like this you might only log in once a month for payroll purposes.
But because I caught this early I should be able to get my account back.
EDIT: Yep, got my account back with info intact  :phew:
« Last Edit: October 09, 2020, 02:36:46 am by EEVblog »
 

Offline ANTALIFE

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Re: OT: MYOB threaten to delete my records
« Reply #8 on: October 09, 2020, 02:58:37 am »
Spoke to support this morning, they said they permanently delete all account info after 1 month if you fail to pay. Scary because systems like this you might only log in once a month for payroll purposes.
But because I caught this early I should be able to get my account back.
EDIT: Yep, got my account back with info intact  :phew:

Phew that's good to hear. Did you manage to figure out why they decided to delete it in the first place?

Offline Ed.Kloonk

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Re: OT: MYOB threaten to delete my records
« Reply #9 on: October 09, 2020, 03:52:41 am »
Spoke to support this morning, they said they permanently delete all account info after 1 month if you fail to pay.

Bullshit!

You can bet your arse that if the Tax Office or some such org demanded such information they would cough it up in a heartbeat.

For God's sake ppl. Stop it with this paying and giving these corporations the keys to your kingdom. Just sub-contract a book keeper. Have them on a short leash. It isn't rocket science.

Be wary of companies that promise to alleviate the worry of conducting a small business.

'Cos when the stuff gets in, you cannot get it out!

« Last Edit: October 09, 2020, 03:56:32 am by Ed.Kloonk »
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Online EEVblogTopic starter

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Re: OT: MYOB threaten to delete my records
« Reply #10 on: October 09, 2020, 05:26:40 am »
Spoke to support this morning, they said they permanently delete all account info after 1 month if you fail to pay. Scary because systems like this you might only log in once a month for payroll purposes.
But because I caught this early I should be able to get my account back.
EDIT: Yep, got my account back with info intact  :phew:
Phew that's good to hear. Did you manage to figure out why they decided to delete it in the first place?

First post, failure to pay because of expired credit card.
 

Online EEVblogTopic starter

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Re: OT: MYOB threaten to delete my records
« Reply #11 on: October 09, 2020, 05:29:51 am »
Bullshit!
You can bet your arse that if the Tax Office or some such org demanded such information they would cough it up in a heartbeat.
For God's sake ppl. Stop it with this paying and giving these corporations the keys to your kingdom. Just sub-contract a book keeper. Have them on a short leash. It isn't rocket science.
Be wary of companies that promise to alleviate the worry of conducting a small business.

My accountant does my books and returns, and charges a metric shit ton to do it. But MYOB was required for the new Single Touch Payroll system the government force mandated on all business from July 2019. MYOB is one of the official packages and the one recommended by the ATO to use. They even released a stripped down low cost version that just does STP and not much else.
 

Offline Ed.Kloonk

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Re: OT: MYOB threaten to delete my records
« Reply #12 on: October 09, 2020, 06:07:34 am »
Bullshit!
You can bet your arse that if the Tax Office or some such org demanded such information they would cough it up in a heartbeat.
For God's sake ppl. Stop it with this paying and giving these corporations the keys to your kingdom. Just sub-contract a book keeper. Have them on a short leash. It isn't rocket science.
Be wary of companies that promise to alleviate the worry of conducting a small business.
My accountant does my books and returns, and charges a metric shit ton to do it. But MYOB was required for the new Single Touch Payroll system the government force mandated on all business from July 2019. MYOB is one of the official packages and the one recommended by the ATO to use. They even released a stripped down low cost version that just does STP and not much else.


I'm just saying you need a separate accountant and book keeper. I learned years ago to not dump the book keeping duties onto a tax agent. I don't know about the rest of the world, but for our dung hill, the hard part about gaining the tax agent license is proving you can do book keeping. Ask your tax agent. That's what kills under graduates.

However, there are specialist book keepers here and it is a thing. If you find a good one, they are worth their weight in cockie shit. The GST has provided a great mechanism for this type of  hermit crab to prosper.

Try it. Present your books, prepared by a professional sole trader book keeper to your tax agent and he (she?) will have a hard-on from here to Hong Kong.

 :)
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Offline Domagoj T

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Re: OT: MYOB threaten to delete my records
« Reply #13 on: October 09, 2020, 06:10:43 am »
they permanently delete all account info after 1 month if you fail to pay

Holy crap that's aggressive storage space management policy.
There are so many legitimate explanations and causes for somebody to fail to pay. Even when the client has the funds and is willing to pay for the service, what if they're in a traffic accident a day before the payment date. They could easily spent a month in hospital and suddenly two payment periods go by... poof, all data is gone. |O
How can this policy be legal?
 

Offline Ed.Kloonk

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Re: OT: MYOB threaten to delete my records
« Reply #14 on: October 09, 2020, 06:13:40 am »
they permanently delete all account info after 1 month if you fail to pay

Holy crap that's aggressive storage space management policy.
There are so many legitimate explanations and causes for somebody to fail to pay. Even when the client has the funds and is willing to pay for the service, what if they're in a traffic accident a day before the payment date. They could easily spent a month in hospital and suddenly two payment periods go by... poof, all data is gone. |O
How can this policy be legal?

As I said. It's just a corporate bullying tactic.
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Offline AntiProtonBoy

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Re: OT: MYOB threaten to delete my records
« Reply #15 on: October 09, 2020, 06:22:30 am »
Dave: I heard good things about Xero. Ditch MYOB and give Xero a try.

I personally don't use cloud based accounting. I use Manager.io, which is a stand-alone app for small businesses. It does the job if you don't want anything special.

Oh, and if you own any actual physical gold? The government has a law in place by which they can take that too, any time they decide they want to. Check out the Australian Banking Act, section about gold.
In exchange for legal tender though - i.e. the bank is legally obligated to pay for it. Gold coins, jewellery and material that is being worked on by a gold smith is actually exempt. Now the issue is, the money you get in exchange might be losing value, which defeats the purpose of hoarding gold in the first place (if you are an investor).


edit: Xero not Zero
« Last Edit: October 09, 2020, 08:26:22 am by AntiProtonBoy »
 

Offline Psi

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Re: OT: MYOB threaten to delete my records
« Reply #16 on: October 09, 2020, 06:22:49 am »
We have MYOB in NZ too, and its pretty common.
It's also well know to be a pretty bad service.
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Offline wilfred

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Re: OT: MYOB threaten to delete my records
« Reply #17 on: October 09, 2020, 06:56:09 am »
We have MYOB in NZ too, and its pretty common.
It's also well know to be a pretty bad service.

You would think a business would send out a letter or email to alert their customer to the impending credit card expiry. Hell, even Paypal can manage to do that.

It must be such a common problem of people overlooking the need to update their credit card details in all necessary places.

Without being expert in what exactly MYOB and Xero do I would have expected sending such notices automatically would also be part of their service their own  customers use to ensure those small businesses' customers keep their card details up to date.
« Last Edit: October 09, 2020, 06:58:11 am by wilfred »
 
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Offline Ed.Kloonk

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Re: OT: MYOB threaten to delete my records
« Reply #18 on: October 09, 2020, 06:57:16 am »
We have MYOB in NZ too, and its pretty common.
It's also well know to be a pretty bad service.

They lobbied (conned) both our govts into letting them worm their way into a monopolistic system so normies can still go about their business, all the while selling off purchase information, absolving themselves of any responsibility of liability.

The part that shits me is the whole thing is like a Nigerian billionaire scam. Everyone is surprised when they get done but the marketing is so slick that it seems like it's a necessity. It really isn't.

Dave thinks he's in front because the company restored the account status to how it was previously. But what is the company prepared to offer him for the time to sort it out and the worry incurred during this event?

Claiming that obsolete credit card info is the cause is a lame argument. The system is so sophisticated that they couldn't manage to detect a card nearing expiry and send a email?

There are plenty of creditors, Apple is one and one domain host I had can leap over credit card expiry. The domain host I refer to was so persistent that I was forced to nuke the card. So I don't buy that argument at all.

Not arguing with you Psi, just being a grumblebum.

 :)

 
« Last Edit: October 09, 2020, 09:02:08 am by Ed.Kloonk »
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Offline BravoV

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Re: OT: MYOB threaten to delete my records
« Reply #19 on: October 09, 2020, 07:25:33 am »
they permanently delete all account info after 1 month if you fail to pay

Holy crap that's aggressive storage space management policy.
There are so many legitimate explanations and causes for somebody to fail to pay. Even when the client has the funds and is willing to pay for the service, what if they're in a traffic accident a day before the payment date. They could easily spent a month in hospital and suddenly two payment periods go by... poof, all data is gone. |O
How can this policy be legal?

As I said. It's just a corporate bullying tactic.

Yep, don't know about Aussie regulation on financial data "minimum" retention period, pretty sure NOT 1 month.
 
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Offline Halcyon

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Re: OT: MYOB threaten to delete my records
« Reply #20 on: October 09, 2020, 08:32:28 am »
I am a huge advocate for self-hosting where it's possible and economically viable. Email is one of the very few services I don't bother to host myself anymore, it's just not worth it these days.

For everything else (including my PBX/VoIP services), I host my own servers.

For a small business, you don't need to spend tens of thousands of dollars on infrastructure either. Just a few decent servers and virtualise everything. For my primary hypervisor, I use an old IBM System x3650 server I picked up for $300 and just upgraded the RAM to 64GB. It runs something like 11 or 12 VMs concurrently (including a Plex server that does video transcoding on the fly). It's by no means "powerful" by today's standards but it does the job and does it reasonably well.

Since I've switched entirely to a Linux workflow, I find setting up these little "niche" servers much, much easier than a bloated Windows install. For backups, I just take regular snapshots of the VMs and back them up to my NAS. If the house burnt down, I could have all those machines up and running again within an hour.

 
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Online EEVblogTopic starter

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Re: OT: MYOB threaten to delete my records
« Reply #21 on: October 09, 2020, 11:52:33 am »
I'm just saying you need a separate accountant and book keeper. I learned years ago to not dump the book keeping duties onto a tax agent.

They are CPA accountants and they know their stuff, not just a "tax agent". And it would just be double handling really, my needs are actually quite complex.
 

Online EEVblogTopic starter

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Re: OT: MYOB threaten to delete my records
« Reply #22 on: October 09, 2020, 11:56:31 am »
Dave: I heard good things about Xero. Ditch MYOB and give Xero a try.

Nope, not worth my time. MYOB actually does very little for me, just payroll stuff, but it's a requirement of the new tax laws.

Quote
Oh, and if you own any actual physical gold? The government has a law in place by which they can take that too, any time they decide they want to. Check out the Australian Banking Act, section about gold.
In exchange for legal tender though - i.e. the bank is legally obligated to pay for it. Gold coins, jewellery and material that is being worked on by a gold smith is actually exempt. Now the issue is, the money you get in exchange might be losing value, which defeats the purpose of hoarding gold in the first place (if you are an investor).

A hammer and a drill is all that is needed to turn any gold into jewelry at a moments notice.
« Last Edit: October 09, 2020, 12:02:27 pm by EEVblog »
 

Online EEVblogTopic starter

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Re: OT: MYOB threaten to delete my records
« Reply #23 on: October 09, 2020, 12:06:41 pm »
There are so many legitimate explanations and causes for somebody to fail to pay. Even when the client has the funds and is willing to pay for the service, what if they're in a traffic accident a day before the payment date. They could easily spent a month in hospital and suddenly two payment periods go by... poof, all data is gone. |O

Yep!

Quote
How can this policy be legal?
Because 'ma private business, and nobody has ever challenged it.
 

Offline VK3DRB

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Re: OT: MYOB threaten to delete my records
« Reply #24 on: October 10, 2020, 03:03:10 am »
MYOB is a bit of a ripoff. Intuit is arguably better. I tried a few of these subscription packages, but I settled on Wave Accounting and am very happy with it. If you set up right (chart of accounts, GST etc), it is very good. Only downside is it does not support inventory management. It is hosted by a reputable Canadian company. Why is it free? They provide a credit/debit card transaction service for a small percentage, which you can turn off. I only get paid by bank transfer from other businesses, so I have never had to sue their credit card process yet.

By the way, MYOB hooks you in in the same way that Microsoft Office 365 does. And so does Altium to some extent.
 


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