MYOB tasks you can
hand to a VA
MYOB carries a lot of long-established Australian businesses, and that history shows up in the ledger — legacy chart structures, years of habit, jobs and categories nobody has revisited. Here is what travels well, what does not, and the order to hand it over in.
MYOB files tend to be older than Xero files, and that changes the handover. The work itself is the same shape — coding, entering, chasing, preparing — but the file usually carries fifteen years of accumulated convention that exists nowhere in writing.
That is the real risk, and it is not about competence. It is that a capable person, given no documentation, will make reasonable decisions that do not match how you have always done it. So the first fortnight of an MYOB handover is worth more documentation than a Xero one.
The boundary is identical: preparation versus authority. Anything ending in a lodgement, a signature or money leaving the bank stays with you or your registered agent. Everything leading up to it can go.
Who this is for
✓Worth your time if
- You run MYOB Business or AccountRight and bookkeeping eats half a day a week
- You are a practice with more compliance work than capacity
- Your bank feed and supplier statements are chronically behind
- You know what needs doing and need hands, not advice
✕Probably not if
- You need BAS or tax advice — that requires a registered agent
- Your file needs a clean-up or a migration first — do that, then hire
- You want someone to authorise payments
- You are still deciding whether to stay on MYOB or move to Xero
What an MYOB VA actually does
Grouped by how quickly clients hand each one over. The top four are usually live inside a fortnight.
Coding the bank feed against your accounts list, matching to bills and invoices, and parking anything unrecognised on a running query list rather than guessing. Errors surface immediately and cost nothing to fix, which is why this is always first.
Bill entry from your document capture, supplier statement reconciliation, duplicate checking, and preparing the electronic payment file ready for your authorisation. They prepare; you release.
Raising invoices from your job system, sending statements, and running debtor follow-up on a fixed cadence. Most businesses have no cadence, which is the whole problem.
Timesheet entry, checking hours against rosters and award conditions, preparing the pay run in draft, and reconciling superannuation batches. You post it and make the STP declaration.
Reviewing GST coding across the period, clearing suspense, reconciling GST control accounts, and handing your agent a finished reconciliation pack. Preparation only.
Keeping job costing and category allocations accurate — the part of MYOB that decays fastest and quietly ruins your margin reporting.
Aged payables and receivables, unreconciled chase-ups, asset register updates, and the reports you actually read arriving on schedule rather than on request.
What must not leave your desk
Same line as any Australian bookkeeping engagement. A VA prepares; a registered agent lodges and advises; you authorise money movement.
- BAS and tax lodgementLodging or advising on a BAS for a fee requires Tax Practitioners Board registration. Your VA prepares the numbers; your registered agent reviews, signs and lodges.
- Bank authorityNo offshore team member should hold payment authorisation or a bank token. They prepare the payment file; you release it.
- Tax and structuring adviceAnything answering "should I" rather than "here is what happened" belongs with your accountant.
- Signing off financialsYear-end financials, director declarations and STP finalisation stay with you or your accountant.
The order to hand it over
Same sequence as Xero, with one extra step at the front that MYOB files specifically need.
Write down your conventions first
Before anything is handed over, spend an hour documenting the things that live only in your head: which account codes you use for the ambiguous cases, how jobs are named, which supplier gets coded where. On an old MYOB file this single hour prevents most of what goes wrong.
Bank reconciliation
Start here regardless of what your biggest time cost is. Mistakes are visible in the ledger immediately, and the "flag it, do not guess it" habit is what makes every later step safe.
Accounts payable entry
Same accounts list, same judgement. Keep authorisation with you from day one so there is no expectation to unwind.
Accounts receivable and debtor follow-up
Where the business feels the hire. A consistent follow-up cadence pulls cash forward inside a month.
Payroll preparation, then BAS prep
Payroll only after two or three clean cycles above — errors there are expensive and visible to staff. BAS prep last, and only into a reviewing agent.
Giving full file access on day one
MYOB access levels are coarser than people expect, and the default administrator role lets someone change the accounts list, edit closed periods and adjust opening balances. None of that belongs with a new starter. Create a restricted user, keep your period lock in place, turn on the audit trail, and review it in the first fortnight. On a file with fifteen years of history, the damage is rarely a wrong number — it is someone tidying a convention that six other reports quietly depend on.