Moving from MYOB

SlowBooks imports MYOB exports, not company files — .MYO (AccountRight Classic) and .myox or an online file (current AccountRight) are MYOB's own databases and only MYOB opens them. The good news: three quick exports from inside MYOB are all the importer needs, and the dry-run verifies everything against your trial balance before a single record is written.

Works with MYOB Business AccountRight Plus and Premier (the desktop app or the browser), MYOB Business Lite and Pro, and exports already made from AccountRight Classic (v19 and earlier, read-only since February 2026). Tab-separated .TXT, comma .CSV and Excel .xlsx exports all import, singly or together in a .zip.

Step 1 — Export the three files from MYOB

AccountRight (the desktop app)

1. Accounts list — File → Import/Export Assistant → Export data → Next, choose Accounts list, tab-separated with the field names in the first row, every field, and save it as Accounts.TXT.
2. Journals — the same assistant, data type Transaction journals, every journal, with the dates covering everything you want to bring across (e.g. 01/01/2000 to today). Save as Journal.TXT. (General journal entries alone exports only the general-journal transactions, not the sales, purchases and banking ones.) If your version exports one file per journal type (Sales, Purchases, Disbursements …), upload them together — and never together with an "All" export, or every transaction counts twice (the dry-run's trial-balance check will catch it, loudly). Journal types with no transactions simply won't export; upload the ones you have.
3. Trial balance — Reports → Index to Reports → Accounts → Trial Balance, set the same period end, display it, then File → Export → CSV (or tab-separated text). Save as TrialBalance.TXT.

AccountRight Classic (v19) had these under File → Export Data → Accounts → Account Information and … → Transaction Journals; an export made there imports the same way.

MYOB Business (browser)

1. Chart of accounts — the settings menu (⚙) → Import and export data → Export → Chart of accounts (a tab-separated .TXT).
2. Journals — Reporting → Reports → General ledger [Detail], the full date range, Export → Excel. The browser exports reports to Excel or PDF only; upload the .xlsx as it is (SlowBooks reads MYOB's day-first dates from it).
3. Trial balance — Reporting → Reports → Trial balance, the same period end, Export → Excel.

Filenames matter: keep "account"/"chart", "journal"/"ledger", and "trial" in the names — the importer recognizes each file's role by filename.

Step 2 — Dry-run in SlowBooks

Open Migrate Data in the sidebar, choose MYOB, select all three files, and click Dry Run. Nothing is written; you'll get a report:

• every reconstructed journal must balance,
• every GL line must reference an account in the chart,
• GL account totals must match the trial balance.

Fix anything it flags (usually a truncated date range or a missing journal type) and re-run until it passes.

Step 3 — Import

The Import button unlocks once the dry-run passes. Accounts are created (existing same-named accounts are reused), every journal posts through the standard double-entry engine, and the Opening Balances wizard is marked ready.

Opening balances

Opening balances are entered as account setup in MYOB, so they never appear in a journal export. When the dry-run sees trial-balance differences that net to zero (MYOB offsets them through the Historical Balancing account), it treats them as opening balances and the import posts one balanced opening journal dated the day before your earliest transaction. Differences that don't net to zero remain errors — that means journals are actually missing (usually a truncated date range).

Quirks handled automatically

• Tab-separated classic exports and comma CSVs (detected per file)
• dd/mm/yyyy dates (MYOB's AU/NZ convention)
• Non-postable header accounts (skipped)
• Journal lines grouped by ID No.
• Lines carrying only an account number (dashed 1-1100 or flat)
• Contra lines expressed as a negative amount in one column
• ($1,234.00)-style accounting negatives
• Report-style trial balance exports (address block and period header skipped; YTD columns preferred over single-month movement)
• Reused journal IDs (MYOB stamps every electronic payment EP) — grouped by ID + date + memo
• Duplicate account names under different numbers (imported as Name (code) so both survive)

All of the above were validated against MYOB's own Clearwater sample company: 101 accounts and 328 journals import with the ledger balanced to the cent and every account reconciling exactly to MYOB's trial balance.

If your export uses a column heading the importer doesn't recognize, the dry-run lists it — send the header row (only the header, no figures) to support@slowbookspro.com and it's a one-line alias fix.