CNUCash Setup

[David T.]

Cathy,

Your request is not inappropriate. This is the right spot to ask. Welcome!

I have not used MYOB, and cannot advise you fully, but I can point you in directions to explore.

Your first option would be to keep your older data in MYOB, but start fresh in GC. This entails the least transitional disruption, but leaves historical data n the older format, making long term reporting difficult. In this scenario, you would close your MYOB books as of some date, and then use the account values of that date to start your books in GnuCash. This is a manual process, but involves only a relatively few number of transactions to enter.

If you still want to migrate your historical data, you need to get that data out of MYOB and then get it into a format that GnuCash can import. GnuCash has numerous import formats available. I see that MYOB appears to offer a comma-separated (CSV) export option. I do not know what that CSV will contain (and the devil in this case really is in the details!), and thus cannot tell you what results you will get. 

It may be useful for you to take the CSV output from MYOB, and edit the results to improve import.

It may also be useful to locate one of various tools that are available for converting CSV (or by extension, spreadsheet) data into the Quicken Interchange Format (QIF), as QIF handles accounting data beeter, and GnuCash has a more robust QIF importer.

Regardless of the approach you take, plan on repeating the process several times (make staged backups as you go, so you can roll back as needed!) until you achieve the result you are seeking. I know when I migrated from Quicken many years ago, I tried many times before I got a result I could live with. But once it was done, I have not looked back.

I expect others will be able to provide you with more detailed information on this process (e.g., people who have migrated from MYOB), but I thought I’d give you an overview.

David


> On Jul 30, 2015, at 8:05 AM, thecat <thecat131 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> If this is inappropriate, please delete.
> 
> Can anyone suggest someone to help migrate my books from MYOB Business
> Basics (Windows XP) to GNUCash (Mavericks 10.9.5)? I'm an Australian based
> small business.
> 
> Thanks in advance
> Cathy
> _______________________________________________
> gnucash-user mailing list
> gnucash-user at gnucash.org
> https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
> -----
> Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
> You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.