You're running MYOB AccountRight. Most Australian manufacturers are. It handles your invoicing, your BAS, your superannuation and single-touch payroll — the financial backbone of your workshop.
But MYOB wasn't built to tell you whether Job #4872 made money or lost it. It doesn't know that the kitchen install you quoted at 30 hours actually took 42. It can't show you that your spray booth is the reason three jobs ran over budget last month, or that two of your five staff are 20% faster than the others on cabinet runs.
That's the gap job costing software fills. And for an Australian workshop, how it integrates with MYOB matters more than most people think.
Why MYOB alone isn't enough for manufacturing job costing
MYOB AccountRight is accounting software. It tracks money in and money out, handles your GST, and reconciles your bank feeds. It can do basic job tracking and time billing, but it's not designed for the granular, real-time job costing manufacturing needs.
- Real-time labour tracking against jobs. MYOB knows what you paid someone this week. It doesn't know they spent 6 hours on Job A, 12 hours on Job B, and 2 hours on rework for Job C.
- Live budget-vs-actual on every job. You see the overspend when the job is finished, in a report, if you remember to run one. By then the margin is gone.
- Production-stage cost tracking. A joinery job moves through machining, assembly, finishing, QA, and install. MYOB sees it as one job; manufacturing needs cost against each stage.
- Capacity planning. MYOB has no view of which work centres are overloaded next week or which jobs are at risk of missing deadlines.
What proper MYOB-integrated job costing looks like
The integration between job costing software and MYOB is a two-way bridge. It should move data both directions automatically — not a one-click CSV export you have to remember to run.
1. Live labour data captured at the bench, not reconstructed
Staff clock onto jobs via touchscreens on the floor — not paper, not a spreadsheet at 4:55pm on Friday. Every hour is attributed to the right job at the right production stage in real time. The office sees exactly where labour is being spent as the week unfolds.
2. Costs flow into MYOB AccountRight without re-keying
Timesheet data syncs directly into MYOB's payroll module — no double entry, no end-of-week reconciliation, no "who was on what job?" conversations. Job costs flow into MYOB's job tracking records so your P&L reflects actual margin, not estimated margin.
3. BAS cycle integrity preserved
GST handling stays in MYOB where it belongs. Job costing software doesn't try to be an accounting system — it feeds MYOB cleaner data so your BAS cycle isn't blown apart by scope creep from your production tool.
What to look for in MYOB-integrated job costing software
- True two-way sync with MYOB AccountRight. Not CSV export. Not a one-direction push. A live two-way bridge.
- Production-stage tracking. Jobs that flow through machining, assembly, finishing, QA — with labour, materials, and sub-contract cost at each stage.
- Live budget vs actual. You see the overspend when it's happening, not two weeks later when you reconcile.
- Floor-friendly time capture. Touchscreens, biometric clock-in, or tablets. Whatever doesn't rely on staff typing or remembering.
- Reporting built for manufacturing. Margin by job, by product type, by customer, by work centre, by staff member. Not generic SMB reports.
- AU support and AUD invoicing. If you're invoiced in NZD by a vendor with no AU presence, that's friction every month.
A working example: Total Kitchen Solutions in Mt Gambier
PCs on the factory floor, MYOB on the back end, Empower connecting them. Staff clock onto jobs at their workstations as they work. Managing Director Richard Hein's words: "Using PCs on the factory floor and Empower we get an estimated 28% more kitchens per month from our factory staff." That 28% productivity lift translated to $80,000 a year in wage cost savings — Mt Gambier kitchens, same team, more output. See the full story on the case studies page.
The bottom line
MYOB AccountRight handles the money. Job costing software handles the floor. If they talk to each other properly — live, two-way, no re-keying — an Australian workshop can run on actual numbers instead of reconstructed guesses. That's the difference between a 20–40% productivity lift and another year of wondering where the margin went.
Empower runs this loop for 16+ Australian workshops across NSW, VIC, QLD, SA, WA and TAS, all integrated with MYOB AccountRight (or Xero if that's what you're on). Read more about how Empower fits Australian workshops, or plug your shop's numbers into the instant quote calculator.
