They say all good things must come to an end and it’s time for me to spread my wings and soar into some exciting new adventure.
I joined MYOB late in 2012, well before terms like apps & ecosystem were really a thing. There were a couple of hundred developers in the MYOB developer program and ~25 approved add-on solutions. I leave at the end of 2018 with over 10,000 developers in our developer program, and nearly 350 apps in our ecosystem.
Even better than that, we’ve hundreds of thousands of AccountRight & Essentials files connected and using 3rd party apps each and every day.
It’s been an amazing journey, one that has seen our developer community impact and transform not just MYOB but the entire accounting industry. Cloud, connected advisory, smart tools, apps and add-ons are now as common in discussions as GST, budgets and reconciliation.
I’ve made friends, I’ve supported businesses, I’ve shared in your lives - and for this privilege, I thank you.
For me, I’m not sure what 2019 holds, I have no firm plan for me right now outside of some consulting work (reach out if you want to chat), I’m excited to take a pen to the blank page that is the future and see what comes out. Do keep in touch (TWITTER - LINKEDIN - KERANMCKENZIE.COM), I’d love to see where your journey takes you.
For continuity here at MYOB you can continue to connect with Nigel Tiley and Ria Russell for Apps and Ecosystem conversations. For API Developer Support the team continue to support you through apisupport.myob.com.
For now, it’s time to spread my wings and soar.
If I may borrow a famous line - “so long and thanks for the fish”
Exciting news time, we’ve hired someone awesome to come and join us in the MYOB Ecosystem. Please welcome Nigel Tiley to the team.
We’re lucky to have Nigel joining us, coming from the ecosystem having worked for both Kounta and more recently Deputy. Many of you will have, no doubt, met Nigel at many of the MYOB and industry conferences and events proudly wearing the Deputy badge and sharing their story.
Nigel brings a strong background in partnerships, technology and the connected accounting ecosystem. We’re really stoked to have him in the team, taking on the big role of Ecosystem Partner Manager.
Connect with Nigel on LinkedIn or Twitter - he’d love to know more about you, your tools, services and offerings within our ecosystem.
Support for an API is an ever-changing and challenging area. With many frequent support requests being very similar and yet just different enough to require a little care and attention to help solve the hiccup.
To continue to help us to provide top-notch support to you, we’ve recently released some new support tools for you.
Postman API collections
Postman is an API client that allows you to quickly and easily explore an API without writing code. It’s a powerful tool for exploring various endpoints, JSON payloads and authentication headers.
Check out our MYOB AccountRight Postman Collection here or MYOB Essentials Postman Collection here.
API Knowledge Base beta
We’ve also started building out an api knowledge base based heavily on common support requests, community forum posts and general advice for working with our APIs.
This knowledge base is in early stages, but already is starting to help speed developers along their api journey with us. This knowledge base is linked to our support ticket system so it can offer suggestions to help you.
Anyone working with our API and with the ATO will no doubt be familiar with their DSP Operational Framework. This is a framework provided by the ATO for working with data across various networks and providers.
All digital service providers wanting to use the ATO’s digital services will now need to meet specific requirements as defined by the ATO, which can include, but is not limited to:
· Authentication
· Encryption
· Supply chain visibility
· Certification
· Data hosting
· Personnel security
· Encryption key management
· Security monitoring practices.
The ATO’s website includes the reasons for creating the framework and the related requirements:https://softwaredevelopers.ato.gov.au/operational_framework
MYOB will be making changes to our MYOB APIs to adhere to this framework. The Product and Engineering teams are currently working with the ATO on what is the best approach to this. This will primarily affect the TFN (Tax file number) currently shared with our API users. We will notify users through a blog post, forum update and newsletter before this change goes to production so you can prepare for it.
Are you a product that uses the TFN (or other personal data that might be covered by the DSP Operational Framework) from our API? We’d love to hear from you and understand better how you use this data, and the impact of having it removed or masked might be on your clients. Fill in our quick form here so our product team can be in touch should they want more details.
As you will no doubt be aware, security on the internet is an ever evolving activity, and as such TLS1.0 is actively being retired from many services. This is due to known vulnerabilities that directly impact the integrity and security of communications, and these vulnerabilities are unable to be fixed in this older version of TLS.
MYOB is dedicated to ensuring the security of our client's data and in 2017 our API infrastructure was upgraded to support TLS1.1 and TLS1.2 while allowing TLS1.0 connections as a fallback. Now is the time for us to remove this fallback, so as of 30th September 2018 the MYOB API will no longer accept connections using TLS1.0.
What will happen?
If you are using TLS1.0 and you choose to do nothing, your TLS1.0 calls to our API will be blocked and will fail. These calls will be considered insecure and will be blocked at the gateway.
What do I need to do?
You need to upgrade your infrastructure to ensure your API calls are using TLS1.1, TLS1.2 or greater, you will no longer be able to use on SSL3 or TLS1.0. Your teams will need to look at the impact of this and the change required for your calls to the MYOB API.
Once you update your servers to support TLS1.1 or greater, there is nothing else to change.
Are you passionate about cloud and making an impact in Australian and New Zealand SME businesses? Are you excited by seeing problems and hassles in business, solved by smart use of awesome connected tools? Do you delight in helping people discover solutions they didn't know exist? Then we want to chat with you. We're looking for someone passionate about technology, business and making an impact in everyday business life.
The role
You'll be working with our Head of Ecosystem to further build out our partnerships with some of Australia and New Zealand's best business software vendors. You'll be discovering the impact these amazing tools make in everyday businesses and helping businesses, advisors, bookkeepers and accountants to understand the value smart tools bring to business today. You will also be working closely with the internal MYOB teams to look for and discover the crossover impacts where the ecosystem supports, augments and extends the MYOB product range.
Never underestimate the power of a single coffee conversation. I’m not gonna lie, I’m not sure I was ready for the epic journey, one that would give such a roller coaster ride. Rollercoasters create fun times in life when you realise what is important. Yes, of course, there are times of down and up and each carries with it a special note. A memory, a moment.
Never would I realise the advantage of someone who constantly says “I’m gonna just do that”. So it is with a sad tone, that today the MYOBapi team let you all know that Jack Skinner is moving to a new adventure. When you process this it could be easy to let the emotion drive you to feel down, but this is an exciting time for Jack.
Never one to let life hold him back Jack has continually lived that “I’m gonna do it” mindset in everything. A smile and his energy would see Jack run from event to event as he tweeted up a storm. Always one for a flight around Australia & USA with Virgin Australia, or NZ with Air NZ (oh hey and let’s not forget those status credits). Many a steak along with the odd desert & cheeky whisky, has helped create friendships and moments that you will remember forever.
Never has our twitter seen so many tweets nor have we all said: “Not gonna take another selfie are you Jack?” so often. While he helped us make better integrations, Jack changed the way we at MYOB supported you on this ecosystem journey. I know saying goodbye may well make us cry, but we will always have his new tweets & selfies.
Never forget the moment when last minute I called to say “Jack I’m not gonna make it to NZ, can you fill in for me?”, Jack was always there ready to say “Yes I can do that” and fill in for me. So when it comes to saying goodbye, well my friends ...
I have to say, I’m “Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you” - it’s hard, really hard to say goodbye.
Farewell Jack - you’ve left one heck of an impression on MYOB, the API and our entire ecosystem. We love you and wish you all the very very best as you head into new adventures. Keep the music in your heart, the beat in your step and Party like Gatsby!
Wow, it’s been a crazy couple of weeks for me hitting the road and talking all sorts of things tech and future.
I was asked to attend MYRIAD to run a workshop on the Future of Money. I gathered together some experts facing hassles with the current world money & payments and with a room full of attendees we discussed the current frustrations and future tech/processes and tools that might change this in the future. The surprising outcome was just how quickly people think this change is coming! To find out more, read my latest article on the Future of money and payments.
I was also asked to host a fireside chat with Dave Lennon from Business Aspect exploring “Startup vs Corporate - the innovation story”. You’ll never guess who is the startup in the picture above right *hint* it’s not me!
TechWeek NZ
How awesome is it when a country puts on a tech event? Over 540 events all around the country over 5 days! MYOB hosted or engaged with many of these events. I had the honour of presenting at 6 events over 7 days, covering topics like What the ____ is Blockchain (watch a previous recording here), Data - unlocking the power of transformation and Visions of Future Success (watch a recording of it here).
NZHerald took the opportunity to pick my brains about the top tech trends that will impact businesses. You can read more about that here.
The future is exciting - made even more so by all our amazing developer partners who use our APIs and data to make incredible tools that solve real world problems
We’re updating the errors that our API will return based on your API key status and usage. The changes will apply to the following errors:
developer_inactive (inactive or missing API keys)
API key over QPS (over per-second rate limit)
API key over threshold (over daily rate limit)
Gateway timeout (long-running API calls)
The new API responses will no longer be HTML responses but will instead be a JSON object (similar to the existing AccountRight Live errors). You’ll also see a LearnMore link has been included too.
Here’s an example of the new developer_inactive error.
The updated API errors will be returned from all API hostnames including:
api.myob.com
ar1.api.myob.com
ar2.api.myob.com
ar3.api.myob.com (until decommissioned later this year)
We’re on schedule to make this update on May 8th, after which you’ll receive the new API errors.
We're excited to share that AccountRight Live 2018.2 is now available for developer partners from my.myob.com.au. We'll be upgrading the shared sandbox files over the next day or so.
You’ll find the 2018.2 release notes on the developer site and we’ve included a summary here on the blog.
Introducing Multi-currency
2018.2 introduces a closed-beta for multi-currency in AccountRight Live and that means we’ve added new endpoints, fields and errors being added to the V2 API. In summary, you'll see:
new /GeneralLedger/Currency endpoint
new read-only "ForeignCurrency" field on bills, spend/receive money, supplier cards and accounts.
two new types of API errors for foreign currencies.
The most important thing to know is that resources for foreign currency transactions (such as bills and orders) will be read-only via the API and will not allow PUT or POST API calls in this release.
Learn more about multi-currency:
A sneak peek at multi-currency (our recent blog post)
Introduction to Multi-currency (developer site)
Multi-currency in the AccountRight Live API (developer site)
AccountRight Live 2018.2 Whats new (product release notes)
“LearnMore” about API errors!
We're adding a new field to errors returned from the AccountRight Live API. The "LearnMore" field is null by default and will include customised links directly to our documentation to help you resolve errors.
LearnMore links are included for errors relating to multi-currency (see below) and we'll be adding more documentation references over time.
Here’s an example of the LearnMore link that we’ve added for a new ValidationError.
{ "Name": "ValidationError", "Message": "Cannot update a local bill with a foreign currency", "AdditionalDetails": "ForeignCurrency", "ErrorCode": 70003, "Severity": "Error", "LearnMore": "http://developer.myob.com/api/accountright/api-overview/error-messages/?code=70003&context=400" }
Single Touch Payroll
2018.2 introduces a number of workflow improvements for your clients including an updated Single Touch Payroll readiness check. You can learn more about AccountRight Live and STP here.
We've also removed the employee state validation rule that was added in 2018.1; the state field is still required for STP, but your clients will be prompted to supply this information via the STP readiness check instead.
New Sale/Invoice “OnlinePaymentMethod” field
The “OnlinePaymentMethod” field can be set to “All” to enable online payments for a given invoice. This only applies if clients have set up online payments. The field will default to “None” in 2018.2 and “All” in 2018.3.
We’re on schedule to commence our staggered release AccountRight Live 2018.2 to partners and clients in the first week of May.
We’ve been working hard to bring multi-currency to AccountRight Live and you’ll soon be able to record transactions in both local and foreign currencies.
In this post, we wanted to share what we've been working on.
Introducing foreign currencies
The first of our multi-currency features will be added in our upcoming release of AccountRight Live 2018.2. We'll be running a closed beta test with a small group of clients but we plan to grow the beta program over time.
Starting with a focus on bills, AccountRight Live will allow your clients to enter a foreign currency for a bill and we'll convert that to the local currency. For example, in this screenshot, you can see a bill for JP ¥1000.
Whats new in the API?
Naturally, introducing this feature means we'll be making some updates to the AccountRight Live API.
We'll be publishing the full 2018.2 release notes and technical details shortly, but at a high level you can expect to see:
A new read only /GeneralLedger/Currency endpoint
Purchases and Banking transactions will have a new read-only "ForeignCurrency" field.
Foreign currency transactions will be read-only and return a new set of error messages.
During the beta test, the API will not be able to create or update resources with a foreign currency, but you will see the currency that the bill is linked to. We'll post more about this soon.
Multi-currency documentation
We've added a new multi-currency section to the AccountRight Live API documentation. This section will be home for all things multi-currency as features become available over the next few releases.
Update: We’ve updated our internal schedule and will be making the internal changes to ar3.api.myob.com after April 16th.
Hi folks!
We wanted to give you advance notice that we're going to be making some internal changes to the AccountRight Live API served from the ar3.api.myob.com hostname.
You may recall over the last few years we’ve rolled out a multi-datacentre solution to improve performance for your clients and partners. This is exposed in the API through the hypermedia between resources. We also have a best practice guide helping you to craft a best-in-class integration to consume those Uri's.
Whats changing?
Historically, ar3.api.myob.com was home to our old data centre and although we've not actively used it for some time we've made sure it's still available for backwards compatibility. If you're consuming hypermedia and Uri's in our API you should no longer see the ar3.api.myob.com hostname.
As part of our ongoing infrastructure work to improve performance in the API we're going to be switching off our old service that supported ar3 as a data centre. For backwards compatibility, we'll continue to serve API calls to ar3.api.myob.com from our new infrastructure and that should also mean you see a small performance boost over time.
If you consume Uri field in the API then you should already be connecting to our ar1.api.myob.com and ar2.api.myob.com services and of course, you can always access api.myob.com.
Based on our current schedule we’ll be completing this change no sooner than April 16th. This may change at short notice but should have no impact on your API connectivity.
Do I need to do anything immediately?
Ideally - this should be a completely transparent change and it should have no impact on your connected solution.
If you are currently connecting to ar3.api.myob.com (for example, you've hardcoded that hostname by mistake), we'd recommend you explore our best practice guide for hypermedia. The best practice guides will help you build a scalable and performant solution consuming features in our API such as the Uri field for company files.
What is the long-term plan?
Over the next 3-6 months, we'll be making plans to decommission the ar3.api.myob.com hostname completely. Once we decommission this hostname, attempts to make API calls to it will fail with a DNS name lookup error.
Before then, we recommend you review your solution to make sure that you're following our best practice guide so that our hypermedia can guide you to the most performant way to access data via the API.
Don't worry - we'll let you know when we get closer to making this change later in 2018.
Need help?
You can always reach out to [email protected] if you have any questions or need help understanding how to consume hypermedia in our API.
Update: 20/03/2018
Last week (16/03/2018) we found an issue that affects clients when they try to convert sales quotes and orders. As a result, we temporarily removed the installers from my.myob. AccountRight Live 2018.1.1 is now available for download; this version replaces 2018.1 and resolves this bug.
If you have already installed 2018.1, we recommend you update or patch your installation to 2018.1.1
1. Single Touch Payroll - Employee Cards
Single Touch Payroll is a new way to report payroll to the ATO and applies to Australian businesses commencing July 1st 2018. It applies to businesses of 20+ employees from July 1st 2018, and for all businesses from July 1st 2019.
In 2018.1, we’re introducing a new readiness check feature so that businesses can prepare for STP. For full details about the readiness check for you and your clients, check out the “Whats new” release notes.
As part of this update, we’re adding a new validation rule to Employee cards for Australian employees. If the employee card’s Country field is blank or set to “Australia” then the State field will also be required (and must be valid).
We’ve updated the /Contact/Employee endpoint documentation to detail valid values and validation rules.
2. Single Touch Payroll - STP Categories
STP includes a standard set of categories that get used when reporting payroll to the ATO. Clients can map existing PayrollCategories to a StpCategory.
We added the StpCategory field to /Payroll/PayrollCategory endpoints in 2017.2. In this release, a large number of SME’s will be updating their payroll mapping as part of the STP readiness check. That means you can expect to see new values in the StpCategory field as clients complete these updates.
Quotes (beta)
We’re also introducing a new set of API endpoints for sales quotes! 🎉 We know this has been a frequently requested feature in the API and we’re excited to be making it available in this release.
The quotes endpoints allow you to read, create, update and delete quotes from a company file much as you do existing resources in the API.
Quotes beta will be opening in the coming weeks. If you would like to learn more and take part in that beta, please visit the AccountRight Live beta page.
Release timeline
Sandbox files have been upgraded to 2018.1 the download links are currently available via my.myob.com.au
Next week, we’ll commence our in-product messaging encouraging clients to upgrade as we commence our staggered release.
If you have questions or need help with this release, feel free to reach out to [email protected] and we’ll be able to lend a hand.
It’s been an absolute cracker of the year and as we approach the holiday season we too will be taking some time to recharge the batteries and prepare for what promises to be an exciting 2018 ahead.
That means we’ll be available until midday Monday 18th 2017, after which we’ll be putting a pause on our regular API support. The team will be back on deck on January 10th 2018 when we’ll be resuming support.
From everyone here at MYOB and especially from the API team, have a wonderful, safe and relaxing holiday!
As of 1st July 2017, the ATO has introduced Simpler BAS which changes the reporting requirements for SME’s. In AccountRight Live 2017.2 we’re adding a feature to help your clients merge unused tax codes in their company file.
Clients using AccountRight Live have two options to simplify their reporting requirements in line with Simpler BAS. The first is to use MYOB’s online tax service to lodge returns directly from their MYOB software. Using this solution, clients can map any number of tax codes to their reporting fields. Alternatively, some clients may opt to reduce the tax codes they use when entering data in their ledger.
In 2017.2 the “Combine tax codes” feature will be added to help clients remove unused tax codes in their ledger. Combining a tax code into another one will remove the initial tax code entirely from the ledger. Clients will be shown this screen prior to removing a tax code.
What it looks like via the API
Once a tax code has been combined it will no longer exist in the ledger. This means that it will no longer be listed when retrieving tax codes via the GeneralLedger/TaxCode endpoint and you’ll no longer be able to reference it using its (previous) UID.
Using a tax code after it has been combined with another
Once a tax code is combined with another one it no longer exists. As a result, the API will respond with a 400 error (shown below) if you attempt to use the merged tax code.
What do I need to do to support combining tax codes?
If you’re caching tax codes or other API resources locally in your solution you may need to refresh this by retrieving the list of available tax codes from the API. Using this list, your clients should then be able to reconfigure their connection to use the correct tax codes.
If you receive the 400 error above you’ll need to prompt your clients to reconfigure the solution for their updated tax codes.
We’ve put together a new best practice guide to help you store and cache data from the API. This not only applies to tax codes but to other resources in a ledger such as accounts or company preferences.
Need help?
2017.2 will commence pre-release to sandbox files over the next few days and will be made available to partners and clients progressively throughout November.
If you have any questions or need further assistance understanding how tax codes work in the AccountRight Live API please feel free to reach out to our support team via [email protected].
Partner Connect is a time to network, learn and celebrate - and this year was no exception! We've just returned from a three-week road trip across Australia and New Zealand with the culmination of the tour finishing in Alice Springs last Friday!
Almost a thousand partners joined us at seven major events over the past four weeks for Partner connect where this year's focus was 'success', 'knowledge' and 'inspiration'. Exhibitions in Wellington and Alice Springs also showcased 37 innovators - our amazing developer & add-on partners!
Partner Connect national events are also a chance to celebrate the hard work that our partners have done throughout the year, and this year is no exception! The awards ceremony at the gala dinner is a chance to showcase some of the amazing achievements that you, our add-on community has achieved!
Fastest Growing New Add-on
This is awarded to an add-on solution that new to the MYOB community in the last 12 months. We measure their growth for the year prior as more MYOB clients and partners use the add-on
This year we're thrilled to award the Fastest Growing New Add-on to... Receipt Bank!
Fastest Growing Add-on
This is awarded to the add-on solution who has the fastest growth throughout the year. It's a tightly contended award, but it went to none other than... ezyCollect!
MYOB Partner choice
New to the add-on awards in 2017 is the MYOB Partner choice award. We asked our partner community to nominate the add-on that has had the most impact on their business, or their clients' businesses. We're delighted to share that our partners nominated Calxa as the MYOB Partner Choice award recipient!
From everyone here in the MYOB team, we want to say very warm congratulations to Receipt Bank, ezyCollect and Calxa for your hard earned achievements this year! #LoveYourWork!
I recently had the amazing opportunity to be up close and personal with tech at Microsoft’s Build conference in Seattle! A phenomenal week of geeking out with some fantastic technologists and exploring what tomorrow’s technology looks like!
In my Build report, I’ll explore my top 6 announcements from #MSBuild, why they’re exciting and how they’ll be changing the way we as technologists work with and build software.
CosmosDB
Cosmos DB is a planet-scale database allowing developers to store and replicate data globally. We’ve heard a lot about “planet-scale” databases recently having had Google announce Spanner earlier this year.
What excites me about CosmosDB is that it has a ridiculously fast SLA and provides configurable consistency options that suit us. No longer are we stuck between strong or eventual consistency, Cosmos lets us choose a range of 5 consistency levels allowing us to fine tune performance - a huge step forward for anyone building applications that rely on realtime or near-realtime data availability around the world.
Best of all, you can choose how you interact with Cosmos DB by selecting which API you want to work with.
Azure Functions get better telemetry
I love serverless applications. They’re a beautiful lightweight solution to build microservices. Of course, if you’ve been building serverless apps you’ll also know that getting runtime insights in serverless environments is an absolute pain in my keyboard…
Functions are getting both better telemetry, and a tighter integration with Visual Studio allowing, say, Scott Hanselman to quickly hotfix an API issue live onstage.
And that tweet leads me to…
Visual Studio is coming to OSX!
It’s no secret I’m a fan of my MacBook Pro, so naturally seeing Visual Studio launch for MacOS is exciting! Even better, there’s no change to the licensing agreement for Visual Studio!
This is an exciting but interesting move especially given it was coupled with API development using Azure Functions!
XAML Standard
I get to attend a lot of awesome tech events in my job but nothing quite compared to a room of 5,000 + developers cheering at the XAML Standard announcement! Indeed, XAML is getting properly standardised across forms, UWP etc. so that the UI components across each device platform are more consistent to work with.
In theory, that means less time building UI’s and more time building APIs - right!?
Hololens is growing up
Most AR (Augmented Reality), VR (Virtual Reality) and MR(Mixed Reality) are currently used predominantly as expensive toys. Business adoption of technology is however driven by familiarity and trust that is grown and built in our homes. Take the iPad for example; it launched as an expensive toy, and now I now use it as my primary work-device when not coding!
The Hololens (among many other ‘headset’ devices) is growing up, and we saw live on stage how Cirque Du Soleil are using Hololens and mixed reality to collaborate with their global team (and in realtime) to craft and curate new stage experiences. I managed to capture some of that live stage-performance on video too!
JAL is using it for jet engine modelling, and Thiessen Kruep uses it to model custom stair-lifts for homes. Microsoft boasted 22,000 developers have created over 70,000 concept pieces with the Hololens since launch and that figure is climbing daily. What looks (and plays) like an expensive toy is rapidly becoming an important piece of productivity technology.
Extending the Microsoft Graph
If you’re not familiar with the Microsoft Graph, its a suite of APIs and tools for interactive with Microsoft products - perhaps most popularly being the Office 365 product suite.
A number of announcements at Build extended the graph to a range of devices and platforms; the implicit intent being to extend the potential reach that your app or service can touch.
Microsoft shared with our group a near-future vision of technology, interaction and devices. Extending the Graph is a huge step in this direction; imagine Cortana playing a part in every conversation, every device, and every interaction you have. Wouldn’t that be a change to the way you work!
That’s a wrap!
This year’s Build seemed less about feature launches and more about building the experience. A strategic move to provide and end to end interaction model for developers and non-developer alike.
The beauty of this is that the APIs were the glue bringing the entire platform together giving you the opportunity to launch the next big thing!
