Over the last few years there has been an increased demand placed on small businesses by the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) and other Government departments to refine their financial reporting processes, in order to meet ever-increasing standards. This absorbs valuable hours of productive time for small businesses and consequently it can have dramatic and sometimes negative ramifications for the effective running of their core business.

As a result of the ATO's requirements most businesses now have in place accounting software to assist with their BAS and PAYG reporting. The issue however continues to arise that companies need to integrate their front-end business systems with their back-end accounting software, allowing for automatic feeding of data into their accounting software. Efficient companies are moving away from manually inputting their data into their accounting systems, by enabling this process to be integrated and automated with the assistance of software like FileMaker Pro.

"All businesses want to increase their efficiency and effectiveness as these two factors combined can increase a company's bottom line. As competitive demands on businesses, especially smaller businesses, increase year over year they require integrated systems to help them manage their time and data more effectively, " says Joseph Suhr, Director, Keysoft (FileMaker Developers).

JBA Urban Planners are a case in point. They called in Keysoft FileMaker Developers to design and implement a business solution that would transfer invoice data in both directions between the company's existing FileMaker system and their fully featured MYOB accounting software.

Prior to the combined solution being developed for JBA Urban Planners, FileMaker was being used for all data entry within the organisation, and then that data was manually re-entered into MYOB, taking up hours and hours of time and increasing the risk of errors.

Leading software developer, Keysoft, has developed an innovative business solution, which combines the flexibility and scalability of leading database management software FileMaker Pro 6, along with the power of leading accounting software MYOB.

The solution streamlines the process workflow for quoting; job tracking; jobs in-progress and invoicing as well as bill payment tracking.

Results of combined FileMaker/MYOB solution
· Increased efficiency - limited chance of errors and therefore more effective in total business offering.
· Increased productivity - staff members' can work on their core business of servicing their customers.
· No doubling up of information and data entry.
· Reduced human error by removing duplicated manual entry process.
· The combined solution makes end of year financial reporting easier.
· Streamlines business' accounting operations and processes.