Odoo and MYOB solve different problems. MYOB is a mature Australian accounting and payroll platform built around BAS, STP Phase 2 and bank feeds for the domestic SME market. Odoo is a modular ERP — accounting plus CRM, inventory, manufacturing, project and field service — with Australian compliance added through the localisation module. Choosing between them is less about features and more about how much of your business you want running in one place.
We worked with a Perth landscaping operator on this exact decision last year. Fourteen users, MYOB AccountRight for the books, a separate scheduling spreadsheet for crews, a CRM from 2019 that nobody updated, and a fleet tracker that pushed notifications nobody actioned. The accountant loved MYOB. Operations hated the rest. Moving to Odoo consolidated five tools into one and removed the manual BAS reconciliation that had been eating three days a quarter. MYOB wasn’t broken; it was just doing one-fifth of the job.
Odoo vs MYOB at a glance
| Dimension | MYOB | Odoo |
|---|---|---|
| Core purpose | Australian accounting + payroll | Modular ERP with Australian localisation |
| Best fit user count | 1–20 (Business), 20–100 (Acumatica) | 5–500+ |
| Starting monthly cost (AUD) | ~$30 per org (Business), ~$75 (AccountRight) | ~$34 per user (all apps) |
| GST, BAS, STP Phase 2 | ✓ Native and mature | ✓ Via localisation module |
| Peppol e-invoicing | ✓ Built in | ✓ Via registered Access Point |
| Award-interpretation payroll | ✓ Deep — handles edge cases | ⚠ Base rates fine; pair with Employment Hero for complex awards |
| Bank feed polish | ✓ Live feeds, big four + many more | ⚠ Serviceable; CBA via aggregator |
| Inventory / warehousing | Basic | ✓ Deep — barcode, lots, landed costs |
| Manufacturing (MRP) | None native | ✓ BOMs, routings, subcontracting, PLM |
| CRM, project, field service | Light (Acumatica only) | ✓ First-class modules |
| Implementation complexity | Low — self-serve possible | Medium-to-high — partner recommended past five users |
Rule of thumb: if accounting is the whole job, MYOB wins. If accounting is one of five jobs the same system needs to do, Odoo wins.
What Odoo and MYOB actually are
MYOB is an accounting software company founded in Melbourne in 1991. Its current line-up — MYOB Business (cloud SME), MYOB AccountRight (desktop and cloud hybrid) and MYOB Acumatica (mid-market ERP built on the licensed Acumatica platform) — is shaped around Australian and New Zealand tax, payroll and compliance. The smaller tiers do accounting, invoicing, bank reconciliation, STP payroll and BAS. That’s the core job, and they do it well.
Odoo is a Belgian-founded, open-source ERP with a yearly major release. The Australian localisation module covers GST rate handling, BAS Types A, C and D, STP Phase 2, Peppol e-invoicing under BIS Billing 3.0, and ABA file generation for ANZ, CBA, NAB and Westpac. Beyond accounting, you also get CRM, sales, purchase, inventory, manufacturing (MRP), project, timesheets, field service, HR, marketing and website — over sixty official modules sharing the same database and user model.
The short version: you buy MYOB to do accounting. You buy Odoo to do accounting plus whatever else your operations team is currently doing in Excel.
Pricing and total cost of ownership
MYOB’s tiered pricing
MYOB Business sits in the $30 to $109 per organisation per month range as of 2026, depending on tier and payroll headcount. MYOB AccountRight runs around $75 to $180 per month. MYOB Acumatica is priced per named user and typically quoted from $15,000 to $40,000 in year one once implementation is included. Licence fees bundle in ATO lodgement and bank feeds; there are no module add-ons to worry about.
Odoo’s per-user pricing
Odoo Online is around $34 AUD per user per month for the “all apps” plan, billed annually. A twenty-user organisation costs roughly $8,160 per year in licensing. Odoo.sh — a managed hosting tier that supports custom code — adds server cost on top. Implementation is separate and typically $20,000 to $60,000 for a standard small-to-medium build; $60,000 to $150,000 for mid-market.
The total stack cost is the real comparison
On pure licence cost, MYOB wins at five users and Odoo wins at twenty-five. But that comparison is apples to oranges. The real question is total tooling cost: MYOB plus your scheduling tool plus your CRM plus your inventory tool plus the integrations between them. Once your stack hits four subscriptions, Odoo usually wins on total spend even before productivity gains.
Australian compliance — GST, BAS, STP Phase 2, Peppol
Where MYOB’s maturity shows
MYOB’s compliance story is its single biggest strength. BAS reports generate cleanly, STP Phase 2 lodgement is built in, PAYG withholding handles correctly for the Australian financial year, and Fair Work award interpretation works out of the box for most awards. The ATO relationship is decades old. Your accountant has almost certainly used it.
Odoo’s compliance via the localisation module
Odoo reaches feature parity on compliance through the Australian localisation module, maintained by Odoo S.A. with contributions from local partners. GST 10% is pre-configured with correct tax codes. BAS reports generate Types A, C and D. STP Phase 2 lodgement works via an approved sending provider. Peppol e-invoicing runs through a registered Access Point — useful now that the ATO is the Peppol Authority for Australia and Commonwealth agencies are mandated recipients.
The catch — implementation quality matters more than the platform
Odoo’s compliance only works properly if it’s set up properly. The localisation ships correctly, but the chart of accounts, tax rules and reporting dimensions have to match your actual business. Bad implementations of Odoo Accounting produce BAS reports that look right and aren’t. MYOB gives you less rope to hang yourself with.
Payroll and Single Touch Payroll
MYOB’s award-interpretation depth
MYOB’s payroll engine was built for Australian award interpretation. It handles multiple pay cycles, leave loading, RDOs, time-in-lieu, salary packaging, super funds, and the edge cases of Horticulture Award, Clerks Award and Building and Construction General On-site Award without needing custom code. STP Phase 2 lodgement is direct to the ATO. Super stream integrates natively.
Odoo’s payroll coverage
Odoo’s Australian payroll is serviceable but narrower. Base award rates work, STP Phase 2 lodges through the integration, and super stream exports to clearinghouses. Where it strains is complex award interpretation — overtime bands, allowance stacking, casual loading rules and RDO accrual behaviour that MYOB has modelled for years.
When to keep a dedicated payroll platform
For businesses with more than thirty employees on a complex award, we often recommend keeping a dedicated payroll platform (Employment Hero, KeyPay or MYOB itself) and letting Odoo handle everything else through a light journal integration. This is the one area where MYOB’s domain focus genuinely pays off and where “Odoo does everything” needs an asterisk. Be honest about your payroll complexity before committing.
Bank feeds and reconciliation reality in Australia
Bank feeds are where the comparison gets underdiscussed. MYOB’s feed network covers every major Australian bank — ANZ, NAB, CBA, Westpac, Bendigo, Macquarie, ING, HSBC — with next-day reconciliation in most cases and live feeds for the big four. Rules learn from your reconciliation history. The experience is genuinely frictionless once set up.
Odoo’s bank feed coverage in Australia runs through a handful of providers including direct ANZ, Westpac and NAB feeds, CBA via a data aggregator, and manual CSV imports as a universal fallback. It works, but the polish isn’t at MYOB’s level yet. Reconciliation rules are configurable and automation is good, but new users often find the first weeks less slick.
If reconciliation speed is the single most important thing your finance team does — for instance a cafe group doing eight hundred EFTPOS transactions a day — MYOB wins this lane. If reconciliation is ten percent of the finance job and inventory, project profitability and purchase orders are the other ninety percent, Odoo’s slightly-rougher feed doesn’t matter.
Features beyond accounting — CRM, inventory, manufacturing
This is where the comparison stops being close.
CRM and sales
MYOB Business has a light contacts module; MYOB Acumatica has a real CRM. Odoo CRM is deeper than either — pipelines, lead scoring, quotations, activity tracking, email sync with Outlook and Gmail, and tight bidirectional links to sales orders and invoicing.
Inventory and warehousing
MYOB’s stock functionality handles basic multi-location, quantities on hand, and cost of goods sold. Odoo Inventory does barcode operations, put-away and removal strategies, multi-step receipts and deliveries, landed costs, serial and lot tracking, cycle counts, and Aus Post, StarTrack and Starshipit shipping connectors. For any business holding more than a few hundred SKUs, the gap is unbridgeable.
Manufacturing
MYOB has no native MRP. Odoo Manufacturing covers bills of materials, routings, work centres, quality checks, subcontracting, maintenance and PLM. Australian manufacturers currently on MYOB plus a dedicated MRP plus a separate quality tool almost always find Odoo cheaper end to end — once the implementation is paid for.
Field service and projects
MYOB doesn’t compete here. Odoo Project plus Timesheets plus Field Service replaces JIM2, ServiceM8 and a pile of spreadsheets for most trades-based businesses. We cover this pattern in detail in our recurring service jobs playbook.
Which suits which business size
| User count | Profile | Recommendation | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| ≤ 5 | Pure services, no inventory, no scheduling, no manufacturing | MYOB Business or Xero | Accounting is the whole job. An ERP here is overkill — you’ll pay for modules you don’t use |
| 5–20 | Accounting plus one operational wrinkle (light inventory, project profitability, recurring service work) | Either | MYOB plus a point tool often wins year one on cost. Odoo wins year three on total spend and coherence |
| 20–100 | Any business with manufacturing, multi-warehouse, field service, construction job costing, or wholesale distribution | Odoo cleanly | MYOB Acumatica competes at the top of this band but usually costs more to implement and is less flexible on customisation |
| > 100 | Complex multi-entity, international operations | Widen the search | Comparison extends to NetSuite, SAP Business One, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, and Odoo Enterprise. MYOB Acumatica is a contender; MYOB Business and AccountRight are not |
Migrating from MYOB to Odoo without losing history
Exporting data and mapping tax codes
The migration path from MYOB to Odoo is well understood and follows the same principles we cover for Xero-to-Odoo migrations. Export chart of accounts, open AR and AP, customers, suppliers, items and opening balances from MYOB. Map your MYOB tax codes (GST, FRE, INP, ITS, N-T and so on) to Odoo’s Australian localisation tax codes during migration — not after go-live. The tax-code mapping is where most unassisted migrations quietly break their own BAS.
Historical records and the ATO
Historical transactions usually don’t need to migrate line-by-line. The ATO accepts archived MYOB files as source records for the seven-year retention period, so most businesses bring across opening balances at cutover plus open transactions and let MYOB become a read-only archive. Summary journals for the prior two financial years can be loaded into Odoo if you want the reporting continuity, but it’s rarely worth the cost.
Cutover timing and BAS boundaries
Cutover timing matters. Finish the current BAS period in MYOB and lodge it from there; begin the next period in Odoo. Cut over on the first day of a new quarter to avoid splitting one BAS across two systems. Payroll is the same: finish the fortnight in MYOB, start the next fortnight in Odoo, and lodge STP from whichever system owned the pay.
Running Odoo alongside MYOB as a staged integration
When staged makes sense
Some businesses aren’t ready to move accounting off MYOB but have hit the ceiling on everything else. A staged approach works: put Odoo in for inventory, CRM, manufacturing, project and field service, and keep MYOB as the book of record. Integrate via a daily summary journal from Odoo to MYOB covering sales revenue, COGS and inventory movement.
Treat it as a stepping-stone, not a permanent state
Running two ledgers doubles reconciliation work, and two subscriptions cost more than one. We usually scope these engagements with a twelve-to-eighteen month horizon to move accounting into Odoo once the operational modules are trusted. If the plan is permanent dual-system, the economics don’t work and something else is driving the decision.
Integration patterns that actually hold up
Use a real integration layer (Odoo’s native export plus a scheduled API push, or a middleware like n8n), not manual CSV transfers. A botched integration produces reconciliation variances that take weeks to unpick and sour both teams on Odoo before it’s had a chance to prove itself.
Local implementation support and what an Australian partner actually means
The partner networks are not equivalent
Both vendors operate partner networks in Australia. MYOB’s is deep and mature — there’s a bookkeeper or certified consultant within a suburb of most Australian SMEs. Odoo’s Australian partner network is smaller but growing, and varies sharply in quality.
What “Australian partner” should actually mean
A partner worth hiring will: understand Australian payroll awards at the code level, have configured Peppol e-invoicing for at least one live client, have lodged STP Phase 2 end-to-end in production (not just theory), and be able to talk to your accountant in the same language. “Australian partner” should not mean a white-label of an offshore development shop with a .com.au domain. The difference shows up six months after go-live when something breaks and nobody on the partner side can trace why the BAS reconciliation is $412 off.
What to verify before you sign
Ask to see a sample BAS reconciliation from a real engagement. Ask who will actually be doing the implementation — the people scoping the work, or a junior team brought in once the contract is signed. Ask for one reference from an Australian client who’s been live for more than a year. The question of whether you can implement Odoo yourself is worth asking too; the honest answer for most businesses over five users is that you can, but the licence fee you save is usually lost three times over in rework.
If you’re weighing MYOB against Odoo and the answer isn’t obvious, it probably means Odoo is the right long-term move and the real question is timing and scope. A short discovery call will tell us both whether a migration to Odoo makes sense this year, next year, or not at all. There’s no fee and no pressure to commit — we’d rather tell you to stay on MYOB than win a bad-fit engagement.
Frequently asked.
What is the best accounting software for small business in Australia?
For sole traders and businesses under five users, MYOB Business or Xero handle it cleanly. Above that — particularly where inventory, projects or field service touch the same workflow — Odoo Accounting with the Australian localisation typically gives better value because one system replaces three. Best depends on whether accounting is the whole job or part of it.
What is the disadvantage of using Odoo?
Odoo's depth cuts both ways. There's more to configure, more to learn, and bad implementations produce cluttered systems nobody trusts. Australian localisation is mature but needs a partner who understands ATO quirks. The platform also releases annually, so upgrades need planning. Picked properly and implemented well, none of this is disqualifying.
Is Odoo used in Australia?
Yes. Odoo has Australian customers across manufacturing, field service, wholesale, retail and professional services, supported by a local partner network and built-in localisation covering GST, BAS Types A, C and D, STP Phase 2 and Peppol e-invoicing. It's less name-recognised than MYOB or Xero but materially more capable past the accounting layer.
Which ERP is mostly used in Australia?
By customer count, MYOB and Xero dominate the SME accounting tier but neither is a true ERP. Among genuine ERPs, NetSuite, SAP Business One, MYOB Acumatica, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and Odoo compete in the Australian mid-market. Odoo's share is growing fastest in the five-to-fifty user band where ERP meets departmental software.
What is the alternative to MYOB in Australia?
Xero is the closest like-for-like alternative at the SME accounting tier. For businesses wanting accounting plus operations in one system — inventory, manufacturing, CRM, field service — Odoo is the obvious alternative. Reckon, QuickBooks and Sage Business Cloud also operate in the Australian market but with smaller footprints and narrower feature sets.
What is the simplest accounting software for a small business?
For a sole trader or micro-business under five users, MYOB Business Lite, Xero Starter or Reckon One are the simplest to set up and run unassisted. Odoo is powerful but rewards investment in setup — if your business fits on a single spreadsheet today, don't reach for an ERP yet.