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MYOB AccountRight Desktop: Exporting Timesheets & Error Troubleshooting
MYOB AccountRight Desktop: Exporting Timesheets & Error Troubleshooting

Configure MYOB Desktop and Tanda to export Timesheets

Jov Mendez avatar
Written by Jov Mendez
Updated over a week ago

Tanda and MYOB Desktop is run through a flat-file integration, where a file can be exported from Tanda with your Timesheets into MYOB.

Integration

Before exporting your Timesheets, you just need to ensure:

  • MYOB Timesheets are enabled and all staff have a Card ID: you can check out the Importing Staff article for detailed information on this if you haven't done it yet. 

  • If you're on a Tanda Managed Award Template, you have completed the Payroll Configuration: Preparing for payroll on a Managed Award step. For Desktop, this involves creating new Payroll Categories and it may also involve changing Base Hourly rates for staff. 

  • Standard pay: some businesses use Standard Pay hours in MYOB to make processing pay quicker. With Tanda you will be paying staff based on their Timesheets so you won't require Standard Pay, therefore you'll need to remove it for all staff except Salaried. 

To remove Standard Pay in MYOB:

Go to Card File > Cards List > Employee. Select an employee to go into their profile > go to Payroll Details tab. In the left sidebar, select Standard Pay and in the table, in the Hours column next to Base Hourly, delete out the number and then click Ok:

Note: MYOB has a little quirk that it adds back in Standard Pay if you change the Base Hourly rate of an Employee in MYOB. You might be doing this as you pay the employee above award or at the end of financial year. If you do make this change in MYOB, just make sure to remove Standard Pay again. 

Exporting Timesheets

Go to Timesheets > Weekly/Fortnightly:

All your Timesheets should be green to show they're approved:

If there are any that are showing white, just click on the employee's name to go into their Timesheet to check for any shifts you haven't approved.

For Salaried staff, even though their Timesheets won't be exporting to your Payroll system, you can still have them in green and export them along with the other Timesheets, they just won't show in the confirmation summary or export file. If they have Leave though, this will be included. 

Exporting - Preview

When you're ready, just click the green Preview & Export button in the top right corner to go through to the Export Preview:

In this screen, you can:

  • Check for any warnings. An orange exclamation mark at the top will alert you to any issues:

  • Check Timesheet Export Summary: you can click on each employee's name to check the Award calculation. 

  • Check Total Hours and Gross Wage: at the end of each employee you can see the total for the pay period. 

Exporting - Complete

When you're ready, just click the green Export to Payroll Software button:

A file will be downloaded to your computer with the extension.txt. Save this somewhere on your computer where you can easily find it again.

Importing into MYOB

  • Click on the File menu

  • Select Import Data (or Import/Export Assistant)

  • Select Timesheets

Choose the following configuration settings:

  • Import File Format: Tab-delimited

  • First record is: Header Record

  • Identify employee by: Emp. Card ID

  • Click Continue

  • Select the file you downloaded from Tanda

  • Click on Match All at the bottom and a list will appear in the far right column Matching Import File. 

  • The first field should be Emp. Co./Last Name. Click on this field (in the far right column, in italics) and it should disappear:

Note: Deselecting the Emp. Co./Last Name field forces MYOB to match staff by Card ID, which is the field Tanda uses to match data to MYOB. If you don’t do this, MYOB will have trouble importing multi-word surnames.

  • Finally, click Import 

  • When the process is complete, you'll see a message with the results of your import:

  • Records imported without errors - this is a successful import

  • Records imported with warnings - this is a successful import (if you're not using Jobs). Warnings are when a Team isn't linked with a Job in MYOB. If you are wanting to use MYOB Jobs with your Tanda Timesheets, revisit this article or contact us on the information at the bottom of the article if you can't resolve. 

  • Records skipped - there have been errors with the import. Click on the link in the box or take note of the address to locate your MYOB Log. This will give you a summary of what the errors are.

Process Payroll in MYOB

When you’re ready to process, in MYOB go to Payroll > Process Payroll > ensure you select the correct pay period start and end date for the payrun and then you can check your staff to ensure you're happy with their pay and finalise as normal: 

Troubleshooting Errors

If records were skipped, you'll need to fix those errors before processing your Payroll. A record is a line of pay, so even if there is only 1 record skipped, you'll still need to fix it. 

Locate your MYOB folder and click on the text file called MYOB LOG. You may have more than one in the folder, so use the date modified column to locate the file with today's date.

This is an example of what the MYOB LOG will look like:

The two areas you want to pay attention to are the Summary of Errors and the Error Codes next to each record line. To solve the error, you need to look at the error code next to each record line to see which employee and payroll category is affected. You can then use the information below for each error code to troubleshoot. 

Error -216: Payroll Category not found

This can occur with both the Tanda Managed Award Template and Custom Rules. It means either the Payroll Category hasn't been created in MYOB or there is a spelling mistake. 

For the Managed Award Template, all the items in the Configuration Report need to be created as Payroll Categories in MYOB. To check this, in Tanda go to Compliance > Award Template > Manage > Get MYOB configuration report:

When you click on the button the report will generate and display the new Payroll Categories that must be created to match to in MYOB:

If you have already entered these, double check the spelling and spaces (it is more accurate to click COPY and paste into the field in MYOB). 

For Custom Rules, this either means there isn't a Payroll Category in MYOB or the Award Rule in Tanda hasn't been matched against the Payroll Category in MYOB. To check this:

In MYOB, go to Payroll > Payroll Categories > Wages. Check the relevant Payroll Category or create it if it wasn't there by clicking New.

In Tanda, go to Compliance > Custom Award Rules (or Allowances) > click on the relevant rule and check that the Export name is linked with the relevant Payroll Category in MYOB:

Error - 217: Payroll Category is not linked to employee

This means the Payroll Category hasn't been linked with the employee. In MYOB go to Card File > Cards List > click on the relevant employee > Payroll Details tab > go to Wages > in the Wage box at the bottom, ensure there is a tick next to the Payroll Category that had the error line against it and press OK to save:

Error -218: Payroll category is not an hourly wage category. 

For Custom Award rules, this error will come up if the Payroll Category is not setup as Hourly.

In MYOB, go to Payroll > Payroll Categories > Wages tab > click on the relevant Payroll Category and ensure it is selected as Hourly:

Error -296: Employee not found

This means either the employee hasn't been added to MYOB or there is an issue linking the employee with the Card ID from Tanda.

First, check that you have added the employee to MYOB under Card File > Cards List > Employee. Add them if they weren't in your Employee List.

Next in Tanda, go to the employee's profile by clicking on Workforce > Staff > click the employee's profile > click on Payroll tab:

Ensure the Employee ID entered matches with the Card ID in MYOB. You might also want to check that when you're importing the Timesheets into MYOB, you're matching by Card ID and not Last Name, as differences in spelling or hyphens in one system cause this error, which is why we use Card ID to match instead.

General Errors

  • As a general first step when incurring export issues, it's recommended that the integration is reconnected. This can be done by following "Settings -> Integrations -> Edit [On your MYOB integration] -> Disconnect". Once that's done, you'll be able to reconnect your integration by going to "Settings -> Integrations".

  • If records are not importing for some staff, make sure that you are deselecting the Emp. Co./Last Name field when doing a timesheet import. This ensures MYOB checks for staff based on their Card ID.

  • If you get an error while attempting to import the file into MYOB, make sure you don’t have it open in any other programs (such as Notepad).

  • Tanda uses “Base Hourly” as the default payroll category, so data that has not been matched to a specific payroll category will be entered into that one. Some old versions of MYOB use “Basic Hourly” instead of “Base Hourly”. You can either update it in MYOB to Base Hourly, or in Tanda under Payroll > Award Rules > Base Hourly > ensure the export name says Basic Hourly. 

  • If MYOB says that your timesheets have been imported successfully, but they are not showing up in MYOB’s timesheets section:

  1. Check that the correct payroll year is open. Check by going to File > Close Payroll Year.

  2. Check that you have selected the correct Pay period start and Pay period end in Process Payroll:

  • Check that your computer’s date format matches what you expect. If your computer is set to use American date formats, then the date formats Tanda exports won’t work because MYOB will mix around the months and days. In your Control Panel’s Region settings you can change the date format - we recommend English (United Kingdom).

  • If they still haven't imported and there's no import log this could be an internal server security issue outside of Tanda.

Re-exporting Timesheets

Once you have fixed all the errors, you'll need to generate a new export file from Tanda. If you use the same one (with everyone's data in it), it will duplicate the data for all the Timesheets that imported successfully.

You will need to download an individual export file for each employee that had an error. To do this in Tanda, go to Timesheets > Weekly/Fortnightly > click on the relevant employee's name > in the top right corner of their Timesheet click Export to > select MYOB AccountRight Desktop:

Repeat this process for every other employee that had an error and then follow the process as before to import the Timesheet into MYOB.

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