Western Sky Communications

“I have been an MYOB user since February 2005,” wrote Martha Retallick in a letter to the MYOB offices. “And there’s good news to report: MYOB just helped me win a Cactus Quill Award of Excellence for my studio.”

The Cactus Quill Awards honor business communicators in the Tuscon and Phoenix regions of Arizona, and are sponsored by the Tucson Chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators [IABC].

According to the IABC Tucson website, there were twenty-three qualified entries for the 2006 awards, in categories ranging from print to electronic and digital communication. Martha’s web and graphic design studio, Western Sky Communications, was chosen for a Cactus Quill based on a monthly postcard campaign she undertook.

“The Cactus Quills are not a beauty contest,” Martha explains. “Each entry must include a project description with goals and objectives, and a measurement of the project’s effectiveness.”

Martha used MYOB Premier Accounting – MYOB’s complete small business and management software for Windows – to help her analyze and organize her winning Cactus Quill entry.

Martha’s winning entry focused on monthly postcards that she sends to her in-house customer list. She used the Sales Customer Summary report, which displays the original sale amount, sales tax collected, and the current balance for all sales within a date range, to calculate the percentage of design studio income that came from customers on her list. “For the year 2005, that figure was almost 80 percent,” Martha says.

Martha found out about MYOB software from her accountant, Helga Russell, an MYOB customer since 1997. “Helga likes to say she twisted my arm to start using MYOB software,” Martha recalls. “And I’m glad she did. Before I started using MYOB last year, I had tried a competing product. I just couldn’t get my brain around it.”

Prior to doing her own books, Martha had been outsourcing her bookkeeping. She would receive financial reports long after they had any relevance. “Nothing like trying to run your business with stale information,” Martha remarks.

“My first two days of using MYOB Premier Accounting were filled with data entry, which I abhorred,” Martha admits. The time that she took to properly set up her company file paid off, however, almost immediately. Three days after she switched to MYOB, she was mining data, and gaining valuable insight into her business.

“I’d never done that before,” says Martha. “Not with the competing product, or with the reports that the bookkeeper had provided. That’s what convinced me that MYOB is the real deal. Count me as a very satisfied user.”