MYOB Acumatica for Franchise Businesses in Australia (formerly MYOB Advanced)

Updated 20 October 2026: rebuilt the short answer, opening section and FAQ around the “MYOB Advanced for franchise” question, added a royalty and marketing levy section and an entity structure table, re-verified every multi-company, intercompany, BAS, STP and point-of-sale claim against MYOB’s current pages, and removed the licensing dollar figures.

MYOB Advanced for franchise groups is now called MYOB Acumatica; MYOB renamed it in 2024. For a franchisor and its franchisees it gives one username across every entity, a separate set of books per legal entity in one tenant, intercompany invoices posted in both entities at once, group reporting across the network, and scheduled royalty and marketing levy billing. GST, BAS and STP stay per entity.

At a glance

• Who it is for: Australian franchisors and franchise networks with several legal entities, central purchasing or supply, and a head office that reports across the group monthly
• Problem it solves: One accounting file per entity and a consolidation spreadsheet at month end, royalties invoiced by hand from store sales reports, and intercompany charges keyed twice
• Platforms: MYOB Acumatica (sold as MYOB Advanced until 2024) in the Standard, Plus or Enterprise edition; point of sale through 1Retail, a POS built on the Acumatica platform
• Typical cost: Licensing is per named user and quoted per business through partners, so there is no list price to print here; our MYOB Acumatica cost guide gives the indicative implementation ranges, and multi-entity builds sit toward the upper end
• Typical timeline: 3 to 4 months for a finance, inventory and purchasing scope across a small network; each extra entity adds configuration and testing time
• Last verified: 20 October 2026 against MYOB’s licensing page, Companies form reference (CS101500), intercompany sales guide, Prepare Tax Report form (TX501000), Single Touch Payroll guide and 1Retail

Is MYOB Advanced for franchise groups the same as MYOB Acumatica?

Yes. If your franchise was quoted MYOB Advanced Business a few years ago, or your accountant still calls it Advanced, this is the same product. MYOB’s product page still introduces it as “MYOB Acumatica (formerly MYOB Advanced)”, and the multi-company architecture, the editions and the licence types carried over unchanged. The name, the release numbering and MYOB’s AI tools are what changed. We cover the history in our post on what the MYOB Advanced to MYOB Acumatica rebrand means for Australian businesses.

Two licensing details matter more to a franchise than to most buyers. MYOB’s licensing page lists “Companies”, the number of separate companies you can set up, as an entitlement fixed by the edition, so check it against your entity count, including planned stores, before anyone signs. The same page says users with the same username in different companies are counted once, so a head office accountant who posts in twelve franchisee companies uses one licence of each type, not twelve.

What does a franchise network need from its accounting system?

A franchise has an accounting shape that single-company software does not handle well. There is a franchisor, usually some company-owned stores, and a set of franchisees that are separate legal businesses with their own ABN, BAS and payroll. Head office needs to see across all of them, each franchisee needs to see only its own numbers, and money moves between them constantly: royalties and levies one way, stock and rebates the other. On one accounting file per entity that works until roughly the fourth or fifth entity. Then month end becomes a spreadsheet with a tab per store, royalty invoices are built from sales reports emailed in by franchisees, and intercompany charges are keyed twice.

How does MYOB Acumatica set up a franchisor and its franchisees?

MYOB Acumatica runs several companies inside one tenant when the Multicompany Support feature is switched on. MYOB’s companies and branches guide defines a company as “a legal entity with an independent balance sheet and separate tax reporting”, and each company can carry branches, which the guide describes as a separate office or point of sale. So the franchisor, its company-owned stores and its franchisees can each be a company, with branches underneath where one entity runs several sites.

The same guide states that all branches within a tenant have the same chart of accounts, calendar and base currency, and MYOB’s multibranch guide lists customers, vendors, stock items and taxes among the shared master data. One chart of accounts across every store is what makes a group report possible without mapping. The same guide describes branch access roles that limit users to their own branch’s data, and restriction groups that fence off specific accounts, so a franchisee owner sees their entity only.

Licence types follow the same pattern. The licensing page lists an Executive type in every edition with “read-only access to all features and edit access for key tasks”, which is how a franchisee owner sees their numbers without a full seat, and an External bookkeeper type on the Enterprise edition for the outside accountant who keeps a franchisee’s books.

Intercompany transactions and group reporting

Money moving between companies in the tenant is where the time saving lives. MYOB’s interbranch account mapping guide describes mapping rules on the Inter-Branch Account Mapping form (GL101010) that generate balancing entries automatically when a transaction touches two companies, so each entity’s books stay in balance through due-to and due-from accounts. Funds transfers between companies use the same rules.

For sales between companies, MYOB’s intercompany sales guide covers “multiple companies defined in the same tenant” trading with each other: the franchisor raises an AR invoice to a customer record extended from the franchisee company, and the system generates the matching AP bill in the franchisee, singly or in bulk from the Generate Intercompany Documents form (AP503500). Taxes are recalculated on the AP side using the vendor’s tax zone.

On eliminations, be careful what you are promised. MYOB documents automatic balancing entries and intercompany document generation, not a one-click elimination of intercompany revenue and cost on a group report. The group report is designed so the intercompany accounts net off, and that design is implementation work. Our post on multi-entity and intercompany accounting in MYOB Acumatica goes through the mechanics.

How does MYOB Acumatica handle royalties and marketing levies across franchisees?

There is no royalty module, and anyone who tells you otherwise is describing configuration. What MYOB Acumatica has is two billing engines and a ledger the royalty base can be read from.

• Fixed fees on a schedule. MYOB’s contract billing guide describes contracts on the Customer Contracts form (CT301000) billed weekly, monthly, quarterly or yearly, with the Run Contract Billing form (CT501000) invoicing every active contract in one pass. A fixed franchise fee or flat levy fits this, one contract per franchisee.
• Recurring invoices without contracts. The lighter option is a scheduled AR invoice. MYOB’s recurring AR documents guide describes schedules on the Recurring Transactions form (AR203500) that run daily, weekly, monthly or by financial period.
• Percentage-of-sales royalties. If the franchisee is a company in the tenant, a generic inquiry gives gross sales by company by period. If it is outside the tenant, the base comes from the POS feed or a sales declaration. The royalty line is calculated from that base and invoiced in AR; we build this as an inquiry plus an import scenario on most sites, and tiered or capped royalties are a small customisation.
• GST on the invoice. Royalties and levies are service invoices between registered entities, so the tax category on the non-stock item decides the treatment. GST lands in the franchisor’s BAS and, where the franchisee is in the tenant with intercompany sales on, the generated AP bill carries the franchisee’s side.
• Marketing fund accounting. Keep the levy on its own non-stock item and revenue account from day one. Franchise agreements usually require the fund to be reported to franchisees, and separating it early beats untangling it from royalty revenue later.

“Franchise networks come to us with the same spreadsheet: twelve tabs, one per entity, and a consolidation tab that only one person understands. The software fixes the double keying. What decides the project is whether the franchisor is willing to standardise the chart of accounts across every franchisee, because without that the group report is still a spreadsheet with better formatting.”

Josh Craig, Director, Auboros

How do GST, BAS and STP work when every franchisee is its own entity?

Each legal entity lodges its own activity statement with the Australian Taxation Office, reporting GST at 10% on its own sales and purchases, and MYOB Acumatica prepares that per company. The Prepare Tax Report form (TX501000) has a Company box, “the company on behalf of which the tax report will be prepared”, which appears when Multicompany Support is enabled, and the Companies form (CS101500) holds each company’s Tax Registration ID. A company whose branches lodge separately can tick File Taxes by Branch and prepare one report per branch.

Single Touch Payroll works the same way. MYOB’s STP guide states that when a pay run is completed a Single Touch Payroll batch is created and submitted to the ATO, and that the ABN, company ID and company name on the Branches and Companies forms must be valid before a batch will send. The Manage STP Submissions form (MP.PP.50.19) shows status at batch, branch and employee level. Where one company pays staff who work for another, MYOB’s payroll reporting companies guide describes a Payroll Reporting Company feature that assigns an employee to a different company for STP reporting and super payments. Since Payday Super started on 1 July 2026, each employing entity has paid super with each pay run rather than quarterly.

What about point of sale and store systems?

For a retail or food franchise, point of sale is the biggest integration decision in the project, because every store’s takings and stock movements come through it. 1Retail is a POS built within Acumatica. Its site lists it as Certified for Acumatica and Technically Validated for MYOB Advanced (the page still uses the older name), names Franchising among the retail industries it serves, and lists Multi-location, Multi-Company, Loyalty and Gift Cards among its features, with nearly all configuration managed in the ERP. Confirm the validation status for your release with MYOB during scoping.

Other store systems connect through the API, and the licence for that is a budget line people miss. MYOB’s API licence page describes the free Full User API licence as limited to 1,500 calls a day and suitable only for light integrations, and recommends the paid Full Access API licence for business-critical integrations. A POS feed from a network of stores is one.

Many franchisees arrive on AccountRight, and whether they move into the tenant or keep their own file is a franchise agreement decision before it is a software one. Where they do move, the path is the standard one for moving from Xero or AccountRight to an ERP: opening balances, open invoices and bills, customers, suppliers and items, with history kept in the old file.

Which franchise networks does MYOB Acumatica fit, and which should look elsewhere?

MYOB Acumatica fits a network where the franchisor carries real accounting weight: several legal entities, central purchasing or a distribution centre supplying stores, royalties and levies invoiced monthly, and a board that wants a group report without a spreadsheet. Networks that supply their own stores get the most from it, because purchasing, warehouse transfers and store replenishment run beside the ledgers.

It is a poor fit for a franchisor with two or three entities and no supply chain, where an accounting file per entity and a monthly consolidation is cheaper. It is also a poor fit where franchisees will not accept a shared chart of accounts or any head office visibility, because that removes most of the value of putting them in the tenant. As a MYOB Acumatica partner in Brisbane we have that conversation with franchisors before anyone signs anything, and we would rather tell you to wait than build a group report nobody trusts.

Goes well with

• How much MYOB Acumatica costs in Australia
• MYOB Acumatica vs AccountRight: when a franchisee has outgrown its file
• How long a MYOB Acumatica implementation takes in Australia

Running a franchise network and wondering whether MYOB Acumatica fits?

We implement MYOB Acumatica for franchise groups across Queensland, NSW and Victoria from Brisbane, and we will tell you plainly whether your structure suits it. If you want to talk through your entities, royalty model and store systems, book a free consultation. No commitment required.