How to Get a MYOB API Key (AccountRight and MYOB Business)

First, work out which MYOB you have

This is the step that saves the most wasted effort. MYOB is not one product, and the APIs are not interchangeable.

• MYOB AccountRight, the long standing product, which can run on a local file or in the cloud. It has its own API and its own quirks, particularly around company file access.
• MYOB Business, previously MYOB Essentials, the cloud first product. It uses a different API surface.
• MYOB Acumatica, the enterprise product formerly known as MYOB Advanced. Different platform again, with its own integration model.

Before anyone writes code, confirm which of these the business is actually on. Enquiries regularly start with "we need a MYOB integration" and turn out to involve two different MYOB products across two entities.

Getting an API key, step by step

1. Register on the MYOB developer portal using an account you control long term, not a personal one belonging to whoever set it up.
2. Register an application. You provide a name and a redirect URI, and you receive an API key, which acts as the client id, and a secret.
3. Wait for approval. App registration is not always instant. Allow for this in the project timeline rather than discovering it the week of go-live.
4. Complete the OAuth 2.0 flow to authorise access to the business's MYOB data and receive an access token and refresh token.
5. Refresh tokens automatically. Access tokens are short lived, so the integration has to renew them without anyone logging in.

The company file login that catches people out

Here is the part that surprises almost everyone integrating AccountRight for the first time. Completing OAuth is not enough on its own. To read or write inside an AccountRight company file, the request also needs the company file credentials, the username and password used to open that file.

Two consequences follow from that, and both matter commercially:

• Somebody has to hand over working company file credentials before the integration can function, which is a conversation worth having early rather than mid build.
• If those credentials change, the integration stops. It needs to fail loudly and tell someone, not quietly stall.

What the MYOB API lets you do

Coverage varies between the AccountRight and MYOB Business APIs, but broadly you can reach:

• Sales invoices and quotes, create and update from a job or order system
• Purchases and supplier bills, including job costing where the product supports it
• Contacts, customers and suppliers, kept in step with a CRM
• Items and inventory, depending on product and plan
• Accounts, tax codes and jobs, so transactions land in the right place
• Payroll and timesheets, on the products that expose it, with tighter permissions

Do not assume a field exists because the equivalent exists in Xero. The data models differ in ways that matter, particularly around jobs, categories and tax handling. Confirm against the actual API for the product in question before promising a mapping.

When to bring in a developer

MYOB integrations are usually more involved than the equivalent Xero work, mostly because of the product fragmentation and the company file layer. That is manageable when it is understood at the start, and expensive when it is discovered halfway through.