Integrating MYOB into a MODx site?

Hi forum,

I’m wondering if anyone out there has ever had to integrate the data from an MYOB database into a MODx site?

I have been planning all along to use FoxyCart since it had everything we needed. However, last minute we realized that it would be impossible for my client to keep updating the MODx site when individual products would go out of stock or not and he is wondering if there is anyway to link his MYOB database to the site. He doesn’t want people ordering what isn’t there

I’ve had a long day so sorry if I haven’t explained this thoroughly enough. But anyone out there have any ideas or can point me to a link?

Thanks,
Sarah

Hi Ganesh,

Thanks for the quick reply.

Sounds like I have a lot of researching to to ahead of me. I have very little experience writing snippets or running cron jobs. Luckily there’s someone at work who can maybe help me.

At least I have an idea what to do now. Fingers crossed!

Thanks heaps,
Sarah

I have a client asking for this exact same thing now. Did you make any progress to a solution that worked for everyone?

Hi jcurtis,

I’m sorry I didn’t post an update.

I didn’t manage to figure out the MODx/MYOB integration. I passed the website onto someone else who apparently had experience doing it...but even THEY couldn’t figure it out. It’s a big job for one designer (are you working in a team?) I honestly wouldn’t tackle this unless I had a lot of time to work on it. I initially thought of using FoxyCart, but then my client wanted the website to pull information from their MYOB database. That’s when stuff got a bit too crazy for me to handle it!

Why don’t you send off an email to MYOB and ask them if they have any resources? Now that I think of it, they never replied when I emailed them last year!

All the best jcurtis. If you figure it out, please post the solution. I can imagine if I ever freelance, E-commerce would be in high demand.

So far I’ve found two streams of info from other third parties:
- that it seems quite easily possible to import information, so I could build these sales as CSVs ready to import or something along those lines
- to be able to develop integrations and have access to API level information requires being an MYOB partner which costs to join

On this project our main contender is using Joomla and has said they can do it (to what degree I’ll find out at a meeting tomorrow). I did find a plugin for Joomla that sounds like it does two-way seamless MYOB integration...the only ’hitch’ being a $196 PER MONTH fee for the service.

My client is more interested in the one-way I think: importing web sales in, but if they have the option of going both ways and it’s worth that monthly cost to them we may find ourselves outgunned here.

Will let you know what I find out to close out the topic.

Josh

I have never used Joomla. But if that’s what it takes to get an online, MYOB shop up and running for a client, then I guess I’ll have to take a look. But 200 bucks a month is quite steep! I don’t see that being profitable at all for small businesses. They may as well set up an Etsy store :p

In my case, it was essential to import and export data. Along with the online store, they have three brick and mortar stores where they were selling their product. So keeping track of inventory from the online AND offline stores was important.

All the best Josh. Maybe MYOB will take notice with the amount of MODx programmers wanting to integrate with their service. It’s gotta start somewhere right?

Over the weekend I’ve looked at it a lot more.

For $700 you can become a MYOB development partner and they’ll give you an ODBC unlock key which will let you talk to/from MYOB. You can develop based on free software to test things though.

Fortunately my client is more than happy with the CSV import as he’s happy to operate the website stock levels manually for now.

When I mentioned the Joomla/$200 per month solution he laughed out loud. As a small business/startup it just wasn’t even on his radar that he’d spend that much a month to find out whether or not something might work.

$700!? Yikes. Is that something that the client purchases or the designer? So that you could work on multiple site using the same unlock key?


Your client is quiet right to LOL about the $200

The $700 is an annual fee which entitles you to some support and an unlock key. From what I understood it also gave you "one of everything" in terms of versions of the software to be testing/developing with. The way I read it, you can develop without this partnership, but each client needs to pay a 1-off $295 unlock fee for their MYOB product. If you take the $700 annual option, you’re also entitled to unlock as many clients as you work with.

Definitely would be worth the money if it was something that you came across a few times in a year. I can totally see how it’s a massive addition of value to a customer with stock levels and the like all tied into their systems.

There were still a few other questions unresolved for me though like how the ODBC driver connects to the client’s data file. If the site is hosted on a box at location a) I assume it needs a path via static IP and bridging to the machine where the data file resides and runs at location b). Things like that I’d need to have sorted out before I could feel comfortable offering it as something I’d develop for.

MYOB’s docs did seem to indicate all building and testing could be run using trial products which are fully unlocked using the included trial data files, so it’s definitely something I may play with down the track, but there’s no need this time around.