How to delete multiple transactions in MYOB
There is no bulk delete in either MYOB product. Here is what you can do instead — the manual route, the purge workaround, what it costs in time, and what to do before you delete anything.
MYOB has no bulk delete — not in AccountRight, and not in MYOB Business. Every recorded transaction is deleted one at a time. AccountRight’s only built-in cleanup is to purge whole categories of records, and purge does not cover cards, purchase orders or sales orders. For a file with thousands of junk entries, that leaves you deleting by hand — or paying a service to script it for you.
What MYOB actually allows
| What you want to delete | Built-in option | Limits |
|---|---|---|
| Invoices, bills, purchases | One at a time | Each record is opened and deleted on its own |
| Journal entries | One at a time | No batch route exists |
| Bank-feed transactions | One at a time | Matched entries have to be handled first |
| Purchase orders & sales orders (AccountRight) | One at a time | Cannot be purged — only opened and deleted |
| Cards, contacts, items | Only if unused | A card with transactions cannot be deleted — merge instead |
| Bulk cleanup (AccountRight) | Purge, by category | Irreversible, and not every record type can be purged |
Last checked 3 October 2026. MYOB changes its limits quietly; if the product disagrees with this page, trust the product.
AccountRight and MYOB Business are not the same job
Before anything else, know which product you are on — the answer changes.
- MYOB AccountRight is the desktop product. Your company lives in a single file on a computer or server, and that file grows with every transaction. As it grows it gets slower and less stable, and at the 1.8 GB limit it becomes unusable. MYOB’s own remedy is to purge transactions — which is why “purge” and “bulk delete” get talked about as if they were the same thing. They are not, and purge does not cover everything.
- MYOB Business (previously Essentials) is the cloud product. There is no file-size problem — the problem is simply that nothing can be deleted in bulk. You delete invoices and other records one at a time from the browser.
The manual route, and what it costs you
- Delete by hand, one record at a time. MYOB’s only supported route for most record types. A handful of test entries is minutes; a bad import of several thousand is days or weeks of work you did not have.
- Purge (AccountRight only). Clears whole categories at once and is irreversible. It does not touch cards, purchase orders or sales orders, so for those you are back to deleting by hand.
- Merge duplicate cards. The fix when a card cannot be deleted because it has transactions. Slower than it should be — roughly 100 cards at a time before MYOB runs out of memory and has to be restarted.
- Start a fresh company file. Clean and sometimes right, but you lose the history, the reconciliation and the audit trail, and you still rebuild whatever was real.
Before you delete anything: back up, then export
Deletion is not something to do carefully later. If you are on AccountRight, take a company-file backup first — that is a genuine restore point, and it is the one undo MYOB gives you. If you are on MYOB Business, there is no restore point: export the exact set you intend to remove and keep the file somewhere you will still have it. Only then start deleting.
What a safe bulk delete looks like
You cannot delete what you have not exported. Reconciled lines and closed periods are reported as skipped, never forced — QuickBooks will not allow it, and a tool that tried would be the harm this design exists to avoid.
What the only real alternative costs
There is no self-serve MYOB bulk-delete product — MYOB’s marketplace carries none. What exists is a service: an Australian MYOB/Xero tooling vendor sells a “Bulk Deletion Tool for MYOB” that scripts the keystrokes for you against an AccountRight file.
| Option | Model | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Accounting Addons — Bulk Deletion Tool for MYOB | Service — keystroke scripting on your AccountRight file | From AUD $660 inc GST + quoted scripting |
Vendor’s published terms, checked 3 October 2026. Its own stated limits: it can only delete records you could delete manually, cards linked to transactions cannot be deleted (they can be merged, about 100 at a time), and it drives the desktop UI rather than an API.
Why there is no button for this
MYOB’s community has an open request — *“No Bulk Delete of Invoices”* — and the standard answer in its threads is that no such function exists and the only route is a third-party specialist. That is not a setting you have missed; it is a gap in the product.
Is there a better way?
We build Multi-Delete for QuickBooks Online, not MYOB — so this page answers your question and stops there. There is no MYOB tool from us, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. If a safe, self-serve MYOB cleanup ever makes sense to build, it will be described on these pages first.
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Questions people actually ask
Can you bulk delete transactions in MYOB?
No. Neither MYOB AccountRight nor MYOB Business has a bulk delete for recorded transactions. Every invoice, bill, purchase, journal entry or bank transaction is deleted one at a time, and each delete has to be opened and confirmed on its own. MYOB’s own community carries an open request for bulk invoice deletion, so this is a known gap rather than a setting you have missed.
How do I delete multiple transactions in MYOB AccountRight?
By hand: open each transaction and delete it, one at a time. The only built-in cleanup is to purge records by type, and purge does not cover everything — cards, purchase orders and sales orders cannot be purged. For thousands of records the manual route runs into days or weeks, which is why the only real alternative today is a paid keystroke-scripting service (see below).
How do I delete multiple invoices in MYOB?
One at a time. In MYOB Business you open the Invoices page from the Sales menu and delete invoices individually; in AccountRight you open each sale and delete it. If an invoice has a payment or a credit applied, that usually has to be removed first. There is no select-many-and-delete.
Why is my MYOB AccountRight company file so large and slow?
AccountRight keeps everything in one company file on disk, and it grows with every transaction. A large file gets slower and less stable, and at the 1.8 GB limit it becomes unusable. MYOB’s own remedy is to purge transactions, but purge does not cover every record type — which is exactly the situation the bulk-delete service exists for.
Can I delete a card or a contact in MYOB?
Only if it is not linked to a transaction. A card that has transactions against it cannot be deleted — MYOB will not let you — so the practical fix is to merge duplicate cards instead. Merging is also slower than you would expect: there is a cap of about 100 cards at a time before MYOB runs out of memory and has to be restarted.
Is deleting a transaction in MYOB reversible?
It depends on the product, and this is the one place MYOB is safer than a cloud-only tool. In AccountRight you can restore a company-file backup, so a backup taken just before a cleanup is a real undo. In MYOB Business (the cloud product) there is no restore point, so export the data you are about to remove before you delete anything.
Can MYOB delete duplicate transactions?
Not in bulk. You can find duplicates with a report and delete them one at a time, and for duplicate cards the merge function is the right tool. There is no built-in duplicate-deletion action.
Is there an MYOB bulk delete app?
Not a self-serve one. MYOB’s own marketplace carries no delete tool, and the only option found is a service from an Australian vendor that scripts keystrokes against your AccountRight file, with a quoted fee and a minimum of AUD $660 plus GST. It is a service engagement, not a product you can buy and run yourself.
Does this page cover MYOB Business (Essentials) and AccountRight?
Both, and the difference matters. AccountRight is the desktop product with a file on your computer or server — its problem is file size and purge. MYOB Business (previously Essentials) is the cloud product — its problem is only that nothing can be deleted in bulk. Know which one you are on before you start.