Poof! – and Mentor Education is gone – Oops, page not found, then Inspire Education Type Message

If you’ve been following what is going on with Mentor Education and my article about what happens when a company goes through voluntary administration you’ll know that Mentor was spending a lot of money on advertising courses which they hadn’t normally promoted in the past – short courses in MYOB & Xero & Payroll.

Mentor Education was a big success and quite a large RTO (Registered Training Organisation) that offered many different Cert IV and higher qualifications on their “scope”. This included the Cert IV in Bookkeeping and Accounting.

As soon as they went into administration I noticed a couple big changes.

The biggest change was they increased the price of their Cert IV in Bookkeeping to about $1500 which I thought was strange.

Until then they were competing with companies like Open Colleges and the Career Academy (NZ headquarters and NOT an RTO) at a couple hundred dollars cheaper. When an accountant took over the administration of Mentor Education they must have calculated how much they should be charging for the Cert IV in Bookkeeping to stay in business.

The other company that advertised heavily several years ago and offered the Cert IV in Bookkeeping very cheaply went through a similar fate. They were called Inspire Education and seemed to do a pretty job from what I heard but they went into receivership and were ultimately sold to Shafston International College.

Cert IV in Bookkeeping & Accounting to become a Registered BAS Agent

Most of the people who we speak to about doing a Nationally Accredited course like the Cert IV in Bookkeeping want to become a Registered BAS Agent. This means that they want to start a bookkeeping business and work as an independent contractor providing BAS services.

We’ve spoke to lots of students who want to do this but many of them don’t understand the really hard part of starting your own business – GETTING CLIENTS!

Often when I speak to a bookkeeper or accountant about marketing and sales they go numb. One lady in North Melbourne was so horrified to use the word sales that she didn’t know what to say to potential new clients – she didn’t understand that the sales process is just matching a customer needs with a suppliers products and services.

As a result of this experience we created an Advertising and Sales Training Course for students who want to start a bookkeeping business and it is included for a short time to anyone who enrols into the Cert IV in Bookkeeping with EzyLearn and our RTO Partner.

Short Courses in MYOB and Xero Training

The other change I noticed is they were no longer offering the MYOB and Xero courses they licensed from the Career Academy (the Career Academy that was convicted of misleading students in the Directors – Daniel Hunt – home country of New Zealand).

What I find fascinating about these courses from the Career Academy (NZ based one) is that they are sometime more than 3 times the price of our MYOB and Xero courses yet they are non-accredited. Unless you believe that ICOES is a real accreditation for Australian bookkeeping or office admin courses.

Mentor Education kept their website running while they were going through the Voluntary Administration process but they removed all of the content about these these short courses. Why?

All of the other courses where displayed as usual.

One of the worst errors you can have appear on your website is a 404 error because it means you have a broken link – a link that no longer works. These links reduce the value of your website, but that doesn’t seem to be an asset that was included with the recent sale of Mentor Education.

What can you do?

If you are a Mentor Education student please contact us and learn some bookkeeping skills by learning how to use MYOB and Xero.

Industry-Endorsed Short Courses in MYOB & Xero can give you the skills and confidence to apply for accounts jobs as well as perform better in your current job and they are usually much cheaper than accredited courses.