Posted on 1 Comment

Is the money really owed to you? Then pursue it!

Get paid on time using MYOB, Xero or SAASU - accounts receivable
Image from Sydney Morning Herald article about difficult payers on September 14th 2011

I was reading an article about difficult payers and the steps that some companies need to take to chase money that is owing to them and thought that this is something that every MYOB Bookkeeper needs to be aware of.

There seems to be perception (and most of the bad news seems to come from the building and construction industry) that payment of debts is something that should be stretched out as far as possible. I was discussing this concept with a colleague and was interested to find that this person believes that payments should be stretched out as long as practical. The interesting part of this conversation is that this person is a very reasonable man. He believes in long term investments and dealing with every person in a fair and reasonable manner, so it was strange for me to hear this mentality.

If you commission someone to do some work for you, shouldn’t they be entitled to be paid on the same terms that an employee is entitled to? I think so and you’ll find some skills to find out who owes you money in our MYOB Day-to-Day training course.

Here are the steps that are recommended:

  1. Charge in Advance if you can
  2. Chase money owing early
  3. Provide multiple payment options
  4. Be as up-to-date as possible
  5. Enforce your trading terms
  6. Be honest about non-paying clients
  7. Give customers an opportunity to complain
  8. Be polite
  9. Get heavy on time

A leading author of MYOB and Small Business “How to” books, Veechi Curtis says that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. So, chase money as soon as an account falls behind. Perhaps a more relevant saying is “work with the willing”. There are many people who value the work you do enough to pay you before the due date. There are customers who can afford what you do and want you to think positively of them so they pay as early as practical.

Find customers who want to be good to you!

This blog post is an introduction to articles that will be coming shortly for the continuing professional development of the bookkeeping academy so make sure you subscribe to receive updates via email.

References taken from an article in the Sydney Morning Herald on September 14th 2011.

 

Posted on

VIDEO: See a 3D printer produce a plastic widget

I recently visited a warehouse/factory in Silverwater where they distribute 3D printers. I had heard a lot about them but was never quite sure how you could print a physical object using a printer and needed to explore this a little deeper. Come along and watch as Joe from Rapman demonstrates how these amazing machines work.

The products that can be created using these printers is most things you can design using a 3D Cumputer Aided Design program. The printer is fed with plastic and it melts the plastic and applies layer upon layer until a 3D product is produced.

You may not see the video if you are reading this via email so click on the heading to get to our blog site. Feel free to subscribe and have these blog posts delivered to your email inbox.

It will be interesting to see how far this technology goes as it evolves…

Posted on

Don’t be afraid, connect with the ATO via Business Portal

ATO Business Portal to lodge your BAS online using MYOBAre you still receiving your Business Activity Statements via mail? We receive our notification that the BAS is ready at the ATO’s Business Portal but the Business Portal is much more useful than just a way to deliver your BAS.

There are some great features of online tax lodgement:

  1. You can lodge your BAS immediately online
  2. You can see historical lodgements
  3. You can change your contact details

The most complicated part of dealing direct with the ATO is the setting up of a digital certificate, but once that is sorted out you have all the convenience that you have come to expect from your internet banking and any other online service. All the information is there, you don’t have to rely on the mail to send or receive your BAS and you know exactly where you stand. If you have missed a lodgement you’ll also find that information at the portal.

The website address for the portal is https://bp.ato.gov.au/ so check it out and get through your compliance issues faster.

MYOB GST, reporting and BAS training coursesOur MYOB Reporting, GST and BAS course (which includes bank reconciliation) shows you how to get to the BASlink to produce a BAS using the data that you have already entered into MYOB. If you have entered everything correctly you will just need to complete your contact name and number and how long it took to complete. Then you can print that form out and keep it in your records. The information you see in the totals can then simply be entered in the Business Portal and submitted to lodge your BAS and get your compliance tasks out of the way so you can focus on running your business.

Posted on

Is a website more important than your shop or warehouse?

123ezy website design and hosting services for cheap websitesI’ve recently attended some business building and networking events and have been fascinated at the number of people who speak about the importance good first impressions and having a professional website. What’s most amazing is that many of these people have a website that hasn’t changed in 2 years!

This is amazing because there are some very powerful and free website content management systems (CMS’s) like WordPress and Joomla and very inexpensive but professional templates (also called themes) where all you need to do is add hosting and a domain name and you have a website that you can change whenever you want. You can also easily update the news section of your website (usually called a blog these days).

The most important thing about a website though is that it is often the first time potential customers get to know something about you and how you operate your business. Your warehouse and office are things that they may never see, plus, you can use your website to give them some important information that makes them buy from you straight away.

Our WordPress course contains all the training you need to setup a professional website and start adding and modifying the images and words when and as you please. Plus, we have cheap student hosting through 123ezy online services. If you are an MYOB student that wants to start their own business, this is the next course you should take.

 

Posted on

Do you want to see the results of our online MYOB quiz attempts?

Learn how to make the most of MYOB bookkeeping softwareWe’ve made a simple online MYOB quiz available for anyone who wants to test their MYOB bookkeeping skills. It’s a very simple test designed to show people how online knowledge tests work and also have some fun and see how much they know. We did an export of all the results (minus the students details of course) and you can see them in our Microsoft Excel Training Course.

These test results show how long it took students to complete the test, their results, overall score and more and the datafile is available in our Microsoft Excel Course 308 which includes:

Understand 3D formulas between worksheets, cleaning up data using advanced filter, create a pivot table and change the value field settings, create a pivot chart to visually show the stats, using advanced functions like CHOOSE, VLOOKUP, HLOOKUP, MATCH and INDEX, look at advanced functions within functions (Nested Functions) and how to protect the worksheet and workbooks

The knowledge reviews in our online training courses are much bigger and more complicated and they provide us with a great tool to identify areas of difficulty for students and help us constantly update and improve our MYOB training courses.

Posted on 1 Comment

Does your business innovate or compete?

Red Ocean Blue Ocean from Dr Sarah Laytons Blog
Red Ocean Blue Ocean from Dr Sarah Laytons Blog

At a recent business owners breakfast I heard someone speak about blue ocean and red ocean strategies. I’m going to write some blog posts about how to build your business as part of our project to help our MYOB students start, maintain and build their own bookkeeping businesses and this article is a fitting way to start.

The Blue Ocean strategy involves finding new demand in an uncontested market which essentially means to innovate. This essentially means create something new, but I think for many small business it could means package your services so that you can demonstrate a difference between your bookkeeping business and others. The Red Ocean strategy is all about competing head to head with your competitors to try to get existing customers to move away from someone else to use your services. You can get a better idea of what Blue Ocean strategy is at their website.

We try to innovate in our services by offering lifetime access to all courses, provide all skill levels in one course (ie. beginners to advanced) so you don’t have to waste time trying to figure out which level you are at and provide different versions of training for Microsoft Word and Excel (ie. 2000, 2003, 2007 and 2010.

This table shows the key differences between the strategies. See which strategy you are pursuing.

Are you looking at starting or growing your business?

Cert IV small business management coming soonDo you want to start a business? Do you want to create a business plan? Does it all seem a bit daunting?

[quote]We are working with Maggie Richardson, author of “Starting a business in Australia” to get her Cert IV in Small Business Management online.[/quote]

This course not only gives you a well rounded education of the requirements to start and build a small business, but you will end up with one-to-one help in creating a business plan as part of the course! Read more..

Posted on 4 Comments

Tabs and Tables make a great resume

Microsoft Word Training Courses - Insert TablesOne of the most popular office productivity programs in the world is almost taken for granted these days as a program that everyone knows how to use, but there is a lot to learn to really master it. We’re talking about Microsoft Word of course, and we’re currently having new training content recorded for Microsoft Word 2010.

You might recall from previous posts that we offer lifetime access to our training courses. You might also recall that our Microsoft Office courses include most versions of the software so you can enrol knowing that all versions are covered. We also include access to beginners to advanced courses all for one low price! That’s our learning guarantee.

You will have the chance over the following weeks to see some of these new videos right here so stay tuned and make sure you subscribe to receive these posts via your email.

You’ll get some insights into tabs and tables. They are extremely powerful Microsoft Word tools that help you make your Word documents look professional. If you get the wording right in your resume and use your Microsoft Word skills to make your resume look good you’ll increase your chances of getting that job.

Tables are like spreadsheets

Even though you often see the borders of a table in Microsoft Word you can change the formatting so that they are invisible and this is a great way to get some structure in the content in your work document while not showing that your using tables. Tabs are also very handy but you need to remember that tabs are paragraph formatting so if you forget to apply them to each paragraph you are working in you might find the whole process very messy. There are also the option of using the default tab stops to make text line up, or setting your own (which we recommend because you can make the text line up as centres or right aligned and even to the decimal points if you are putting a pricelist together).

Formatting your resume

If you are using Microsoft Word to create your resume you’ll definitely make it look better with the use of some structure, after all, it’s the structure and layout that often separates a professional looking resume from an average looking one.  If you are not sure how to create your own resume, let one of our professional partners create a professional resume for you and provide training so you know how to make any modifications yourself.

Discount Coupon for MYOB Training Courses

We also mentioned the discount coupon available to you for our online MYOB training course, but we forgot to mention that the discount coupon actually applies to all courses!

Posted on

Did you get your electricity bill?

Electricity prices powerpoint, energy efficiency and Microsoft ExcelThere was a letter from the Energy company sitting on my desk today. I took a deep breath, prepared myself for a new invoice and opened it. To my pleasant surprise there was no bill, instead I received a letter with an accompanying brochure, warning me of my impending bill.

But it wasn’t really a brochure, it was my terms and conditions. I am certain that I had seen this before so why did they send it again? What I was most impressed with was how they sent these terms and conditions. Rather than send them in fine print on lengthy A4 pages it came in the form of a brochure. That alone made sifting through them easy to digest – very smart Tru Energy.

We thought we would use this opportunity to share with you a great story about how one company, EnergyAction used our Excel training course at a training centre near their Sydney office in Parramatta, to teach their employees how to create excellent spreadsheets that demonstrate how much money they can save on their electricity costs.

Posted on 1 Comment

Should we offer MYOB Training Courses to group buying companies?

group-buying-sites-choice-review-discounted-MYOB-training-course
Image from Choice website

We’ve been approached by many different Groupon type companies. There seems to be hundreds of these sites popping up every day and they are famous for offering you almost unbelievable discount coupons for almost anything but most commonly services like pedicures, restaurant and cafe meals etc. We’ve always ensured our prices are competitive and bookkeeping students receive good value for money, but our Training Partners have tried them and we’ll share their opinions with you.

For business owners (or merchants as we are called) group buying sites promote the possibility of receiving hundreds of sales of your product (so you better make sure you can service the demand) but what do they want in return. Here’s a classic scenario:

Normal Price: $200

Group Buying Price: $100

Saving to you: $100

Margin that goes to the Group Buying Site is typically 50% of the discounted price, ie. $50

This means that a merchant that would normally receive $200 for something, will now receive $50! Is it worth it? Then why not just sell it on special for $100 and spend some money advertising it? As you can see, we are pessimistic about the future of group buying sites. Our training partners workface.com.au offered a discount on their Microsoft Excel training courses only to receive a handful of sales.

choice_group_buying_reviewAnd there are hundreds of these group buying sites. See if you can recognise some of these names: Cudo, Groupon, AlltheDeals, Spreets, Living Social, Grabone, BizzBuzz etc. At the beginning of 2011 a local Australian startup in the space was sold for $40M! If you have time read a review by Choice Magazine.

The main reason we don’t like the big group buying sites is because of some of the conditions imposed.

When you buy the discount voucher the group buying site earns the money. Some of the more selfish sites will then only pass this money to the merchant when the customer uses the voucher. In other words, if the  customer doesn’t use the voucher within the “valid period” the merchant earns nothing and the customer loses the benefit!

By the way, I was at a software training function last week and a birdy told me that consumer protection laws might come into affect that provides protection for buyers of these discount vouchers – if you buy a $50 product then you can receive $50 off after the offer period has expired. Watch this space…

As far as discount coupons, we make them available to you. Just tell us what you are looking for in a training course and you’ll automatically receive a discount coupon code for our MYOB, WordPress and Excel training courses.

Posted on 2 Comments

Discount code for online MYOB Bookkeeping and WordPress Website Design Courses

cheap MYOB training coursesWe recently wrote about why more and more mums are looking to work from home as a virtual assistant and perform bookkeeping tasks using MYOB. Mums are also becoming website designers using the free website building software called WordPress.

We just wanted to remind you that if you are a mother or a stay at home dad and you want to learn these programs so you can work from home while bringing up your children, we want to offer you a discount.

Just tell us what you are looking for in an online training course and instantly receive your discount to one of our online training courses.

Posted on

What’s included in Day-to-Day MYOB Bookkeeping skills?

ezylearn-MYOB-training-workbooksA short time after we opened our first training centre in Dee Why in 1999 we offered MYOB training courses and our trainers included some very talented ladies Maria Landrelli and Marie Di Blasio. We quickly discovered that business owners and job seekers alike wanted and needed to learn some key Day-to-Day skills so we set about creating the ideal MYOB training course for Day-to-Day Transactions.

Most of our training workbooks are based around case study examples of a practice company. This gives you a real world example of the types of processes that many businesses go through as you learn to perform the transactions using MYOB. We’ve written a detailed description of the journey we take you through in our Day-to-Day MYOB Training Course so check it out and see if it covers some skills you’d like to master.

The MYOB Day-to-Day Course uses a case study of a small business telephone system supplier as they go through the process of purchasing products, providing customer quotes, ordering and supplying products and services, accounts receivable, receiving payments and banking. It’s the perfect course for someone looking for a job where the use of MYOB is required for data entry, or a small business owner that wants to take the next step towards a computerised bookkeeping system.

 

 

Posted on

Ebay sends mothers little helpers

Ebay sends mothers little helpersWithout wanting to dive into the psyche of a new born mother I noticed a warming pattern in Ebay shipments. Although my teenage years weren’t filled with the educational perspective of The Rolling Stones’ lyrics, the benefits of small parcels from other Ebay devotees fulfils the mothers need for new and interesting things.

Moving away from our usual topics of computer software training, employment services and MYOB and Bookkeeping related blog posts I delve into the stupendous success of Ebay. Ebay users share an unequalled (in the eye of this writer) desire to be rated by their peers so that they can sell to other Ebay devotees. Small children’s garments are often mailed for the cost of the packaging and freight in the knowledge that they will benefit another fledgling family as merchants are rewarded by the invisible smiles of happiness of thousands of  recipients in other suburbs every day.

If business owners can act in this way the future might be filled with more specialised businesses that do a better job and are prepared to be publicly rated.

Just like Carol the kindle user and Grandpa Jack, Ebay is evidence that technology is now like electricity – a normal part of our lives. Bring on the next wave.

 

 

Posted on

Mummy earns good money

mums returning to work doing bookkeeping using MYOBEmployment is one of those huge questions in the mind of many mums and dads. How to ensure that the family can maintain an income from both parents while still giving your new infant the time they need.

When we operated our MYOB training courses in Parramatta, Chatswood, Burwood, Gordon and Dee Why we noticed that a lot of mums were looking for a way to work during school hours while still being able to earn good money. They were coming to our MYOB courses because they knew that they could earn good money performing bookkeeping for local customers. The same still applies today.

It is now easier for working mums to earn good money and still remain at home! With VoIP Phone Systems, accounting services in the cloud and broadband internet mums can perform bookkeeping tasks for clients anywhere in Australia.

 

Posted on 1 Comment

Paperback or kindle / iPad? Do you prefer real books?

Kindle Fire Slate book reader from AmazonI conducted a little experiment earlier this year on an avid book reader to see what she really thought about new technology. She said there is nothing like the feel of paper when reading a romantic love story or a gripping thriller. Let’s see what unfolded.

For the sake of anonymity let’s call this lady Carol, she could get through a good solid paperback in no time and then shared stories over tea about the twists and turns. When asked about the Kindle she first said “What? Do you mean kindling… for the fire” and then resisted any reasons I gave about the benefits. “It’s light, you can store thousands of books on it, books are cheap, it remembers which page you were last at, you can bookmark pages and search for the meanings of words” I urged, but Carol was adamant and a little sad for the poor ol’ paperback.

A week later the Kindle I ordered arrived in the mail and I got to work on learning how to use it, pressing a couple buttons, connecting to Amazon and before long I got the hang of navigating around it. After downloading a novel that Carol wanted to read, I took it with me one visit, showed it to her, taught her the simple steps for using it and left it with her.

Another week went by and Carol was quite impressed with it, another month later the kindle had traveled with Carol and the relationship between Carol and her Kindle became very strong. I gifted her the Kindle and now they are together and happy.

Just like Grandpa Jack, the moral is that when people use new technology without the barrier of paying for it before learning how it works, they give it a go and try to understand the benefits.

Posted on 1 Comment

Grandpa Jack is a nerd

Samsung-Galaxy-S3 with Telstra and not OptusI wrote about strategic management decisions earlier this year to confirm our decision to make our online training courses available to training institutions to use as part of their courses. I chose those words because they were fresh in my mind and part of the Applied Finance course I am studying with Kaplan Professional. It confirmed in my mind that the “market” changes every month. Every month you need to improve what you offer and how you offer it otherwise you may drop behind.

I was reminded about this concept today when I ordered my new Samsung Galaxy S3 from Telstra after being a loyal Optus customer for more than a decade. The prices of Optus and Telstra are now very similar and I was have terrible problems with the quality of the Optus network, it was an easy decision to make. While I was in the shop I had a conversation with Grandpa Jack who was buying exactly the same phone and the Telstra shop man and I joked that Jack’s grand kids would look at him very differently and think he was a nerd.

It occurred to me that Grandpa Jack wasn’t really a nerd, he was just in the market for a new phone and a new plan and wanted the best phone he could buy considering he’ll probably keep it for as long as possible. This concept made me think about our online MYOB training courses and how students who’ve been enrolled since our LIFETIME student access started in January 2011. Do they still see the website as a great tool to learn new things about MYOB since we’ve updated and improved the MYOB Reporting, GST & BAS and the MYOB Payroll course?

If you are an early EzyLearn student and have some comments about the value of your course today please feel free to email our sales team at sales@ezylearn.com.au and share your experiences.

Oh, by the way, as I was leaving the Telstra shop I heard Jack asking the shop assistant, “What is a nerd”?

 

Posted on 2 Comments

Is a machine reading your resume?

OCR for resume and cover letter writing skillsI was speaking with Ross Miller, the blind rehab consultant who has helped hundreds of job seekers learn new computer skills, write better cover letters and resumes and improve their performance at job interviews, and he shared an interesting resume writing tip with me.

Many employers are now using technology as much as possible to help them find the right candidates for job vacancies. With the tremendous cost in time to find the most appropriate employee some companies are using OCR (optical character recognition) scanning to help them identify the best resumes for their advertised positions. This means that they are actively looking for selected keywords in the resume’s that are sent to them.

Once the domain of website designers and search engine optimisation (SEO) specialists the ability to use the most relevant words in your resume is becoming more and more important. It’s the same principle that is used to make websites more relevant to Google’s Search Engine results.

Is there a difference between a resume and a CV? Read the Workface blog and receive regular tips from Jacci, Ross and Yvette for increasing your chances of getting that next job.