Posted on 1 Comment

Google Apps is now Google Drive. Is it better than dropbox?

Google Drive and smart devices storage in the cloudAs users of Google Apps, the EzyLearn Team are always interested in learning about new technology and how it can be used to increase productivity, reduce cost and allow us to do great new things.

We recently received a message that Google Docs is now Google Drive. They’re tying it all into Cloud based storage and services and it looks like a great move, but will we use it instead of Dropbox?

We recently wrote about MYOB in the Clouds, we use a small business telephone service that is in the cloud, our training courses are in the cloud and our website are built using a cloud-based website builder (WordPress) so it’s natural that we try to keep abreast of what the big technology players like Google are up to.

Below is a simple video (if you are reading this blog post via email, click on the heading to see the video at our blog site) that shows what you can do with Google Drive and all your devices including smartphones that are connected to the Internet. How does it compare to Dropbox? I agree with Ed Bott from the prolific technology writers at ZDNet.

Feel free to share your experiences on our Facebook Page

Posted on 1 Comment

Hundreds of businesses already use MYOB hosted in the cloud!

ozBeanz MYOB Approved Hosting Provider for MYOB in the cloud
Screen Shot from ozBeanz website

In our research about cloud based accounting software we discovered that MYOB have an approved hosting reseller program. This is a program where MYOB partners with companies who specialise in providing hosting services so that MYOB users can access their data file from anywhere.

We recently spoke to one of those hosting businesses and took their service for a test drive and it was amazingly quick and did everything we needed it to do. We were able to login, access the MYOB data file, create an invoice and email it via the cloud based hosting account!

[quote]This is a definite boon for Remote Contractors who provide bookkeeping services from their own home, like working mums.[/quote]

The term cloud means different things to different people and Heather Cox from asponline wrote an excellent article about hosted MYOB services. We spoke to the people at ozBeanz as well and they have been MYOB Approved Hosting Providers for many, many years.

Do you have any experience using MYOB in the cloud? If you do, we’d like to hear from you at our Facebook page.

Our MYOB training course is also in the cloud so you can complete all 5 MYOB courses no matter where you are.

Posted on 1 Comment

What is a PAYG tax table and how does it work?

ATO 2013 tax tables for online MYOB payroll training courseWe recently announced our updated MYOB Payroll Course videos and training workbook and were asked to explain PAYG tax tables in a bit more detail. We’ll explain tax tables using the data from the ATO website relating to tax tables for the 2013 financial year.

We recently witness a federal budget and there are usually some changes in each budget that relate to tax tables or tax thresholds. These tax tables simply define how much tax you pay for each threshold and the simplest way to describe it is to define the first category. This category is called the tax-free threshold and it is the level at which you don’t pay any tax. The annual pay for this level will be $18,200 from 1st July 2012 (the beginning of the next financial year). Any money you earn up to this level you don’t pay any income tax on.

Any money you earn over this tax-free threshold amount but less than $37,000 will be taxed at 19c per dollar.

The most important thing to note is that just because you earn $50,000 doesn’t mean you will be taxed at 32.5c in every dollar you earn. You’ll be charged

  1. zero for the first $18,200, 
  2. 19% from $18,200 to $37,000 and then 
  3. 32.50% for each dollar over $37,000.
Stay tuned for more bite size chunks of knowledge in the coming weeks as we evolve our MYOB Payroll training course. Make sure you subscribe to receive these posts via email.
Posted on

We help you in the “Do More Make Less” Australia

Australian employment share by activity - bookkeeping services using MYOBWe were spilling through the recent federal budget information (as you would) and found some interesting facts that we wanted to share. We were actually looking for the new tax tables to explain more about how they work for our recently updated MYOB Payroll Course, but thought the information was enlightening. It’s also another reason to learn how to use MYOB so you can perform bookkeeping tasks!

We found it relevant because our online MYOB and Excel training courses provide education and new skills for individuals to participate in the provision of services in Australia’s knowledge based economy. Is all that jargon too much? It just means that more and more workers are being paid for using their brains and skills to perform tasks (like bookkeeping) and less on making or growing stuff.

You might also be reassured by our relatively low and constant unemployment rate.

And, just in case you weren’t aware, our online MYOB training courses include

  1. Training Videos
  2. Training workbooks with exercises and
  3. Knowledge review to test your skills

PLUS they come with LIFETIME student access so you can have access to new content as it is created for no extra cost.

Posted on

Get a WordPress mobile site because Google says 75% need it

Google Smartphone mobile usage stats - get a WordPress websiteWe recently wrote about WordPress plugins that are available for websites built using the WordPress CMS (Content Management System) that enables the website to be viewed better on a mobile phone and statistics provided by Google (which you can check out and dive into yourself) show that we are one of the world leaders in mobile phone adoption.

Interestingly just under 25% of Australian smartphone owners used the website browsing capabilities of their phone to perform job searches!

We made the decision to use WordPress for our website several years ago (and build a WordPress Training Course) because it is:

  1. An open source solution
  2. Used by millions of website owners around the world
  3. Supported by plugin and themes developers

With the importance of Google searches to bring inquiries to your business and the adoption of Smartphones every business needs to have a website that:

  1. Looks Professional (using inexpensive WordPress themes)
  2. Can be viewed easily on a smartphone
  3. You can update yourself!

Check out the Google OurMobilePlanet website and get all sorts of interesting stats for yourself.

 

Posted on 1 Comment

MYOB Payroll (Processing Pays) Workbook now available

Payroll is one of the most significant costs involved in operating a business and also represents the main form of income for Australian workers. Our MYOB course development for the coming months is focused on increasing the depth of skills taught about how to handle Payroll using MYOB accounting software.

TFN Declaration Form - MYOB (processing pays) Payroll training course and workbookThe beta version of our latest training guide for Payroll is now available as part of the 17 new MYOB training tutorial videos we have produced for the MYOB Payroll course. The videos provide the visual demonstrations for the tasks that are covered in the workbook and the workbooks provides you with step by step instructions about how to load tax tables, create employees, process pays and perform reconciliation and end of year tasks regarding payroll.

Our MYOB Payroll case study for the course involves a hair styling salon that employs staff to operate their salon. Follow their journey as new employees come on board.

There will be more to come so make sure you subscribe so you can receive these blog posts via your email. We’ll also be producing some Excel spreadsheet files for students to use regarding payroll and we’ll have some free demonstration videos as well.

Posted on

Most budding bookkeepers want to start learning MYOB at 12.30pm!

Excel Online Training Course 308 - pivot table value field settingsHow do we know that most students want to start their MYOB training course at 12.30pm? We put all our course enrolment information into an Excel spreadsheet, inserted a pivot table and then filtered the data. Does that sound simple? Well it will be if you enrol into our online Microsoft Excel course.

The good news is that the video tutorial below will show you exactly what we did. If you are reading this blog as an email subscriber click on the heading to get to our blog site to watch the training video tutorial. If you want to receive these blogs posts via email, make sure you subscribe to our Employment and Productivity Training Blog.

The other good news is that when you enrol into our online Microsoft Excel Training Course you actually receive the data file that we used in this exercise so you can replicate it yourself! These figures are for enrolments into our MYOB course, Beginners, and Microsoft Office courses at our Dee Why training centre when we operated class-based training centres in Sydney.

Like all our online training courses, the Microsoft Excel training courses come with LIFETIME student access. The current course not only includes training videos, but nine training workbooks and over 40 exercise files that you can use to practice your Excel spreadsheeting skills.

Posted on

Pay today, slip tomorrow

MYOB online training courses and support - Weekly Pay Slip screen shot
MYOB Payroll screen from MYOB website

Did you know that you are required by law to provide a payslip to your employees no later than the day after payday?

We recently completed our new and revised MYOB Payroll online training course as part of our full suite of five online MYOB Training Courses (all available for one price and LIFETIME course access!) and one of the topics we cover is emailing Pay Slips (or payment advices) to employees. As part of the course we reference the FairWork Australia website which clearly states that every employer must ensure that an employee receives their pay slip no later than 1 day after being paid.

The site also goes on to explain more information about what should appear on a payment advice and they even provide some very detailed Microsoft Word templates for Pay Slips, Weekly time and wages records, employment details and leave records (very handy), roster template and time sheet. They are provide in a Microsoft Word format so you can customise them for your own business!

Need to learn Microsoft Word to modify documents? See our online Microsoft Word course outline.

If you are an existing EzyLearn online student you can see our 17 new training videos in the MYOB Payroll Training Course.

Posted on 4 Comments

New employees, TFN declarations and ATO requirements

TFN Declaration Form for online MYOB training courses and support including PayrollIt is now READY! The 17 new training video tutorials for our MYOB Payroll Online Training Course are now ready and on the learning site. If you are an existing EzyLearn online MYOB training student you will be happy to hear that all this new content is available to you (if you are a LIFETIME student) right now and at no extra cost.

The new videos cover these topics:

  • 505201 – Create a brand new company file using the MYOB trial version software
  • 505202 – Easy Setup Assistant for MYOB Payroll and Tax tables
  • 505203 – Creating new employee cards and setting up categories
  • 505204 – Extra Payroll settings for employee cards
  • 505205 – Superannuation information for employees
  • 505206 – Processing Payroll – Performing a pay run
  • 505207 – Processing Payroll – Editing and Deleting incorrect pay slips
  • 505208 – Processing Payroll – Editing and Deleting incorrect pays using transaction journal
  • 505209 – Processing Payroll – Understanding Payroll and the Account List
  • 505210 – Processing Payroll – Processing Payment of Payroll Liabilities
  • 505211 – Processing Payroll – Processing Payment of Salary Sacrifice
  • 505212 – Processing Payroll – Setting up a deduction for employees social club
  • 505213 – Processing Payroll – Including deductions for employees social club
  • 505214 – Payroll Reporting – Payroll Summary and Employee Register
  • 505215 – Payroll Reporting – Reconciling your Super, Wages and PAYG Taxes
  • 505216 – Payroll Reporting – Printing of EOY Payment Summaries
  • 505217 – Backing up your MYOB Data file before Closing off the Payroll year

For more information about our online MYOB training courses and student support services feel free to visit our information page. You can also enrol online for the current price and receive lifetime student membership to new training material as it is updated! Enrol today and start by 5pm tomorrow afternoon.

Posted on

Certificates are coming shortly

Congratulate all the students who successfully completed their MYOB Bookkeeping courses this quarter, your certificates are now been issued via our support site.

If you are contemplating our online MYOB training course you’ll be very happy to know that the EzyLearn MYOB Course certificate includes the logo for the Institute of Certified Bookkeepers (ICB). We are proud to be an Accredited Training Provider of the ICB and also of their their continuing professional development (CPD) program for bookkeepers. You may also recall that you can join the ICB as an EzyLearn student for free.

Make sure you subscribe to this blog for the pending announcement of our CPD training program for bookkeepers.

In the mean time you might also want to stay tuned for the pending release of our upgraded MYOB Payroll course, Advanced Microsoft Excel courses and updates to our Microsoft Word online training course. We’ll be releasing some free training videos shortly to show you what we’ve done.

Posted on

Need help with Payroll and MYOB?

help with MYOB Payroll and Superannuation SG online training course and supportWe use the EzyLearn blog to inform new and existing students about new course content, tips and tricks and free training that we make available from time to time. Today we are announcing the completion of the workbook and training videos for our online MYOB training courses.

Our MYOB Payroll course has been created and you’ll soon be able to learn how to create employee cards, setup the payroll tax tables, choose wage categories, pay benefits, superannuation information, perform a payroll run, send pay slips, generate payroll advice reports, pay your SG liabilities, reconcile your super and wages payments and print out payment summaries.

Although the course has been created we are finalising the knowledge review questions that are used as part of our assessments for students who want a certificate after they complete their MYOB training course.

Did you know that our LIFETIME student membership entitles you to review the training material (including videos and workbooks) for the rest of your working life? This includes new content, so enrol now at today’s prices and have access to MYOB training course content for life!

Stay tuned for more updates in the coming week! IF you are not a subscriber, subscribe here.

 

Posted on 1 Comment

Every WordPress website can look great on a smart phone

WordPress Plugin WPTouch shows your website on smart phoneIf you have read our blog on your Smart Phone lately you might notice that it is reasonably easy to read on a smart phone. The images in this blog post show the difference between a WordPress website and a WordPress website that uses a free plugin that makes them easy to read on a smart phone, it’s called WP Touch.

We mentioned the great service from Google earlier this week that shows you what your website looks like on a mobile and how it’s also linked to the partnership that Google have with MYOB Atlas in Australia.

We mentioned also that WordPress is a free software program used by Millions of website owners around the world. We installed a simple free plugin to create a much better reading experience (see the image on the left).

Our online WordPress course with LIFETIME access shows you how to install Plugins to get much more functionality out of your WordPress website and blog system.

The best part of WordPress is that it is used by Millions of developers around the world, who are developing Plugins, themes and many other exciting tools to enable you to create great websites, cheaply.

Posted on

Signatures make Outlook sexy

Microsoft-Outlook online training course and supportSometimes we release training videos for free to help our readers and students and also demonstrate the quality of the videos in our online training courses for Microsoft Office, MYOB accounting software and WordPress Content Management Systems.

Today we release a training video that demonstrations via video how to create your own signature in Microsoft Outlook. I personally prefer to use Google Apps for my email because of its SPAM capabilities as well as the fact that I can log in from any web-enabled computer and send/receive emails.

In this video Allison demonstrates an easy way to create a signature, format the text, insert an image (our logo) and save it. She then looks at associating that signature with new email messages as well as replies and forwards. You might be aware that Outlook enables you to setup many different email addresses and this great tool can be used for each of them.

If you are reading this blog post via email, click the heading to see the video at our blog site. If you want to start receiving these via your email inbox feel free to subscribe. Want to see our range of online training courses?

Posted on

We’re real people, really!

mums returning to work looking for online MYOB and Excel training course to upskill to find workThere are many questions that we get asked each day and one of them is “Can I start the course tonight?” I’m writing this blog to let you know that we are all people at EzyLearn and if you have an urgent need we’ll try to help you.

Rowena called and asked this question today because another company that was advertising an MYOB online training course was experiencing difficulties with the person that manages their online system, they couldn’t even get her enrolled and started!

The good news is that there are several EzyLearn team members that can get you started and using our online training system and we manage the whole process ourselves.

Why is this important? and why do I blog about it? Because we promote “Enrol today and start by 5pm tomorrow”. We actually perform enrolments EVERY DAY and we only make the “5pm next business day” promise as a safety net if we get excessively busy.

We also say that “our online training courses are the best online training offer in Australia” and what this means is that we offer EzyLearn ANSWERS and the Student Community and Tutor Support because we are constantly adding content to our MYOB, Excel and WordPress courses. If you are one of our students and there is a topic you are experiencing that is not covered in our course content, we will commission the relevant expert to create a training guide and make it available to you!

Oh, and have a great Easter long weekend. Remember you can enrol today and start after Easter if you want.

Posted on 1 Comment

How do you look to others?

There are some pretty interesting stats that should convince you that having a website that displays nicely on a smart phone is worthwhile.

  • 2/3 smart phone owners use their phones back-light as a torch
  • 2/5 people use their phone to avoid a social encounter
  • 56% of smart phone owners use their phone to browse the web in bed at night

These are actually important facts to consider when you get your website designer to make modifications to your website and Google have created a fantastic online tool that helps you understand what we’re talking about. This tool also helps to answer some rudimentary questions that you should be able to answer about your website design strategy.

These are some interesting questions:

  • Can you read text without zooming or scrolling
  • Can you search the site
  • Is your address and phone number easily visible
  • Can you click to call?

See What your website looks like.

Oh, by the way, if you opt to get the full report about your website you will get re-directed to MYOB’s Atlas website and hosting solution (we were not actually presented with a report) 🙁

Posted on

MYOB Training Course and Support – bank reconciliation

MYOB Training Course - Undo Bank Reconciliations using MYOB version 2011In January 2012 we introduced the Student Community and Tutor Support service and we’re announcing some new training guides that have been placed in the Student Support area.

Bank Reconciliation can be a tricky task to master, and that is before you master the motivation to get started! We have a project in our MYOB Bank Reconciliation course where you have to create a new company file, import accounts and transactions and perform a bank reconciliation. It’s a lot like a real world scenario and it causes some grief for existing students so we added an extra guide to help.

Student Support for online MYOB, Excel and WordPress coursesWe’ve also receive requests in our EzyLearn ANSWER service from students who want help and instructions on how to email invoices using the latest version of MYOB (version 2011) so we have created a guide about how to do it.

Stay tuned for more Student Support Guides over the coming weeks. Enrol to start now and learn at your own pace. Take advantage of LIFETIME student course access and great student support features like EzyLearn ANSWERS and our Student Community and Tutor Support.