Steve Slisar has been training people how to use computers since 1994, opened a training centre in 1999 in Dee Why and by 2005 had 3 training centres and created over 35 individual courses that include Screen videos with audio commentary, training workbooks for those who prefer to read to learn, and exercise files that are used with the tasks in the workbooks so you get practical experience in the software you are trying to learn. Now the creator of 5 of the most popular online MYOB training courses in Australia.
There are lots of services available that, for a fee, will register your business name, company structure, domain name, email hosting, and even register your business for GST and PAYG. But do you really need to use these services? Well, it depends.
It doesn’t matter whether you have a specifically online business, or a gift shop, clothing store, cafe or other bricks and mortar business, as a business owner, we can help you understand the digital economy.
In a post I published about starting your own business, I said that all small business owners should have an understanding of traditional and digital marketing. You’ll be surprised how many don’t!
The Christmas Holidays is a Terrific Time to Start a New Business
IF YOU’VE DECIDED THAT this will be the year you start your new business, don’t wait until January to begin your journey to becoming the head honcho.
Right now is the best time of the year to begin — because while everyone else (businesses included) has gone on on holidays, you’ll be ready to take on your first client or customer by the time January 2017 rolls around. Continue reading Start Your Business NOW!
As a business owner, one of the most frustrating things I come across is talking to a team member who stretches time out because they’re being paid by the hour! It’s not what I particularly wanted to write about today, but it relates to the good bookkeepers who are part of National Bookkeeping and a conversation we were having about doing such a good job you do yourself out of a job.
The best way to do yourself out of a bookkeeping job is to systemise the bookkeeping process to the extent that anyone can do the work!
My answer to that is systemise as much as you can because it makes you MORE valuable as the person to operate the system. The other reason I believe this is a good path for a bookkeeper is because many industry leaders believe that bookkeepers, and many other professionals, will be replaced by automated online systems and technology before long, and bookkeepers need to keep abreast of these changes otherwise they’ll be left behind.
Be Aware of the Ebbs and Flows of Your Business: Multi-Period Profit and Loss Reporting
Nearly every business has its busy periods and its quiet ones. Crucial to the success of a business is knowing when these busy periods and quiet ones occur, so you can capitalise on them.
For a lot of Australian businesses offering professional services, December through January is usually when business winds down for the year. In the hospitality and accommodation industry, however, it’s typically the busiest time of the year, so planning for increased business is essential. Continue reading Running Multi-Period Profit and Loss Statements
What To Do So You Don’t Lose Money When Doing Your BAS – 6 steps
If your business is registered for GST, it means you have to file regular activity statements with the ATO, usually each quarter. A lot of business owners export their Business Activity Statement (BAS) data straight from their accounting software, like MYOB or QuickBooks, and quickly prepare their BAS’ that way. But this is an imprecise method, and one that could be costing you money.
Reconciling Your Accounts Daily Gives a True Picture of Cash Flow
The king was in his counting house, counting out his money… small businesses as well as large can get a true financial picture with daily reconciliation.
For a lot of business owners, just the thought of reconciling their accounts once a month is enough to make them go weak at the knees, never mind every day. Yet there are plenty of contract and remote bookkeepers who work for their clients each week, and some that work every day for the same client, reconciling their accounts and providing other vital bookkeeping services.
And they’re not just big businesses whose accounts are reconciled daily — plenty of small businesses do so too. In fact, with so many small businesses going asunder due to cash flow problems (often stemming from a lack of procedures in place for credit and debt management) it can be not only a cost-saver but a potential life-saver to your business. Continue reading Should You Reconcile Your Accounts Every Day?
Do You Have to Drop a Client Because of a Bad Credit Check?
It’s only business: but sometimes a bad credit rating doesn’t mean you have to end the working relationship.
A Credit Check is one of the most important first steps of good credit and debt management but you can still do business if the check comes back negative.
In a previous post on credit and debt management, I recommended that all businesses — regardless of whether they offer credit to customers on a 30-day account or not — perform a credit check on any new client who will spend more than $1000 on goods or services in one sale, on an ongoing basis.
What should you do if the credit check comes back negative, and shows that the potential customer is guilty of late payments, pending legal action or already carries a significant level of debt?Continue reading What if a Credit Check Comes Back Negative?
It’s Good Business to Set Out Your Credit Management Policy at the Outset
CRITICAL TO THE SUCCESS OF ANY BUSINESS is the ability to maintain a healthy cash flow. But doing so requires effective credit management processes.
Unfortunately, too many business owners feel uncomfortable talking about credit and debt management upfront with new clients.
They (falsely) believe it begins if, and when, a customer doesn’t pay a bill. But, in fact, credit management starts much, much earlier than that — long before the two businesses even agree to work with each other, to be precise. Continue reading Is Credit Management Just About Getting on the Phone?
I’m not one to blog about politics; there are enough people doing that already. However, I couldn’t help but be reminded of something I heard in an audio cassette by Jim Rohn, who I referred to in an earlier blog about starting a bookkeeping business. I’ll paraphrase it here in my own words:
Circumstances around you, changes in the weather, in politics, at your work, are all the wind that blows. Things will change and much of it is beyond your control so you AND everyone else just has to live with it. What you can control is how you think, the goals you set and the things you DO with what you know. Jim Rohn calls this the ‘Set of the Sail’.
Take a look at this video; hear him speak. One of the things I like most about Jim Rohn is that he doesn’t mince words. He speaks simply and plainly with very clear concepts:
However, while I am making mention of the recent US election and politics, Politico.com is a website with awesome visualisations of how results transpire. Enjoy 🙂
Here’s the audio about the wind that blows and the set of your sail. I hope it helps no matter what the result of this or any election. It’s also extremely relevant to anybody working in business.
We’ve had several hundred bookkeepers Pre-Qualify for our National Bookkeeping, Bookkeeper Directory and most of them upload a resume demonstrating their qualifications, experience and references but I’m baffled at how bad the formatting is in these resumes!
To help our students do the best job presenting themselves on paper we’re including the Microsoft Word Course for free when you enrol into either the MYOB Courses or Microsoft Excel Courses (when you choose the all courses and 12 months access with Certificate option). That’s a saving of $267!
The problem with making mistakes with your Microsoft Word formatting is that questions could come up in an interview. The Interviewer might throw in a question about software skills, particularly if you’ll be writing some detailed reports or proposals, forecasts etc. in the new job.
Click the image to see our current special offers!
Here are some extra tips for Bookkeeper resumes
Most of the Microsoft Word skills you need to write a good resume are covered in our Word Intermediate Courses, but we’re including the entire 9 courses so you can become a power Microsoft Word user! Here are a couple other things to think about when writing you resume:
Include an image – it makes you stand out and brings the reader closer (make it a selfie where you’re smiling 🙂
Include your full name and desired role in the filename (we’re all using files these days! use it to your advantage)
The last one about filenames is a big one because if interviewers are like me they’ll put all the resumes for one role into a folder and I find myself renaming most of them!
FREE Microsoft Word Workbook
We spend a lot of time on marketing so I assume that you know we offer free samples of our training material, but I should mention again that the Microsoft Word sample is actually the entire Word Beginners Course 201 Training Workbook, make sure you get it! Get it now.
Quickbooks Course Update
It’s been a while in the making, but we have the final draft of our Quickbooks Course workbook! Unlike some training companies, we write up a detailed course story based on a real business scenario and use that as the basis for recording our screen videos that demonstrate how to use the software. We’ve had a huge number of Course Alert Registrations and they’ll ALL receive a free copy of the workbook, so if you haven’t already registered do it NOW!
EzyLearn Wholesale Partner Update
I made a brief reference to our new Enrolment Voucher system in a recent post about BAS deadlines and we’ve got an update. The new enrolment voucher system is now in beta testing which means we’ll shortly be inviting EzyLearn students who love our courses to receive a massive wholesale discount on selected courses. Make sure you register your interest.
I’ve always believed that as soon as you offer credit you’ve got yourself another business – a credit management business.
When we first created our MYOB Daily Transactions course we designed it to take students through the cashflow process of where money goes when it first leaves your bank account and these are the main steps:
Money in the bank (cash asset)
Buy stock (inventory asset)
Products sold on account (accounts receivable asset – Trade Debtors)
Customer pays their account (cash asset)
The interesting part of this business process to me is the marketing (choosing the products, pricing, marketing message and advertising) and the credit management to get the money back.
It’s that crazy time when the end of financial year TAX and quarterly BAS periods combine to cause compliance anxiety for business owners and managers if they don’t have a handle on their bookkeeping processes and accounts. This is often caused by not having the best team available for all the tasks required and I spent some time during the week speaking with Tracey our MYOB, Xero and Quickbooks Trainer from Rockingham in WA about the different levels of bookkeepers and whether they could complete tasks relating to a BAS Service. Here’s some of the information that I thought you’d find useful.
Getting receipts as evidence
The biggest issue that many bookkeepers experience is getting information from business owners, particularly small businesses that are stretched between:
the work they need to do every day
Keeping and filing the financial records like receipts
Getting the financial records to a bookkeeper or accountant
I’ve written in the past about the ways that small businesses file their receipts as well as cloud technology like Shoeboxed (who now seem to prefer selling their services to accountants and bookkeepers and have removed the educational video that demonstrated how the software works!), but Quickbooks Online has a downloadable app that enables business owners to capture a photo of each receipt for each transaction and if business owners utilise this function they can save a lot of money in data entry and evidence of expenses that could be expected as part of a BAS audit by a BAS agent.
BAS Audits, red flags and tricky GST codes
I’ve mentioned in a previous blog that you can hire a cheap bookkeeper to take care of your data entry and only use the services of a more expensive bookkeeper (ie. BAS agent) for purposes of confirmation of expenses and the GST components of these expenses. In this case a simple BAS audit involves witnessing these source documents to confirm that there is no error in calculating the money owed to the ATO. If you’ve had any of the following transactions you’ll probably need to pay close attention to the information in your BAS lodgement and mention them to your bookkeeper:
Purchasing a motor vehicle
Motor vehicle expenses
Real property purchase
Any purchase coded as a GST-Free transaction
Low value purchases (under $82.50) that are coded as GST free
I’ve written a lot about bank feeds in the past and included a blog post about how bank feeds work in MYOB and Xero. Bank feeds can be a real time saver because they automatically bring your bank transaction records into your accounting software, but Tracey mentioned that in MYOB you should bring them in BEFORE you do any reconciliation tasks otherwise you may need to undo any reconciliation work you’ve already done so watch out for that!
Need One-to-One training or a QuickFix on MYOB, Xero or Quickbooks?
We did a lot of one-to-one training when we operated our physical training centres in Sydney and the training was often completed at our training centre (because we had it!). Now I’m thrilled to advise that we’re helping local bookkeepers in your area deliver MYOB and Xero training according to our profession course structures! To learn more visit the National Bookkeeping training page. You’ll also discover that our bookkeepers area also available to fix problems or lack of knowledge with the QuickFix service so check that out.
Coming up..
Here is what we are currently working on and what will soon be published or made available at our LMS.
Guide to Credit Management (aspects of a business and your accounting software where you can tighten your credit management processes). We’re creating this guide in conjunction with the local bookkeeper at National Bookkeeping
Xero Course training material update (workbooks and videos are being updated and added as we speak so stay tuned for more announcements soon
We’re currently completing new, updated content for our Xero courses and one thing stood out more than anything else – the PLUS button in the top right hand corner! If you are familiar with Intuit Quickbooks you’d immediately recognise that their PLUS in the top centre of the screen is how you access most of the software’s features and I’ve always liked how easy it makes navigating the software. If you compare the two of them you may think that the Xero software still has some way to come.
The other thought I had about this change is “how much will Xero change its user interface”? People get used to how to navigate around a software program (User Experience) and don’t want things to change too much and that has been a great feature about MYOB – their navigation has remained fairly consistent for two decades.
Will cloud services be upgraded like their computer software peers of the naughties?
Microsoft might be the inspiration for change for Xero because although most of the formulas and functions in Microsoft Excel remain the same, the way you navigate around the software changes every 3-6 years. This is a boon for the larger software training companies that charge extra for courses in the different versions (we include all versions for the one price of course 😉 but it can be frustrating for staff who have to re-learn how to navigate the software and their spreadsheets when the office software is updated.
The PLUS menu in Quickbooks has more features
While we are on the topic of upgrades and how annoying they are I received an email from my accountant to upgrade the MYOB version that we share so that she can access the files to work on them! I can say for sure that I once again felt that MYOB are behind the timeline as they fight to stay in control when looking at how they develop their software compared to the other accounting programs like Xero and Quickbooks where the software is updated and live.
Testimonials for Xero, MYOB and Microsoft Excel courses
On a different note, I asked our web guy to get some information about where our students are located around Australia and at the same time get some of their testimonials quotes onto our website. He’s not finished yet, but when I see the different suburbs from all over Australia I reflect on the same picture over 10 years ago when we were operating physical training centres in Sydney’s North Shore, Northern Beaches and Parramatta and our students were located within 20kms of each centre.
It’s a wonderful feeling to see students doing our courses from all over Australia but it’s even better when we see enrolments from UK, Canada, US and Hong Kong because it shows the true power of cloud based services.
When you want to become a Registered BAS Agent
Last week I wrote about starting a bookkeeping business while you are working your day job and I just want to add a note that may be very useful for those who want to become a registered BAS agent. National Bookkeeping offer a BAS lodgement service through our licensees and it is a great way for qualified bookkeepers (who have their Cert IV in Bookkeeping or Accounting) to work with an organisation and build up the hours they need to register as a BAS agent via the Tax Practitioners Board.
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Xero is a great bookkeeping program for tradies who are on the go and using their phones (or a tablet) all the time. From receipts scanning to creating quotes and invoices, receiving payments and keeping track of project costs.
bookkeepercourse.com.au/produ…
IF YOU’VE DECIDED THAT this will be the year you start your new business, don’t wait until January to begin your journey to becoming the head honcho. 
It’s that crazy time when the end of financial year TAX and quarterly BAS periods combine to cause compliance anxiety for business owners and managers if they don’t have a handle on their bookkeeping processes and accounts. This is often caused by not having the best team available for all the tasks required and I spent some time during the week speaking with Tracey our 
