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.
The MYOB Bookkeeper Directory: Helping to connect bookkeepers with clients
At EzyLearn we’re passionate about helping our students start their own bookkeeping businesses — it’s why we offer a suite of training courses to help you hone and develop the skills you need to start your own bookkeeping business. But we’re even more passionate about helping those people and businesses succeed long after they first start trading.
Two-Way, Trusting Relationships with Your Bookkeeping Clients
The key to your success as a business owner is having a pool of customers who need and value your work just as much as you need and value their business. This two-way relationship helps to establish trust; the foundation of every successful business relationship.
But sometimes finding these customers is difficult, even if you’ve been in business for some time already. This is where EzyLearn can help.
The MYOB Bookkeeper Directory: Connecting Bookkeepers with Clients
Each time a business is looking for a bookkeeper whose skills or location matches your profile they can make contact with the MYOB Bookkeeper Directory team, who will vet those businesses before putting them in contact with you.
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For EzyLearn students who have completed our MYOB training course, paid for lifetime access and receipt of the certificate, we are offering you a free 12-month membership to the MYOB Bookkeeper Directory. (Membership fees are usually $97/12 months.)
At EzyLearn we offer a handful of online training courses: Microsoft Office (Excel, Word, PowerPoint and Outlook), MYOB Accounting, and WordPress website design and blogging. There are many companies who promote courses online and that’s just what they do — promote courses online — but we try to be a little different.
Here’s why:
We offer only a handful of courses and we do them very well
Our courses come with LIFETIME Membership
As a student you receive fresh, new content without paying extra
Where possible, we provide real life exercise files so you can work with the software.
Our Online Community
Our experience with thousands of students has taught us that some students need more interaction than just the videos. They also like to bounce off other people to better understand the software they are learning.
That’s why we provide our Student Community and Tutor Support — to provide our students with the ability to communicate with fellow students, as well as ask questions of our experienced community moderators. It’s like having your own tutor that you can ask questions to who can provide quality answers based on their own experience in their relative industries.
Our students range from job seekers to small business owners and existing bookkeepers wanting to learn more, to accountants who may be thinking of leaving the corporate world and setting up a small business for themselves (or even seeking greater work-life balance).
Qualified Moderators
Our student support community is moderated by our MYOB Bookkeeper and Registered BAS agent, giving students the benefit of both communication with other course attendees (to socialise and to learn) as well as obtain answers to specific questions.
Annual Membership
Our Student Community and Tutor Support is provided on a yearly membership basis and you can continue or opt-out as you please each year. The service is available to existing EzyLearn students or new students enrolling into any one of our courses.
With EzyLearn, in addition to the videos, you get over 200 pages of training information in our workbook.
When you’re selecting a training course provider, it’s important to consider the training material and resources you will need in order to complete the course.
Is your business accounting software – and your business bank account – saving you time? It should be!
In a previous post we wrote about business bank accounts. Some banks, even though they offer business accounts, aren’t actually all that business friendly, and this can sometimes add hours to your bookkeeping and reconciliation processes.
Not all Business Accounts are Created Equal
If you’re starting a new business and going to open a business account, we recommend you do your research and shop around, because not all accounts are the same.
Some business accounts integrate nicely with your accounting software, while others, like a Bank of Queensland account, for example, does not because they transferred their credit card service to Citibank, preventing integration with the Banklink feature of MYOB.
Other business accounts don’t allow businesses to have a Visa or MasterCard debit card attached to their business account and only allow businesses to make online purchases using their own money.
Business owners can only use a linked credit card to make online purchases or a separate debit card. Either option still results in additional journal entries in your accounting software.
End of Financial Year – Best Time to Get Business Friendly
If you’ve been battling with your current bank, now that we’re approaching the end of the 2013/14 financial year, it might be the time to consider moving your accounts elsewhere so you can start afresh come July 1.
Or perhaps it’s not your bank that’s playing havoc with your bookkeeping – perhaps it’s your bookkeeping software. As we approach a new financial year, it might be a good time to consider switching your account keeping software to MYOB, or something simpler, like Xero (we have written in the past comparing the two).
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At EzyLearn, we provide a range of training courses for a number of different accounting programs from the basic Reach Accounting to the more sophisticated MYOB. For more information on our training courses, visit our website.
We are looking for anyone who has completed our MYOB training course to become an affiliate marketer and earn money by recommending our training courses to people you know.
Our online MYOB training course is like an induction into the world of bookkeeping.
Our MYOB training courses are more than just training course in software. They also function as a quasi induction to the life of a bookkeeper, in that they train you in the day-to-day processes and procedures of a bookkeeper as well.
Even though you still need to have completed a Certificate IV in bookkeeping to become a registered BAS agent, you can still provide clients with basic bookkeeping services if you’ve done our MYOB training course.
Quizzes and Knowledge Reviews
The MYOB workbooks provided in the training courses contain practical exercises that students can complete to familiarise themselves with the software, which they are then later tested on to through a series of quizzes and knowledge reviews.
By the time you’ve completed our MYOB training course, you’ll be proficient not just in the MYOB software, but also in the day-to-day of a professional bookkeeper.
Some of our previous students are already business owners themselves and our MYOB courses provide them with the necessary skills to take care of the data entry and bookkeeping for their own business.
An Entry Point to Your Home-Based Business
But a good many more of our students also use our MYOB courses as an entry point to starting their own home-based bookkeeping business, providing other businesses with data entry while they’re completing a Cert IV in bookkeeping.
This is a great way to familiarise yourself with the bookkeeping process while you’re still learning, and even help you to network with accountants who could later help you become certified with the Institute of Certified Bookkeepers and supervise your work.
We also offer a Small Business Management Course to help those people thinking of starting a home-based bookkeeping business develop a business plan, carry out marketing activities report on financial activity, and so forth. Currently we’re offering this course for just $897 (for a short time only!).
But what about things like, installation costs – should you bill your clients for this or work it into the price or just let it slide?
Some businesses work those sorts of prices into their final cost; others – think Foxtel, for example – charge installation fees; but a surprising number of businesses let it slide. Continue reading When Should You Work for Free?
Employees possessing both will and skill are the most desirable in the workplace.
At EzyLearn, our flagship training course is the MYOB training course, which is sort of like an induction into the role of a bookkeeper in that it provides students with an overview of the duties typically carried out by a bookkeeper. Most of our students take our MYOB training course because they both want and need to know how to use the software in order to find work as a bookkeeper.
In the world of business training and coaching, this is called the Will vs. Skill Matrix. Employees who have both the will to succeed and the skill to succeed are highly desirable in the workplace.
Transparency, Will and Skill
Employees who have only one of those attributes, however, are less desirable. Helping staff maintain both the will and the skill to succeed in their jobs has a lot to do with how transparent you are as an organisation.
We’ve mentioned transparency in business before, notably in relation to induction training programs. Induction training programs are a highly efficient way to communicate easily and efficiently with your staff, while also testing their will and skill to succeed at their jobs.
While most induction training programs are used to merely address the requirements of the Work Health and Safety Act, or to induct contractors and consultants to a business’ premises, induction training programs can also be used to further your employees’ professional development.
Furthering your employees’ professional development can be done by providing your staff with online training courses that are relevant and useful to their jobs, such as a Word or Excel training course. By delivering this content online, it allows your staff to complete the course at their own pace, in an informal environment – at home or at their desk at work, rather than in a dedicated training centre on a dedicated day – and it also allows you to monitor their progress.
As the business owner, by being able to see how your employees are getting on with the training courses can illuminate areas where your staff could benefit from further training; it can also highlight those staff member who possess the will and the skill to succeed.
Those staff members who are have both the will and the skill to succeed in their jobs also happen to be highly engaged, and as we mentioned in a previous post, more productive.
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If you’re looking for ways to keep your staff highly engaged with your business, we can help you tailor and deliver highly engaging induction training courses to your staff. Visit our website for more information, or contact us today for a quote.
Company morale is important for any company, because it helps foster engagement between your staff and their work. If your business has a team of highly engaged staff members, they’re likely to be more productive and ultimately that’s good news for you as the business owner.
Keeping your staff engaged with their work and your business isn’t as hard – or as expensive as it seems. While money certainly plays a huge role in how satisfied employees are in their jobs, it’s not the be all and end all – just look at companies like Google, which have a highly engaged workforce, but which also allows their staff to bring their pets to work with them and includes an onsite games room. Your staff spend more time at work than they do at home – so they want to feel happy and appreciated while they’re there, otherwise they’ll go elsewhere.
‘Talk’ to Your People
But you don’t need to institute a ‘bring your pet to work day’ (although you could if you wanted), nor do you need to set up a pool table in the lunch room, because employee morale and engagement starts by opening the lines of communication. If your organisation has a policy of transparency, and routinely communicates new policies and procedures with their staff, they’re more likely to trust you and feel that as an organisation you trust them in return with company information.
Induction — A Great Way to Open Up the Lines of Communication
An induction training program, which is used both for new employees, contractors, consultants and existing employees is the easiest and most efficient way to demonstrate that transparency to your staff. And online induction training programs make it easy to deliver this information to your staff, while also making it easy to keep the information up to date.
Whether it’s a new procedure relating to work health and safety, or a new way of sending in invoices, you can create the content and deliver it to your staff with ease. Best of all, you can monitor and track which staff have completed their training and which staff haven’t, allowing you to follow up with them. This helps you ensure your due diligence as an organisation, and helps to boost that all-important staff morale.
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For more information on online induction training programs, visit our website or contact us for a free quote today.
You’ll be surprised how much information new employees lack – something which can easily be remedied by an online induction program.
We’ve been talking about induction training a lot lately, and it’s because an induction training program is hugely important for all businesses, especially small businesses often using contractors or consultants. But induction training is also an important aspect of acclimatising a new employee to your organisation.
But most importantly, it should also include specific information that relates to a new employee’s department or position.
Things to include in your induction training program could be: who an employee reports to, how often the company carries out performance reviews, and what the pay cycle is.
This may seem overly basic, but these are common questions employees usually have when they start a new job. By providing this information upfront it demonstrates a level of transparency, and helps newcomers feel at ease – after all, there’s nothing more awkward that having to ask your new boss when you’ll be paid.
Your Employees’ Responsibilities
But you should also use your induction program as an opportunity to highlight the expectations and responsibilities of that new employee, by outlining their tasks and duties and when they’re expected to have them completed by.
You may have covered this in the interview process, but anecdotal evidence shows that the vast majority of new employees still don’t know what is expected of them until their first day on the job.
If their responsibilities and goals are still not properly communicated to them on their first day, they often spend the first few days and weeks uncertain about what they should be doing. This leads to frustration, which ultimately leaves them feeling disengaged and invariably wastes time and money – and they haven’t even started their job yet!
A properly executed induction training program helps to define the responsibilities and expectations of your employees, and also helps boost company morale and engagement – two important ingredients in any successful business.
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If you would like to learn more about induction training programs, visit our website or request a quote from us.
With the advent of the Internet and social media, there’s been a lot of discussion about declining advertising revenues in newspapers, which has led many business owners and marketers to erroneously think that advertising in the newspaper is no longer efficient.
But really, advertising in the paper is just as efficient as it ever was – it all depends on the business and whether a newspaper is the right medium for it.
So what businesses should advertise in the paper?
Where Oh Where to Advertise?
The answer to that question really depends on the business and the newspaper. For a local business, like a restaurant or a retailer or a plumber looking for local customers, a newspaper that’s highly read and engaged with by the local community is definitely the way to go, as opposed to a larger metropolitan newspaper.
But it’s important that you consider why you’re advertising in the first place. If you’re looking to build brand awareness, a regular advertisement in a relevant section – such as dining, or professional services, for example – over a significant period of time will pay off.
If you’re looking for new customers and fast, then a smaller number of ads, towards the front of the paper clearly advertising that you’re opening soon or running a special deal will deliver the immediacy you’re looking for.
How Far Will People Go?
It’s important to remember that the majority of people don’t travel further than between 3 and 3.5 kilometres to do their groceries, and a maximum of about 12 kilometres for larger purchases like a car or white goods.
This is what makes local newspapers highly efficient for local businesses, whereas national businesses find both local and national newspapers efficient in delivering their customers.
Global Reach
But what if you’re not looking for local customers from any specific region because you’re an online business whose customers can reside anywhere in the world?
In this instance, a local newspaper, while it would deliver a number of highly engaged customers, would only deliver a small section of your target market, making it highly costly.
While metropolitan or national newspapers would work better here, they still wouldn’t deliver those overseas customers. This is where online and social media advertising may work better for you, assuming that it’s highly targeted the your ideal customer.
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The key to successful marketing is always understanding exactly who your customer is. This comes from efficient market research prior to starting your business. It’s for this reason that we recently introduced a new short course called the originate and develop new concepts course, which takes you through the all-important first step of business: researching the market.
This course was previously only available as part of our Small Business Management Course, but because it’s such an important first step in starting your own business, we decided to make it available for individual enrolment.
The course focuses on the all-important research phase of starting a business. In order to complete this course, students will need to already have an idea for a business, which they can begin researching.
In the originate and develop concepts course you’ll be looking at things like the geographical area your business will service, whether seasonal factors will impact it, demographics and other socio-economic information that may be necessary.
These are important first steps that many business owners don’t learn until they’ve already opened their doors, at which point realigning their business accordingly is often costly and difficult.
But if you’ve already determined that to start your virtual bookkeeping business, you need compete, say, with two other established bookkeepers who only offer straight bookkeeping services, you can offer BAS services and establish a point of difference between yourself and the competition from the get-go.
Knowing where your business stands in the marketplace will also aid you in marketing and advertising your business, while it’s also necessary to have completed this kind of preliminary research if you intend on securing finance from an investor or a bank.
In the course, you’re also required to isolate your ideal customer, which is imperative to ensure you’re delivering the correct products or services, but again, also helps you market your business directly to that person – because you know exactly, what they do and how to reach them.
We value – and need – your feedback about our online training courses.
Over the years, we’ve provided online training to numerous Australian – and international – students, whether via our flagship MYOB training course or one of our Excel or WordPress courses, or our more recent Small Business Management Course. Over the years these students have provided us with valuable feedback.
The feedback we receive from our students helps us to understand what’s working and what isn’t, which is why it’s invaluable to us that you get in touch and let us know what you think.
It was based on the feedback we received from our students that we decided to develop our Reach Accounting and Xero training courses. It is also based on the feedback we received that we changed the way we issued our certificates so that students received them faster and could use them to find work.
Recent Feedback
Here’s just some of the feedback we’ve received from our students recently:
“I found the workbooks the most helpful for giving practical experience.” — Karen Dimitri, Glengowrie SA 5044
“The best part is that you can do it on your own time and pace.” — Juliana van Wyk, Hilton WA 6163
“Short, easily digestable videos. Can fit in easily with a busy lifestyle.” — Korina Power, North Shore, Auckland 0630
“I could learn at my own pace.” — Jackie Smith, Sheidow Park, SA 5158
“Doing the workbooks and watching the videos at my own pace has helped me a lot in pursing the current workforce requirements.” — Merritt Ray, Loganholme QLD 4129
“I was able to finish the whole course in just a couple of weeks.” — YoonOck Lee, Atwell, WA 6164
“By watching videos on one particular topic and doing a test straight after relating to those videos, you don’t become too overwhelmed with too much information.” — Michelle Bankstown, NSW 2200
“I am happy as I could completely the course at my own pace. It was easy n simple to understand. As a mother I felt the course was very time efficient. Looking forward to putting my knowledge into action.” — Kimberline Francis, St James, WA 6102
“This course is best for me because I can access any time from home, I can replay any video provided when I didn’t understand.” — Mika Humphreys, Innisfail, QLD 4860
“Everything within the course itself was great. I liked the most how easy it was to understand and navigate through.” — Katie Davis, Whyalla, SA 5608
“Being able to actually move around the sample company file to get a feeling of how the software is structured, made me have more confident.” — Joy Khoo, Mudgee, NSW 2850
“The best parts of this course is that we get freedom to learn and complete this course in your own suitable time. There is not so much pressure that you have to complete in certain time limit. I would advise and recommend this course from EzyLearn to international students who want to further their career in bookkeeping and accounting. It was a great privilege to be part of your institute.” — Prabin Gurung, Auburn, NSW 2144
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We’d love to hear from you too. Get in touch via our course evaluation page.
The supermarkets have really shaped the way we shop.
Did you know that when the first supermarkets arrived in Australia, supermarket promoters hired instructors to provide induction training to adults and children demonstrating how to push shopping trolleys down the aisles.
How Did People Shop Before the Supermarket?
Until the supermarket, Australians had been accustomed to queuing at a counter and presenting a shopping list to their green grocer or their butcher, who would then select the items on the list on the shopper’s behalf.
Those first supermarkets offered what I would call ‘bomb shelter supplies’; the kind of non-perishable foods (canned goods, condensed milk, etc.) that you’d stock your bomb shelter with in case the sky fell – or the H-bomb did, at least.
Their Own Network of Suppliers
Today, supermarkets offer so much more than that. The limited fresh produce they once supplied has been expanded to a full range of fruits, vegetables, seafood, meat and poultry supplied directly to them via their own network of farmers and suppliers – an entirely unsurprising direction for the Wesfarmers-owned Coles to take.
Over the years, Coles and Woolies have also entered the petrol market by entering into agreements Shell and Caltex respectively; more recently they’ve even entered into the financial game, offering credit cards and insurance.
Like it or not, our supermarkets are the early adopters of new social trends and they’re shaping our entire shopping experience as a result.
The Evolution of Telecommunications
Now that we’re living in an age of smart phones and high-speed internet, the telecommunications industry has been turned upside down. Whereas you previously only had a small number of telcos to choose from and a limited range of services, these new technologies and methods of communication are forcing traditional telcos like Telstra to take notice.
Skype
Take Skype as an example. There was a time not so long ago when if you wanted to make an international call it would cost a bomb. Then Skype came along. Now you can make free international calls using your broadband connection and at the same time see the person at the other end.
iMessage
Apple did the same by introducing the iMessage function on their iPhones, which allows iPhone users to text each other for free, using their mobile data.
VoIP
These technological advancements have seen the share prices of voice-over IP (VoIP) companies go through the roof, which Ken Maswell of Virion, a small bespoke VoIP provider in Sydney can attest to.
According to Maswell, the share prices of VoIP company, myfonenet, have increased by 57 percent since May last year. “When it comes to telecommunications, customers are now exercising their choice in what was previously considered the dark arts of telephony,” he said.
Coles and Woolies have long offered handsets and prepaid mobile sims; even more recently, Aldi entered the mobile space as authorised resellers of Telstra prepaid mobile sims and handsets at highly competitive prices.
But there’s plenty of demand for a Coles or Woolies-brand mobile service – ideally one offering greater data usage given most people use their mobile phones to send and receive emails, watch videos, communicate via social media, and so on.
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What do you think? Do you think Coles and Woolies will soon become telcos as well? How do you think they would fare pitted against the like of Virgin and Vodafone who have each been in the game quite a while now?
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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…
