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What do you want in a training course?

Dr Evil - Need the info - what do you want in an online training courseSometimes we use the EzyLearn blog to learn more about what you are looking for in a training course, particularly if you have not done a course with us before. As a thank you for sharing your opinions with us you’ll receive a discount coupon for one of our courses and updates about special offers.

We’ve assembled a simple Course Needs Assessment to understand what you are looking for. With online training courses and support for MYOB bookkeeping software, WordPress website design and blogging software and Microsoft Office, we cover a wide range of topics.

Our courses are for:

  • Job seekers,
  • Those already in a job and
  • People seeking skills to operate their own business

Each category of student has slightly different needs and we want to make sure we are catering for your training needs.

Complete this brief questionnaire to join the “specials” list and receive a discount coupon code for one of our online courses.

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Is your WordPress website secure?

WordPress Training Course malware scan toolThis is a general announcement to anyone with a WordPress website. We have a WordPress Webmasters course to help small business owners setup their own website or blog and also to help individuals learn about WordPress so that they can earn a living creating websites, blogging and participating in social media.

You may recall that this EzyLearn Blog was actually affected by a WordPress Malware attack back in mid November 2011. It’s a known fact that there are occasional vulnerabilities in all sorts of software and that includes online software (they call them scripts rather than programs), like WordPress.

The recent issue with WordPress was caused by the TimThumb.php script for inserting, cropping, editing images etc and rather than go into the details here are some links that you’ll find interesting.

Why are we writing this post? Because it highlights the importance of using a theme club or theme maker that constantly updates the themes they create.

We recommend ElegantThemes and Woothemes and they both wrote articles about the vulnerability when it was discovered and provided updated themes with the risk removed.

See the articles from ElegantThemes and WooThemes.

If you want to learn more about our WordPress online Training Course contents, pricing etc please visit our WordPress Course website: www.wordpresscourse.com.au.

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Statement of formulas for calculating PAYG amounts to be withheld

PAYG withholding Scale 7 for weekly wage payments for online MYOB training course and supportThe MYOB Payroll Training Course is in stage two of development. The contents of our existing Payroll course give students an introduction to how to navigate around and get fundamental information about the payroll environment in the sample company file. As part of our constant improvement process we are developing payroll scenarios as exercises for our students. This new content when published will be available for all existing Payroll Students and all those who have enrolled with the LIFETIME training course Access option.

Which table to use?

The ATO release papers that provide you with the information you need to perform your calculations regarding PAYG, super etc. In this blog post we look at Schedule 1 Pay as you go (PAYG) withholding NAT 1004. If you take a look at table 7 on page (see diagram on this page) you’ll see the variables or what the Australian Tax Office call coefficients.

New Spreadsheet for Excel and MYOB students

One of our content creators is in the process of creating an Excel spreadsheet as a simple tool to help you work out how much PAYG tax and super you owe at the end of quarterly BAS reporting period. It’s a tool that we will offer both Microsoft Excel and MYOB Training Course students when it’s ready. And no, before you think of asking, it won’t cost you any extra money to receive it. It’s available as part of our LIFETIME student access.

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Hello to New Zealanders

New Zealander users of MYOB accounting software enrol in our online training courseSometimes we use the EzyLearn Blog to inform readers about who uses our online MYOB training courses. We received an email from a New Zealand student and we have had many New Zealanders enrol into our MYOB Training Courses.

MYOB is an international business that started humbly many years ago in Australia but sold recently to a private equity firm, valuing the business at over $1 Billion dollars. You can see from a recent Bloomberg article that the value of MYOB has grown significantly in recent years.

MYOB, Craig Winkler, Xero and Online Accounting

While we are on the topic of big business and who’s buying what, you might be very interested to know that MYOB founder Craig Winkler closed his account with the company he started in back in 1987, to become a major shareholder in New Zealand publicly listed online accounting company and rival called Xero.

Online accounting appears to be the domain of online workers like website developers and we have had very little demand for MYOB Live Accounts (online accounting competitor to Xero) so as yet we don’t cover MYOB Live Accounts. We wrote an article about cloud based software and it’s importance in the rise of remote contractors (Virtual Assistants) back in August 2010 so feel free to learn a bit more about cloud based software services.

We can help New Zealanders

Until then, we just wanted to say that if you are from New Zealand and you want to learn about MYOB accounting software, we can help you. I also want to add that if you are an existing EzyLearn student and you want to highlight some of the difference between the Australian training videos and the New Zealand version of the software, send us an email to sales@ezylearn.com.au, we’ll get Jacci (our resident BAS Agent) to write something up and include it in our course.

To see the full list of topics included in our online MYOB training course visit our website and REMEMBER, we offer all our MYOB Courses (including updated and new content) for one price AND you receive LIFETIME access.

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Having problems with bank reconciliations using MYOB AccountRight Plus version 2011?

Sometimes we use the EzyLearn Blog to inform readers about modifications to our MYOB online training course. We’ve received feedback in the MYOB Support area from students that elements of our MYOB Bank Reconciliation course are coming up with errors when they use the most recent version of the MYOB software.

Bank Reconciliation using MYOB version 2011

One of the great aspects about coming across problems in a course is that it replicates the type of problems you’ll experience in the workplace or while managing your own business. Jacci, our resident BAS Agent has gone through the steps in the course and identified potential issues. She has written up a concise guide that is now included in the bank reconciliation course (#503) to help you balance the books using MYOB.

Online training and support for MYOB, Microsoft Excel, WordPress and moreIf you come across problems or issues please feel free to use the EzyLearn ANSWERS service we launched in May 2011. It is part of our growing support options for students. If you operate a small business and want to know something or if you come across an issue that is not covered by the training in our existing course let us know because EzyLearn courses are LIVE courses, they are growing every month with new content that you don’t have to pay extra to use.

online training and support for MYOB, Microsoft Excel, WordPress website design and moreOh, before I leave you on this blog post I want to highlight our new student support option we launched last month – Tutor Support and Student Community – it’s a way to connect with other students and have direct contact with our professional tutors who have real life experience using the software in their daily business life.

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How long will an online training course take?

online MYOB Training Course and SupportSometimes we use the EzyLearn Blog to inform readers about general course information. Our online courses are completely self-paced so you can complete the online MYOB course in 7 days, 2 to 3 weeks or just use it as a resource.

It’s that time of the year when traditional training centres start their class-based training courses. When EzyLearn operated three physical training centres in Sydney we spent a lot of time scheduling which courses. We asked ourselves questions like

  • What day should the course start
  • Which course should be held on a Tuesday/Wednesday etc
  • Should we schedule it for the morning, all day, evening or Saturday
  • How many weeks should the course last
  • Which training room and centres should we hold the course,
  • Who will the trainer be
  • Is the trainer available

Office administration (Microsoft Word and Excel etc), MYOB (Bookkeeping software), Website Design (using WordPress) and Absolute Beginners courses have always been scheduled this way so people are used to talking about courses this way. One of the most common questions we get asked is “how long will it take?” and our first temptation is to say “How long do you want it to take”.

Our online MYOB training course includes 5 courses for the price you’d expect to pay for one course (It includes MYOB Setup, Day-to-Day Transactions, Reporting & BAS and MYOB Payroll Intro) and the contents of the course is what we used to cover in approximately 4 full time days of training.

Another great aspect about an online training course is you can use it for the rest of your working life without paying any extra (if you choose that enrolment option). So you can complete just the MYOB Day-to-Day Transactions course (# 502) and when you need it you can complete the Bank Reconciliation and BAS courses.

To enrol into our online MYOB training course click here.

In the forthcoming weeks we are going to write about

  • Using Microsoft Excel to enter Payroll information and then enter that information into MYOB
  • Differences between MYOB AccountRight version 2011 and previous versions
  • New content for the MYOB Payroll Course

We’ll also introduce you to Jerry Lame. He’s the new Ordinary Man. Follow Jerry’s journey of starting a business, writing business plans, creating a budget and forecasts and then implementing it. You’ll learn how to use software for practical purposes along the way.

If you don’t want to miss out on this information, make sure you subscribe to our blog using the form below:

 

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Have you seen the latest version of MYOB software

We sometimes release information at the EzyLearn BLOG that relates to information that will benefit our students. If you are a student and you download the free trial version of the software you will be downloading the latest version.

Back on November 17th 2011 MYOB launched their MYOB AccountRight Plus version 2011 product.

We’ve recently recorded some training videos about MYOB Reports for GST Collected and Paid and where GST is located in source documents like invoices. We’ve then gone on to show you how to update your BAS Info in MYOB and use the BASlink feature that collects your GST information and quickly and easily gives you the information you need for your Business Activity Statement (BAS). This information is covered in our MYOB Reporting and BAS course (code 504). If you are familiar with EzyLearn you’ll know that this course is included with all the others MYOB courses for the one price and LIFETIME membership.

The navigation around MYOB AccountRight Plus version 2011 is very similar to earlier versions (although MYOB has updated the icons they use). We’ve downloaded and recorded a quick video to show you what it looks like. If you are receiving this blog post via email, click on the heading to see the video below.

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MYOB Training Course and Support – Reporting Course updated (BASlink added)

MYOB AccountRight Plus 2011 - Training Course and SupportSometimes we use the EzyLearn Blog to inform readers about new course content or updates to existing training tutorials. We have created new content for the MYOB Reporting Course and more specifically how to complete your BAS using the BASlink in MYOB.

If you are an existing student you’ll know that you have access to this new content for no extra charge.

We downloaded the latest version of MYOB AccountRight Plus to perform these tasks and you’ll be thrilled to know that the navigation of the program (apart from where the Sample company file is stored) is VERY similar. The icons and images are slightly different, but navigation is the same.

Stay tuned for the next free MYOB Training Video about this newest version of MYOB Accounting software. The next step after performing a bank reconciliation (Course 503) is the Quarterly or Monthly BAS (Business Activity Statement).


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We are OPEN now – enrol before school starts

Online MYOB Training course and supportWE are planning some exciting new content for our online MYOB training course, including new support features for students who want extra support. Remember, once you enrol into the EzyLearn online MYOB training course (with LIFETIME membership) you receive access to all new and updated content for no extra cost. Now is an excellent time to enrol.

Now is the perfect time to start a course because most people are on holidays and you have time to think, study, learn and refocus your life strategies for 2012. If you do want to improve your bookkeeping skills and learn how to use MYOB accounting software you’ll be happy to know that we are open over the holiday period (except public holidays).

We hope you enjoyed your Christmas day (if you celebrated it) and wish you all the best for 2012. We sent a thank you out to you and our EzyLearn team, but we forgot to include Monique from Monstar Documents and Rosie Shilo from Virtually Yours. You have both been excellent to work with and we are thrilled at the benefits we have provide some of your members with our Online WordPress training course. Now, more and more virtual assistants and home workers are able to earn an income while working from home.

Here’s to a successful 2012 to you!

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It’s time to thank YOU

It’s only days before Christmas 2011 and from all of us at EzyLearn HQ we want to thank you for watching our training videos, using our training worbooks and completing our knowledge reviews, reading our blog posts and telling your friends about us. I personally also want to thank the core EzyLearn team for enabling us to grow and provide a great online training solution for thousands of Australian’s and international students.

Thank you Frankie, Yvette, Richard, Jacci, Ross, Amy, Luke, Iroshini, Warren and Allison. Also a big thanks to Simon, Scott, Amy J, Faisal, Jennifer, Nicholas and Mathew. You have made a real difference to EzyLearn this year and to our students and the hard work you’ve done will reward students for years to come.

This year has been one of our best years because we made a commitment to be the best online training company for

  1. MYOB accounting software and bookkeeping
  2. Microsoft Excel & Microsoft Word, and
  3. WordPress website Content management system and blogging platform.

Other training companies spend their time and energy trying to provide hundreds of courses with the aim of trying to get anyone they can. We decided to focus on our core skills and give everything we could. We also tried to make our online training courses affordable and inclusive so you don’t have to worry about your availability or skill level.

Here are some highlights during the year:

Creating a WordPress blog post

online WordPress training course - blogging and website designSocial media has gripped us all this year and if you are a business that didn’t know about websites, blogging, Facebook pages and Twitter you were considered lost. We’ve used WordPress to create our own websites for years and this year we introduced the WordPress Training Course.

You might find it interesting that we were writing blog posts about WordPress back in 2007 and even earlier, but this year we expanded our content significantly and included Google Analytics, Feedburner and other skills in it.

LIFETIME student membership

In January 2011 we introduced lifetime access to our online MYOB Training Course. This gave students access to all courses (Setup, Day-to-Day, Bank Reconciliation, Payroll Introduction) and it also provided them with a safety net and a resource when they are in the workplace. Rather than say thank you and goodbye once our students have completed their online course we welcome students to come back as often as they need.

A significant benefit to this offer is that students get access to all new content that has been created for the course or updated content for the existing material. An excellent example of this is our online Microsoft Excel course. We have training material since 1999 on Excel version 2000, 2003, 2007 and 2010 and as we create new content for Office 365, existing students will have access to the new material for no extra charge.

Welcoming Entrepreneurs as Business Partners

Our Business Partner program has enabled other dedicated professionals to use and promote our training material as part of their own business activities. This has enabled us to focus on the delivery of training materials and management of a learning platform while other business owners earn money by their promotional and sales activities.

We are 100% dedicated to this program going into 2012 so if you are interested please ensure you make contact with us.

Testing your MYOB knowledge and skills

Online training assessments and tests for coursesOnline training is still relatively new for many prospective students so we introduce the concept of knowledge reviews and skills tests to demonstrate how they are a learning tool as well as a testing tool.

We created a significant volume of new tests and quizzes as part of our online training courses this year and as a demonstration of their efficacy we introduced a free public MYOB skills test to see how much you knew about MYOB. It was also a great way for students to discover a new way of learning something online.

Partnering with Bookkeeping Industry groups

A significant number of our online training students complete their training to perform bookkeeping tasks as an employee or as an independent contractor. To demonstrate our commitment to “would-be” MYOB Bookkeepers and provide you with reputable accredited MYOB courses we became an accredited training provider of the Institute of Certified Bookkeepers. EzyLearn is also a member of the Australian Institute of Training and Development, the Australian Web Industry Association and the International Coaching Federation.

We join these associations to support the online training and coaching industries, demonstrate our commitment to professional industry ready courses and keep abreast of all new training techniques and technology.

More than just an online training course

Support is an important aspect of online learning and it is also a source of significant costs for organisations like EzyLearn. In balancing the costs of maintaining our current team members will the benefits of some rudimentary customisation of our courses we introduced EzyLearn Q&A. With a separate Q&A service for Microsoft Excel, WordPress and MYOB.

We’ve subsequently called this service EzyLearn ANSWERS. It’s a way of providing new training materials based on questions from our students. Students ask questions relating to their needs and our software specialists create a short answer to lead students to a solution. We use this service to increase the breadth of topics covered in our courses.

More team members to serve your needs

This year we added 8 new team members to help create new training content, manage our online learning site, answer questions and provide support. Most importantly it has helped us significantly reduce the time it takes between when you complete your course and when you receive your certificate.

You’ll meet more of these team members during 2012 and we hope to bring more people into EzyLearn to support your learning needs.

Faster loading videos and better online learning tools

We listened to the feedback from our students to improve as much as possible and to complement the addition of new team members we significant upgraded our video hosting capacity to ensure faster and easier viewing and navigation of our online training video tutorials.

This technology update enabled students with new devices like iPads and other Apple products to view our training videos and participate in mobile elearning regardless of their chosen devices.

Training for office administration for small businesses

virion small business telephone systems using voipThis year we formed a partnership with virion business grade VoIP to provide online training tools for their installation partners. As part of this project we included some new training materials to help office admin staff not only configure their new VoIP telephone systems, but we also provided spreadsheets for them to use as part of their phone bill analysis reports for customers to demonstrate how much money they could saving using Voice over IP.

We started looking at VoIP solutions for our own business in 2008 when we tried out the features of MyNetFone. In our constant search for better technology and support people we discovered the VoIP solution dedicated to small businesses, virion.

In 2012 we will strengthen this relationship by providing more in-depth training videos and tutorials. Our commitment to online training is focused on providing students with the tools they need to be efficient and productive in small business across Australia as well as provide these small businesses with the tools they need to operate great businesses.

Conclusion

If you think we have made a lot of improvements in 2011, just wait until you see what we have planned for 2012. We will:

  • create more training content for our MYOB course and WordPress /  Webmasters course
  • implement more services to help support your online learning
  • help you find more customers (for small business owners using your website and Google adwords, Analytics and SEO)
  • provide more tools to help you find a job (for job seekers by helping you write better resumes, perform better at interviews and be more confident in your work)

Thanks again for reading and following our progress we want to demonstrate your successes in our 2012 blogs posts.

All the best from the EzyLearn Team.

Sincerely,

Steve Slisar

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MYOB Training Course Update: New training content for MYOB Reporting – Profit and Loss Reports

The EzyLearn Blog is where we officially release information about updates and additions to our existing training courses and today we announce new content for the Reporting Subject in our MYOB Training Course.

We are thrilled to announce the production and implementation of the Reporting module in the online MYOB Training Course. In the production of this course we will be including the learning outcomes for BSBFIA401A Prepare Financial Reports subject that forms part of the FNS40210 Cert IV in Bookkeeping course and certification.

Topics included in this course will include training on how to

  • Prepare an asset register or property, plant and equipment, determining the depreciation calculation for these assets and keeping a depreciation schedule
  • Adjust expense and revenue accounts for prepayments and accruals
  • Adjust ledger accounts for inventory and transfer to final accounts
  • Create journal entries for balance day entries and prepare final general ledger accounts to show gross and net profits for the reporting period
  • Prepare revenue statement, balance sheet and cash-flow statements

MYOB Q&A Support

We’ve modified each MYOB Training Course to clearly indicate where you can ask our resident MYOB expert a question specific to your needs and your circumstances. The MYOB Q&A Support service was announced back in May 2011 and it’s just one way that we try to give you the best MYOB Training experience for a fixed price and LIFETIME training access!

Profit and Loss Report

Does that sound familiar? It WAS also called the P&L Report, but as our country marches in time with new international accounting standards we join the rest of the world in calling it the Income Statement. An Income Statement tracks revenues and expenses during a given period. The difference between the revenues and expenses represents a net loss or gain and Income Statements provide business owners with an understanding of the health of their business.

We’ve included our introductory video here:

 

 

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MYOB Support Q&A: Entering Employee Payments Manually using Journal Entries

MYOB Support Q&A: Entering Employee Payments Manually using Journal Entries

MYOB Payroll Course - online training - Journal entries for manual staff payments

If you are a micro-business but you’ve want to pay yourself wages for tax reasons you don’t need to buy MYOB AccountRight Plus. You can enter the information into the system using Spend Money and Journal Entries.

The most important aspect of performing the staff payment task is knowing how much money you owe to the employee, the ATO and the employees Superannuation company. We created a simple spreadsheet to calculate the amount of PAYG, Super, and other Levys that are owed when you pay a staff member. This spreadsheet is freely available to all of our Microsoft Excel Course students.

Once you have this information you can take advantage of our MYOB Q&A Guide that we’ve just added to our MYOB online Payroll Course.

Please note that our MYOB Q&A service is designed to take questions from students about specific topics which may not be included in our course. We take these questions to our software specialists and produce a short instructional guide to help you with your real life need using Microsoft Excel, MYOB and WordPress.

If you want to receive regular updates about when this information is released, please subscribe to our EzyLearn Blog.

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We’re under attack!

TIP: WordPress Training Course

Google Webmaster Tools - Malware Report for WordPress Training Course

We’ve just experience a cyber attack and what do you think caused it? An out of date plugin for our WordPress Blog.

It’s a terrifying feeling knowing that your website visitors see a huge alarming warning asking them to go no further or risk being compromised. Luckily we have a Google Webmaster Tools account that provides some information about the potential cause. When we removed the offending plugin, we were able to use Google Webmaster Tools to get Google to go and re-visit our site and confirm that there is nothing wrong with it.

It’s a lesson in only using plugins and themes that you want to use and removing the rest. We used our blogging site to get to know some great new WordPress tools but now we’re keeping it clean and lean!

If you are a website owner and you haven’t signed up to Google Webmaster Tools, do yourself a favour and get to know it. If you want to learn about using WordPress to create your own website or blog site come and visit our Online WordPress Training Course website.

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EzyLearn Q&A: MYOB – Processing Termination Pay

Free Student Resource

One of our Online MYOB Training Course students asked a question about how to process termination pays. We hope it’s not a common question for employers in our uncertain financial environment, but we put it to our MYOB expert and produced a short guide to help you. If you are an existing student this resource is now available in the Online MYOB Payroll Course in the EzyLearn Q&A section at the bottom.

Stay tuned for more new Payroll content over the coming weeks.

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Want to go to a free seminar to learn how to make “Presentations that Persuade”

Info: Creating great PowerPoint Presentations

Powerful Powerpoint Presentation Questions

 

Image from Powerful Points promotional email

Lee and his team from PowerfulPoints has been helping executives of some of Australia’s largest companies fine tune their presentations using PowerPoint so that they are efficient and effective. If you are new to using PowerPoint you are probably not new to seeing a presentation where Microsoft PowerPoint has been used.

This seminar goes through the important aspect of creating a presenting using Microsoft PowerPoint. Learning how to use PowerPoint in our PowerPoint Training Course is one thing, but perfecting the art of being a presenter is a different story altogether.

See a short video of these PowerPoint professionals and follow the link to register for this seminar if you want to be a better presenter than you currently are.

Remember: All EzyLearn online training courses come with LIFETIME membership so you’ll never need to pay for a course again.

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Microsoft Excel Quick Command to show the Formulas in a spreadsheet

Excel Q&A: Show formulas in a spreadsheet

Microsoft Excel online training course keyboard shortcutsA student took a look at our newly created Staff Payment, PAYG, Super spreadsheet file and they wanted to know which formulas are used in the spreadsheet. This is a great question because there are many ways that a spreadsheet like this can be created and we’ll explore these methods in the forthcoming month.

The secret to reveal formulas is the Tilde key at the top left of your keyboard. Simply press Ctrl + ` and all the formulas in the spreadsheet will be revealed. You can then work intelligently on your spreadsheet and make changes fully aware of where numbers are simply entered or where complicated formulas exist.

Note: Our Excel Q&A service (just like our MYOB Q&A support) is designed to provide extra training content over and above the examples that are in our online Microsoft Excel Training Course.