Author: Steve Slisar

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.

Posted on April 13, 2012April 11, 2012 by Steve Slisar — 1 Comment

Every WordPress website can look great on a smart phone

If 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 April 11, 2012 by Steve Slisar

Signatures make Outlook sexy

Sometimes 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 April 5, 2012April 10, 2012 by Steve Slisar

We’re real people, really!

There 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 April 4, 2012April 2, 2012 by Steve Slisar — 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 April 4, 2012April 2, 2012 by Steve Slisar

MYOB Training Course and Support – bank reconciliation

In 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.

We’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.

Posted on April 3, 2012April 2, 2012 by Steve Slisar — 1 Comment

Accept credit cards with your iPhone, Android or iPad?

When we first started our computer training centre in Dee Why on Sydney’s Northern Beaches we used a Merchant Account from the National Australia bank and rented a credit card terminal. In this scenario there was a

setup fee,
initial deposit,
minimum term,
monthly fees and
transaction fees for every sale.

Plus, if you weren’t a good negotiator you would pay some ridiculous transaction fee on every sale.

Things have come a long way with the recent announcement in Australia by PayPal of their Paypal Here service that turns a smart phone into a credit card processing machine! It’s also very similar to the Square concept that has been available in the US for some time.

You now don’t need a merchant facility with a bank to receive credit card payments from customers. You can get a tiny device that attaches to your smart phone to accept credit card payments and you can just bump smart phones to transfer funds. If you are reading this blog post as an email, click on the heading to get to our blog site and watch the Paypal Video.

Paypal enables you to pay internationally by using a paypal account and that account can be attached to your bank account as well as your credit card so it may become your one payment method. We use Paypal as our payment gateway for course enrolments and as a result students can enrol from all over the world and companies can even pay with an eCheck!

With no setup or monthly fees your business could start accepting credit card payments using its own business paypal account and stay tuned for some new training material for bookkeepers using MYOB to perform bank reconciliations using a Paypal account.

Posted on April 2, 2012 by Steve Slisar

Your domain, your email

We are constantly amazed at the number of businesses that are enrolling their staff into our online MYOB training course that use a Yahoo or Hotmail email address.

From my experience in the last 15 years domain names have come down from $135 per annum when I used to buy them from Melbourne IT to just $25 per year from companies like NetRegistry. Hosting can also be very inexpensive for micro and small businesses.

When you enrol into the WordPress online training course you can:

Choose the micro business hosting option (through 123ezy) for only $100 pa and that enables you to setup your own email addresses as well as a WordPress website. Plus,
They’ll install the WordPress software and
We’ll provide you with a premium WordPress theme for no extra price!

Oh, and when you use WordPress you can have a mobile phone ready website in less time than you think by using a free plugin. This means that your website will look professional even on the small screens of iPhone, Android and other Smart Phones.

All you have to do is add the words and pictures and you can have your own professional website (and blogging system) and professional email address.

If you are interested in enrolling into our online WordPress training course with LIFETIME student access feel free to enrol here.

PS: You might be interested to know that the blog post you are reading is created using WordPress and distributed using Google’s Feedburner and we demonstrate how to do all of that in the course.

Posted on March 29, 2012April 18, 2018 by Steve Slisar — 1 Comment

Did you know that WordPress is free Website Building software?

Many people think that creating a website is complicated and expensive but it’s not and here’s why. WordPress is an open source program which means that anyone is free to download and use the software (for building websites).

The only complicated parts of using WordPress to create your own professional website is installing it on your hosting and using the right combination of words and images to encourage people to call you, complete a form or order from you. Even getting a professional new logo for your business is now cheap and fast using crowdsourcing.

Our online training website where we deliver one of Australia’s most popular MYOB Online Training Courses is built using WordPress and we have a WordPress course that teaches you how to use the software.

The other piece of great news for small businesses that want a website is that you can choose from thousands of professionally designed “themes” that cost from zero, free and zilch to a modest amount like $50-$200.

For tricky parts including buying a domain name (use companies like NetRegistry or MelbourneIT) where you can buy a domain name for less than $20 pear year and hosting you can find from thousands of large and small providers.

NEW: We use and recommend Rose Hosting and SiteGround

The hardest job when you have a company website is that you should be adding to, editing and improving your website every week by creating new and relevant content that Google Search Engines collect and then share freely with people who are looking for you. That’s called Content Marketing!

Posted on March 23, 2012March 23, 2012 by Steve Slisar — 2 Comments

Can you really setup a VoIP phone system in 5 minutes?

Sometimes we use this blog to let you know about other projects we are working on and companies that we partner with. Today we share some information about VIRION and their great new phone system for small businesses.

Our online training courses are a form of “cloud” based service. For example, you can access the MYOB training courses from anywhere in the world using just a username and password. It’s the same for small business phone systems using VoIP technology. You can purchase a small business telephone system for under a thousand dollars, plug it into your broadband internet, configure it in 5 minutes and start making and receiving calls from anywhere.

Best of all you can:

Take your phone number with you when you move
Port your Telstra number across and save a lot of money
Get professional features like voicemail to email and much more.
Save hundreds of dollars per month in call charges

We’re now using virion business grade VoIP and we’re also creating some training videos for them to educate their dealer network. Take a look at a quick and simple training video we created.

Posted on March 21, 2012March 21, 2012 by Steve Slisar

Send debt collection letters using Microsoft Word from within MYOB

Are you using the Microsoft Word templates that come with MYOB? They are a great way to combine the data in your MYOB accounting software with the layout power of Microsoft Word. It’s also a great way of avoiding the emotions involved in chasing money, particularly if it is long overdue. Using Word Templates with MYOB enable you to maintain a professional, well planned approach to your finances.

This blog post contains a new video that will form part of our MYOB online training course. This course delves into the deeper parts of MYOB using some fancy and very handy features of the software. If you are receiving this blog post via email, make sure to click on the heading to get to our blog site to access the free video.

We won’t go into too much description here as the video speaks for itself, but we want to let you know that this new suite of videos will be available for existing students for no extra charge as part of our LIFETIME online training course access feature we announced in January 2011. If you want to receive our blog posts via email, just subscribe at our blog site.

Enjoy..

Posted on March 21, 2012March 20, 2012 by Steve Slisar

Do you have to compete against workers from Bangladesh and The Philippines?

High Speed Internet, Software as a service, Crowd-sourcing websites, cloud-based services. They are all making it easier for small business owners to hire workers from anywhere in the world for rates that are much lower than Australia’s minimum wage.

I have written several blog posts about these new and exciting developments because they finally give small business owners the ability to hire like many large Australian companies. Finally, your local small business can have a professional logo or website without having to pay thousands of dollars. This might not be a good thing for Australian workers though…

I was interested to read an article about the PURGING of the professions in the Sydney Morning Herald because it highlights the huge issues that might face our workforce in the decades to come. There is one thing that does stand out in all this glum scenario and that is the value of Australian Qualifications, the ability to speak English (with an Australian accent) and the value of Continued Professional Development (CPD) to be current in your knowledge.

Most importantly it is important for Australian workers to be as aware as possible about software that can greatly improve their “productivity” so you can get more done in less time.

If you are not subscribed to this blog you can do so at this link. We have some exciting new announcements and new content for both Advanced Excel and some extra features using the latest version of MYOB AccountRight Plus so stay tuned.

Posted on March 20, 2012July 16, 2012 by Steve Slisar — 19 Comments

Why is Continuing Professional Development (CPD) important?

Twenty years ago you could safely complete a degree knowing that your qualifications will fuel your wages (that in turn fuel your lifestyle and desires) for the rest of your life. This is no longer the case. Changes in technology are partly to blame but so too are changes in legislation and workplace practices.

If you are an accountant, working in the finance or medical professions you would know about CPD (also called Continuing Professional Education – CPE). It’s a system of providing education for professionals to keep them up to date with what is going on in their professional and this is particularly important if your profession involves advising your clients.

CPD usually involves training seminars, short courses, watching online webinars and completing assessment tasks and each one of the tasks you complete give you a certain number of points towards your total yearly point requirement. Keeping track of your attendance or the results of an exam you did at the end of completing a short course are some ways of keeping track of these points.

Why do we mention it? Because it going to become VERY important if you want to be a professional bookkeeper.

If you have completed (or plan to complete) an EzyLearn online MYOB Bookkeeping training course you will be reassured by the fact that we are currently working on tools and assessment tasks to providing you with a solution for affordable Continuing Professional Development.

You’ll also be thrilled to hear that as an accredited training provider of the Institute of Certified Bookkeepers our CPD program will provide you with points towards their CPD program.

Posted on March 16, 2012March 13, 2012 by Steve Slisar

New Training Material: Advanced Microsoft Excel 2010 videos

Sometimes we use the EzyLearn blog to provide some free tips from new training material that we create, like manipulating Pivot Tables we mentioned earlier in the week. Today we are announcing that 14 new training videos are now available for our advanced Microsoft Excel course (number 308).

This is the list of videos that are now available:

Video for 3.1.1 – Using AutoFilter

Video for 4.1.1 part 1 – Cleaning up data using AutoFilter

Video for 4.1.1 part 2 – Cleaning up data using AutoFilter

Video for 5.1.1 – Perform an Advanced Filter

Video for 5.1.2 – Advanced Filter using Wildcards (search text within cells)

Video for 5.1.3 – Advanced Filter for multiple search criteria

Video for 5.1.3 – Narrowing search results using Advanced Filter

Video for 6.1.1 – Inserting a Pivot Table

Video for 6.1.2 – Filtering data in a Pivot table

Video for 6.1.3 – Sort dates by month in a pivot table

Video for 6.1.5 – Changing the value field settings in a pivot table

Video for 7 – Creating pivot table charts

Video for 8.1.1 – Get months values using the Choose function

Video for 8.1.2 – Show grades for student results data using CHOOSE function

Our new video references match the many exercise tasks you can complete to master the skills taught in the videos. Everything you watch in the videos you can re-produce using the exercise files that come with the course. The training workbooks contain step by step instructions so you can print them out and practice where-ever you are.

If you are an existing EzyLearn student with LIFETIME access you’ll have access to these new videos and all new content that we create. Stay tuned for more updates soon as we create new videos for the other advanced Excel topics covered in courses 308 and 309. Plus we’ll show you how to create your own macros.

If you like what you read and want to enrol to take advantage of lifetime student access as well as access to all levels of Microsoft Excel for just one price, use our enrolment form. Enrol into the Excel course today and start by 5pm tomorrow (next business day).

Posted on March 15, 2012March 13, 2012 by Steve Slisar — 1 Comment

Live Excel Pivot-Table Stats: self-paced learning versus class-based training

Want to see some live data from when we operated our Sydney-based training centre? We conducted courses for Absolute Beginners (we call it Computer Learners now), Microsoft Word and Excel, MYOB Accounting software for bookkeeping and others. We also offered different start times and different methods of delivery including self-paced (which has evolved into online) as well as class-based training courses.

The data in this free Microsoft Excel training video is taken from our student enrolment database the same year we created our first training videos. We created these videos to make them available to students who couldn’t fit into a schedule or wanted a more personalised training experience. Want to learn more about my fond journey in computer training? Feel free to also subscribe to my small business blog while you are at that site.

If you are reading this as an email, click on the heading to get to our blog site and enjoy the free training video about Pivot Tables using Microsoft Excel (the exercise file is provided in our Excel Training Course) and shows live data of enrolments for that year. We used a pivot table to find out:

The popular courses,
The popular training methods
The popular start times for courses.

Can you see in the video which year the data is from? Back then we had experienced trainer like Maria Landrelli and Marie Diblasio to deliver our popular MYOB Day-to-Day courses to find work as a bookkeeper.

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Posted on March 15, 2012May 17, 2019 by Steve Slisar — 1 Comment

Do you need more customers, more people, or more time?

I was going through our EzyLearn blog library of articles today. In doing so, I was reminded that we started blogging back in 2007.

This was one year after we closed our three Sydney-based computer training centres to focus solely on online training courses.

After reading some of the old posts, I again realised just how much work is involved in maintaining a blog!

The Necessity of Blogging

When I analyse the workload of the EzyLearn team members and the hours we spend creating step-by-step training workbooks, training videos, knowledge reviews and assessment tasks, I realise that it is all very necessary.

Back in 2007, blogging wasn’t new. In fact, many people had heard of it but most small businesses (or large ones) weren’t really doing it much.

We at EzyLearn wrote a workbook to teach people how to use WordPress and it highlights one of the most important parts of being a training organisation. This being, to study what is new and understand how it will affect businesses and employees that use technology into the future.

This blog you are reading right now is read by a lot of other people and it highlights:

Our commitment to keeping you informed
The range of skills our team has
The number of customers who come to us as a result of reading this blog

Why Blog?

Why am I talking about this? One of our most popular online courses is the MYOB Bookkeeping Course and a lot of people who complete this course want to start their own business.

These same people are keen to build their customer base enabling them to work their own hours, use their brains and earn a good living.

Having a website with built-in blogging functionality based on the WordPress Content Management System is a fantastic way to tell people what you know and drum up new customers. It enables you to keep in contact with people, keep giving them information with no strings attached, and remain top of mind.

Blogging and “content marketing” just takes a bit of time to learn and then keep up to date, but you’ll end up with more customers and won’t have to pay for Google Adwords! 🙂

Posted on March 14, 2012March 13, 2012 by Steve Slisar — 1 Comment

New Macros in Excel Course to handle prepayments

We are please to announce that our most advanced Microsoft Excel course (course 309) now includes a training exercise on Macros!

You may recall we asked the question as to whether it is better to give a discount and accept prepayments or to charge your normal price and chase invoices and statements? Well, we got our Microsoft Excel expert to create a simple table that enables us to keep track of prepayments as well as incremental reductions from this prepayment.

This file is a great tool to keep track of how much credit a customer has if you decide to invoice them in advance. There is a way of accepting prepayments in MYOB and our MYOB expert and resident BAS Agent is currently putting a guide together on how to handle prepayments using MYOB. Using Excel can be a handy replacement for using MYOB in this one aspect of your business.

Best of all, Karen created a short guide that we have added to the 309 course training manual which explains how to replicate what she created. Both the Workbook and the demonstration file that Karen created are now at the learning site.