It’s annual report time again and Xero just released their annual results. I always find their annual presentation fascinating because they reveal a lot of visual information about the small business market that they sell to.
Small businesses that employ 1-20 staff are the majority of their users so learning how to use Xero means that these companies will be your employers.
Are you finding work quiet this time of year? We’ve just been handed down our budget and emails are starting to fly around showing what it means to us.
Its the time of year where we find out how well we’ve done financially. It’s the time of year where workers will see how much they can borrow to buy property in the 2025 financial year and where they need to cut back.
Most of this financial information will be worked out using Microsoft Excel.
Most people like to watch some videos about how to use Xero or Excel and then try to replicated it. This works well when exercise files are provided to help you practice. This is particularly important when you get into the Intermediate Excel training where you learn skills like formatting and formulas.
When learning bookkeeping using a program like Xero it’s important to follow along using case studies. Case studies provide a learning journey to help you understand not only how to use Xero but why certain tasks are done.
Our Complete Xero Course includes all learning resources and support but not everyone can afford them (even though they are competitively priced for what you get).
Tradies are the critical workers in the Australian property market. They’re responsible for new home builds as well as renovations and extensions. Since Covid they have been in hot demand and one builder I spoke to said he use to advertise and not even get one response since Covid.
They also run some of the most complex businesses and need the help of bookkeeping software like MYOB and Xero, particularly where it relates to Project or Job Tracking.
In the 2024 Australian Federal Budget they got some good news.
Things are moving fast in the software industry as Intuit (QuickBooks), MYOB and Xero compete with each other with regular software updates. It has become so fierce that many students are enrolling into our Bookkeeping Academy Combination courses.
The key frontiers are still
automated data entry from bank feeds,
capturing receipts and extracting data,
faster reconciliation and
automatic calculations of taxes owed.
These are some of the features promoted by NAB Bookkeeper for NAB Business banking customers but what is MYOB’s huge announcement?
We’ve just updated our Job Outcomes page to showcase some of the jobs that EzyLearn students apply for. Most of our graduates are looking for Office Admin or Business Admin jobs but others want to start their own business.
There is a huge responsibility in being a receptionist because in many ways you need to know a lot about various parts of the business and the right employees to refer callers to. Imagine you have just started a receptionist job and you can people calling all day long about accounts, sales, technical issues and how their project is progressing!
The most common jobs for office admin and office support require confident knowledge of Microsoft Office and MYOB or Xero for bookkeeping tasks.
The office admin role is the person that connects most of the other business roles, including
customer service,
sales and
accounts.
This means you’ll be speaking to existing clients about the administration tasks involved in their purchase, while also coordinating with other employee of the business to help complete the services.
In the building and trades industry you’ll be helping with paperwork relating to their building project.
Office admin jobs require good communications skills because you may not know the answer to all your clients questions but you are the first person they speak with. You’ll need to correspond with other parts of the business to ensure that the client has the information they need.
This can include scheduling meetings, allocating meeting rooms and reminding clients and technicians about appointments, most of which is done using Microsoft Outlook.
This role can get even trickier when you are also the person following up for payment! You may need to be nice and friendly to maintain a good client relationship while also being stern and enforcing the business credit management policies.
If your employer supplies complex solutions which involve project management and many different milestones one of your first tasks will be to collect information about the customer needs from the sales person and provide them with a quote or tender that is created by an experienced estimator.
Your role might be to convert complex information into a glossy brochure or proposal that makes it easier for the client to understand.
If you are preparing this information for a sales person to present you may also need to condense it into a slideshow presentation using Microsoft PowerPoint.
Difference between Office Admin and Business Admin
If you want to climb up the ladder where you work or find a higher paying office admin job you should explore some of the requirements for business administration jobs. This previous blog posts explores actual job ads and requirements for staff.
The one thing I’ve found fascinating in accounting and bookkeeping is watching technology companies try to win clients. I’m not just talking about the special offers, features and pricing but how they use technology to make bookkeeping seamless – to replace some of the bookkeeping tasks!
The most recent event I’ve witnessed is NAB bookkeeper service that has a six month free trial and is $20 per month thereafter.
When you read the fine print it is revealed that Thriday is the technology behind NAB bookkeeper. After a bit more research I discovered that they want to capture a massive part of the micro and small business market by reducing the business administration tasks.
I’ve written in the past about how NAB use Slyp for for smart repeats and this is another example of a technology investment aimed at helping small business owners replace the cost of accounting software and even having to have a bookkeeper.
Friday is a service that uses technology to combine data entry from transactions with your actual bank account. One of the biggest challenges for small businesses it’s all the data entry involved to reconcile their accounting software like MYOB and Xero to the actual bank statement.
We are a long way from the majority of businesses using Thriday, Hnry and services like Slyp but with their laser focus to help to eliminate the data entry and time wasting admin tasks and inaccuracies it is good to be aware of these companies and their technology.
Perhaps in the future bookkeepers will have to focus on customer service, sales and more of office administration type tasks as well as simply reviewing the data and financial reports and information that are created automatically by services like NAB Bookkeeper.
Is this how artificial intelligence will replace manual labour by Australian bookkeepers
I want to thank the following students for choosing EzyLearn and graduating from their Office Admin and Bookkeeping short courses.
At this point we don’t speak with some students again because they have the new skills they want and they use them to find work or do better in their jobs. That is a sad part of the training business for me.
Some students take advantage of our Career Academy services and stay around to get exposure to employers and other students.
There are many finance professionals — who does your business need?
Does your business need a bookkeeper, accountant or perhaps just a BAS agent – or a little bit of everyone?
WE’VE MENTIONED PREVIOUSLY THAT finding a bookkeeper, when you may not know much about bookkeeping, can be a difficult task.
In fact, a lot of new business owners assume their accountant will take care of everything for them, which may be costly if their accountant has to perform a year’s worth of bookkeeping in order to file the business’s tax return. But bookkeepers and accountants can work harmoniously in your business.
As a general rule, every business needs at least two finance professionals working on their business accounts, but which two professionals you’ll need to hire depends on your business needs. If you’re not sure who you need to hire for your business, here’s a cheat sheet to help you out.
Bookkeepers (not registered with the TPB)
An independent bookkeeper not employed by an accountant and not registered with the Tax Practitioner’s Board (TPB) may only perform basic bookkeeping services, such as the
entering of receipts,
coding financial transactions,
generating invoices and purchase orders
accounts receivable and accounts payable
If you hire this type of bookkeeper, you’ll still need an accountant.
BAS agents
BAS agents must, by law, register with the Tax Practitioner’s Board (TPB), which certifies that they are qualified and have completed the necessary continuing education requirements to perform the tasks of a BAS agent, which involves carrying out most of the bookkeeping tasks mentioned above, in addition to preparing and lodging business activity statements on a business’s behalf.
If your business is registered for GST, you will need to file regular activity statements. If you hire a BAS agent, you’ll also need an accountant. In some instances, you may find a BAS agent who’s also a registered tax agent and vice versa, who may be able to take care of all your taxation needs.
Tax agents
Although tax agents, like BAS agents, must also register with the Tax Practitioner’s Board (TPB), a tax agent is focused on income tax — how much income you have to declare, how much you can claim back, etc.
This is distinct from a BAS agent who is concerned with the day-to-day financial tasks of your business (bookkeeping and BAS lodgements). That said, some tax agents will also perform some the basic bookkeeping tasks on a regular basis, though they primarily specialise in lodging tax returns.
If you’re not registered for GST, and your tax agent will also perform regular bookkeeping tasks (or you can do it yourself), you may not need to hire an accountant. In some instances, you may find a tax agent who’s also a registered BAS agent and vice versa, who may be able to take care of all your taxation needs.
Accountants
An accountant is mostly concerned with planning and strategy. Unlike bookkeepers and BAS or tax agents, an accountant will assess and advise you on what actions you should take to maximise your income. Great accountants will get involved with planning the direction of your business and ensure it’s been structured properly and that you’re meeting any additional tax obligations.
They’ll also help you to make strategic purchases for equipment and machinery, and work with your BAS agent or bookkeeper to ensure these decisions are reflected in your daily financial records. An accountant is also able to prepare and lodge tax returns on your behalf.
How much should I pay a bookkeeper?
Check out the National Bookkeeping Directory, which features the details of bookkeepers, capable of doing data entry and clerical tasks, through to high-level accounting work as undertaken by BAS agents, accountants and CFOs.
You can also see the National Bookkeeping rates page to find out what level bookkeeper your business needs.
Employers like small business owners are looking for staff online using Google. From office admin and business administration tasks to bookkeeping and customer service and sales, employers need staff to keep their businesses running.
The only way you are going to get discovered is if you have an online profile that CAN GET DISCOVERED and that is what membership to the Bookkeeping Academy does for you.
The biggest difference between applying for jobs and having employers contact you is that rather than go through the job application elimination process you’ll need to know what to say to employers when they call.
Questions to ask employers and clients
You can’t just say “I need more money, can I have the job”. You need to be able to identify:
what work they need you to do,
how they want you to work
the working hours and pay
One of the hardest things you’ll need to learn is how to say, “Sorry I don’t think I can help you!”
In bookkeeping work alone there are so many different types of work that you need to clarify what clients want.
The easiest way for you to get into bookkeeping if you are new to it is through data entry of invoices and purchase orders.
The features that each of these companies provide is invaluable for businesses. We can’t do without most of them in some way and when they started you, like me, probably turned on all the features and opted into their “labs” to test out new features. Then things changed.
These companies are now mature and they command respect as market leaders. Their financials are also very healthy because they’ve managed to monopolise some aspect of their market. These are some of the things that has happened to me over the years, has this happened to you?
All the marketing messages I hear is how much better Xero is than MYOB but that isn’t always the case.
MYOB and QuickBooks both had more in-build inventory features than Xero but Xero has always promoted their integrations to fill gaps in their core software. I wrote about this several times:
I’m a Google fan, from the simplicity of using most of their software programs to their low cost services I’ve always loved how they compare to Microsoft who charge a licence fee for their software.
But once upon a time I was a Microsoft fan because of the low cost model they had compared to Apple.
I’m watching this Artificial Intelligence race with interest (everyone on Linkedin is commenting about it) but I noticed something recently that shocked me.
Are you earning $50 per hour at the moment? If you aren’t it can seem almost impossible to believe that you could, particularly when you look at your boss and imagine yourself asking them for a pay rise.
I searched online to see who earns $50 per hour and most of the search results in Seek and Indeed showed up saying you have to be a doctor, pharmacist or HR Manager but bookkeepers earning this much regularly.
not having to dress up nicely every day to see your work colleagues
It’s easy to see the benefits for you, but what about your boss? What do they want? If you’re going to work from home you need to start thinking and acting like a boss.
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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…
