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MYOB AccountRight Live Looks like MYOB-of-old + Dropbox

MYOB AccountRight Live OR in the Cloud?

MYOB AccountRight Live Basics - is it really cloud-based accounting software or MYOB and Dropbox 2
This is where you can see the myMYOB login and the Live wording in the cloud

We were asked by one of our MYOB course students recently how you can manage user access to your MYOB accounting file and we did some looking around, spoke to our MYOB course creator and came up with the following useful information.

MYOB AccountRight Live Basics - is it really cloud-based accounting software or MYOB and Dropbox 5 - manage admin and users
Click on Image to Enlarge – How MYOB AccountRight Live enables you to manage users

You can go to the MYOB website and click on my.MYOB to get to the details of your “participation” with MYOB AccountRight –

[quote]sorry, NERD ALERT! I happened to be reading the MYOB Terms of Service and “Participate” is the term that the MYOB legal team use to describe how companies use the MYOB AccountRight service -[/quote]

which enables you to choose your administrators as well as who you want to be able to access your file (like your bookkeeper or accountant). But you can also manage users from within the software. Note the out of place word here? – Software – Yes, when you launch the software and Open your Online data file, you can setup users and be much more prescriptive as to what they can access or not, but also which areas they have read only access as opposed to full access (read and write).

MYOB AccountRight User Access Managed in the Software

MYOB AccountRight Live Basics - Modifying User Access 2 - Role Based User Access
MYOB AccountRight Live Basics – Modifying User Access 2 – Role Based User Access

The silly part of this is we would expect cloud-based software to enable you to do everything in the cloud! If you look at the current MYOB model for their AccountRight Live product you still need to download the software to use it and you still need to update the company file if you update the software version!? We thought that this day had passed when the concept of cloud based accounting arrived.

Is it Designed to Help Current MYOB Users?

When I look at the way that MYOB AccountRight Live is managed at first it looks like it was built for people who are used to having a software program on their computer. Then when you see the capability to Open company data files that are stored “Online” you get the feeling that it would be just as easy to use Dropbox to store your datafile. The worst news comes when you expect the MYOB AccountRight Live software (that has a little cloud around the live) to work just like other cloud-based account programs like SAASU, QuickBooks Online and Xero you get dissappointed in having to install and use software on every computer you use – and I haven’t even tested to see if they have a program for the iPad.

MYOB AccountRight Live Basics - is it really cloud-based accounting software or MYOB and Dropbox 6 - company file needs upgrading
MYOB AccountRight Live Software – Company file still needs upgrading

If you are the kind of person that loves storing a local version of your datafile (and take the risks of protecting your own computer against, viruses, crashes or other corruption) this might seem like a good feature. I bet we see this product evolve until the point where it is finally an all online accounting solution.

How to change User Access Rights using MYOB Account Right Live

Although you can make some rudimentary changes via my.myob.com the best way to add users and make specific choices about what they can see as well as what they can edit and see, you need to launch the software (make sure you’ve downloaded it of course) and then go to Setup, User Access.

We used a current version of AccountRight Live Basics to perform our tests and any new content we create and publish for our MYOB Training Courses are available to existing students – whether you are on a 12 month course access program or LIFETIME course access. Feel free to enquire with us if you have any questions about our online MYOB Training Courses, or enrol today, start by 5pm tomorrow and be comforted by a 30 day money back guarantee.

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The Power of the Homegrown Australian Business

When ‘Aussie’ is a gold winner

Reach Accounting free course from EzyLearnIN ADDITION TO OUR MYOB and Xero online training courses, we also offer an online training course in Reach Accounting, the cloud-accounting software by Aussie-owned company, Net Registry.

Not many people are aware of this, and I’ve been quite remiss when it comes to talking about it on this blog. In fact, I’ve spent more time talking about Zoho and QuickBooks recently, than I have spent time talking about Reach.

This is partly because I’ve been quite interested to see how QuickBooks has been resurrected by it’s American-owned parent company, Intuit, as it attempts to take on Xero and MYOB in the Australian marketplace again.

Zoho is both comprehensive and cheap

My interest in Zoho, meanwhile, stems from one of my contractors, who uses Zoho Books to manage her business accounts; she was telling me about Zoho’s many features, and I surprised to learn just how comprehensive the Zoho Books software is for such a low price.

Zoho and QuickBooks are both positioning themselves as low-cost accounting packages to appeal to the substantial small business market in Australia, but there’s just one thing they can’t compete with Reach Accounting on, and that’s ‘Australianness’.

Reach Accounting is an Australian owned and operated business, and as the owner of an Australian owned and operated business, I like to support other Australians in their business ventures. Reach Accounting focus their accounting software towards people who start a business as a website designer.

Why it’s harder for Aussie businesses to compete

I’m always saddened when I hear of Australian businesses being sold to overseas conglomerates, which take the Aussie jobs back overseas with them, where the wages and materials are cheaper. It makes it all the more difficult to compete for customers in the Australian marketplace when your once-Australian competitor is now producing products or services at a much lower price at their offshore headquarters.

It’s also difficult to compete with the increasing number of overseas-owned businesses entering the fray, now that the Internet has unlocked a global marketplace. What many Australian businesses don’t realise, however, is that they possess a power those overseas businesses don’t: they speak Aussie.

Whether you’re a home-based bookkeeper or virtual assistant, one of your greatest assets is that you’re an Australian and that means you have a deep understanding of what it means to be Australian – from the accent to the vernacular, you get it.

The power of ‘G’day’

It’s also a lot easier to call an Australian company than it is to call an overseas one. My Zoho Books-using contractor was telling me of a complex situation she was experiencing with her account. Unfortunately, the nearest customer service office she could call was located in China, so she had to email.

Several confused emails later, she finally realised what had happened with her account, and managed to resolve the issue herself. She later told me: “It’s a good thing I studied semiotics at university, because deciphering those emails was like trying to interpret hieroglyphics.”

I suddenly thought about Reach Accounting, which is based in the Inner Sydney suburb of Ultimo. For the same price as Zoho Books – possibly even cheaper now, thanks to the fluctuating Aussie dollar – it would have been much easier to say “G’day” to one of the guys at Reach than it was to email China or India or Japan or wherever in the world Zoho’s customer service offices are based.

Don’t be afraid to say “G’day”

As an Australian business, don’t hide your Australianness from view. Wear it proudly, because it makes a big difference to customers trying to decide between your company and the multinational after their business.

For more information on any of our cloud-accounting courses, visit our website.

Become a Virtual Assistant and Start a Business

start a bookkeeping business
Business Opportunities for Ordinary People

While we are on the topic I want to mention our StartUp Academy because we are planning some fantastic ways of helping ordinary people start a business in 2015.

We’re using a combination of our Small Business Management Course and business opportunities from established companies who want to find people who can work from home and sell and support their products.

We’re also using our Small Business Management course to help our existing students start businesses using the skills they learn in their EzyLearn course – namely MYOB and WordPress. If you’re interested in starting a bookkeeping business read on about National Bookkeeping.

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Rapid Induct Staff and Contractors or Your Arse Can be on the Line

Online Induction Training for Your Company

online contractor inductions are important for safety training whs complianceTraining is something that I have been involved with since the mid 1990’s – sure, I don’t look that old, but it’s true – and we’ve used all sorts of tools to create our training courses, including:

  • Creating educational videos using Camtasia,
  • Creating some courses using PowerPoint presentations
  • Hosting the videos online using Wistia,
  • Writing training workbooks using Microsoft Word
  • Creating our website(s) using WordPress
  • Promoting our courses using Google
  • Deliver and managing the online training courses and students using Moodle

I spent a lot of time recently speaking with councils, city building managers, schools, aged care facilities and hospitals and have noticed a massive demand for inductions. These organisations want to rapidly induct their staff but more importantly their contractors about how things operate at their facilities. If you read my previous post about rapid induction you’ll know what I mean.

Staff Inductions

We use our own internal inductions to get new staff members up to speed quickly in how our business works, what we expect from them in customer service and most importantly how we offer, sell and support our online training courses so it makes sense to have a training program for existing staff. The most apparent need however is for contractors who come and work at your site and may never have been their before – for these contractors the biggest reason for having a contractor induction is to educate the contractors of any know risks at the site – like asbestos.

Contractor Inductions

EzyLearn free Powerpoint training course videos at Youtube for contractor inductionsContractors who come to sites like hospitals, councils, schools, aged care facilities, city buildings perform their work on complex equipment that could affect the safety of other people in the building. They need to be qualified to do the work they do and they need to have insurances to cover any potential incidents or accidents and WorkCover for their people. These aspects of a contractors work is often referred to as Contractor Management and when this term is used there is often confusion as to whether you are talking about the company or individual people who work for the company.

Many sites have a manual contractor management system which means they dedicate a certain time each week or month to go through files within folders for each supplier to make sure all of their contractors “credentials are up to date” – can you imagine doing this all of the time?! We have a system that automates this process by reminding them of when their credentials are due to expire and need updating, but I digress.

Create Your Own Contractor Inductions using PowerPoint

Startup Academy Create Online Induction Training CoursesContractor inductions are so popular these days because they are a sure fire way for site managers to demonstrate that they have informed the contractors about any potential risks at their sites – and that can save their bacon! Did you know that someone referred to as a PCBU (in WH&S law Person Conducting a Business or Undertaking), is personally responsible and liable if they neglect in their duty of care for safety at their site!

That is why it is important for everyone to have a contractor induction course. It’s also great that these courses can be initally created using software found in almost every office – PowerPoint. It’s up to you then how you want your induction to look to students, plain and simple slides or audio visual presentations.

[quote]Make sure you contact us to see how quick and easy it is to create your own contractor induction training courses and manage your own enrolments.[/quote]

Start Your Own Business Creating Online Induction Courses

If you like the thought of getting to know how to do this you should come and check out our Online Induction Business Opportunities page at the Startup Academy. My team will show you how to complete the whole process of creating a training course, starting with the creation of a simple powerpoint presentation. At the end you’ll have an online training course with test and completion certificates – just what every site needs for their contractor inductions.

Then if you want to build a business based on your new found skills you can work with us to find new clients and start living the dream of working from home helping local business with their safety training. Click on the StartUp Academy image and follow the links and you can even complete the first stage of the course for free.

 

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Why Telstra’s Wi-Fi Hotspots Are Good For Business

Telstra likes the Internet

Telstra and wifi in phone boothsIf you’re like me, then the only reason you still have an account with Telstra is because you need the phone line for your broadband Internet connection. I replaced my Telstra ‘wired line’ with a VoIP service years ago, which I still use to this day as my business phone, though my mobile picks up most of the slack being that I’m often out and about.

For years, I’ve wondered about the future of Telstra. As more companies entered the telco space and then the ISP space, Telstra seemed to becoming less and less relevant. Funnily enough, just the other day someone asked me if I knew where the nearest payphone was and, for the life of me, I couldn’t think of one. It turned out, there was one just a few metres away.

Telstra offers Wi-Fi hotspots to 7.5 million smartphone users

It seems that perhaps Telstra had been thinking the same thing, because this week they’ve launched free Wi-Fi hotspots in payphones right across Australia. I thought this was a pretty genius move, given some 11.9 million Australians own smartphones and, of those, 7.5 million are accessing the Internet from them. Now there’s a reason for people to head to those little orange and blue phoneboxes again – only now they’re kitted out with a pink cube on top and a white Wi-Fi logo.

Of course, there’s a catch: the Wi-Fi isn’t really free. If you’re a Telstra home broadband customer, then any ‘free’ Wi-Fi you use at a Telstra hotspot counts towards your overall monthly broadband allowance, while non-Telstra customers will have to pay for a guest pass to access the network. Telstra will still make money, just as they did through their payphones until everyone started using mobile phones.

Telstra’s marvelous act of reinvention

Catches aside, though, using phoneboxes to offer Wi-Fi is a marvelous act of reinvention. Developing new concepts – or putting a twist on an old concept, at least – is something we cover in our Small Business Management Course, because it’s something every business owner will need to consider at some point during the life of their business.

Indeed, EzyLearn might not be offering training courses at all if I hadn’t done a similar thing a few years ago when I realised face-to-face learning was becoming a thing of the past. When we eventually closed out training centres that could have been the end of my business had I not made the decision to move our content online.

Every business should pull a Telstra

Keeping up with trends and making changes to your business model is what makes a business successful and gives it longevity. Though it doesn’t necessarily have to be something as radical as Telstra’s free Wi-Fi approach. It could be something simpler, like streamlining your business processes and taking advantage of cloud apps, as Rohan Calvert from Men in White has, for example.

Even though I probably wouldn’t use Telstra’s Wi-Fi unless I was in a real bind – perhaps when I’m on holidays and in need of an Internet connection, but I don’t want to use too much of mobile data allowance – I do think it’s a great idea. What do you think?

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Smart TV Guy Has Feet Planted Firmly In Cloud Accounting

Smart TV Installation & Cloud Accounting Guy

As smart devices and cloud-based apps have become more popular, I’ve started to see more and more tradies using their iPhones and iPads to handle their paperwork, a task traditionally left to the wee hours of the evening – or to their wives and partners!

Now, with cloud-based accounting software like Xero and a number of other great mobile apps, tradies can quote, invoice, and even take payments for work right from their smart phones and tablet devices.

Streamlined business processes with cloud accounting

I met Ken Burrows from Love My Home Theatre, a home theatre installation, TV installation and plasma wall mounting business based in Sydney recently, when he was installing a new home theatre system for some friends, and I was taken with how streamlined his entire business processes were.

Everything – from the quote through to payment – is performed entirely online, using a couple of different apps, including Xero which is used to maintain the business’s accounts. In the video you can Watch Ken talk about how he uses cloud-based apps in his business to streamline his business processes, and make him more efficient and I think it helps 1 business owner do the work of more than 1 person – perhaps he can use more people in marketing..

EzyLearn offers a number of cloud accounting training courses, including our flagship MYOB training course, as well as training courses in Xero and Reach Accounting.

Share your cloud accounting story

start a bookkeeping business
Business Opportunities for Ordinary People

We’ll soon be running meetups for our startup academy in these locations.

  • Brookvale
  • Hornsby
  • Epping
  • Chatswood
  • Parramatta
  • Blacktown
  • Penrith
  • Bankstown
  • Liverpool
  • Campbelltown
  • Sutherland
  • Hurstville
  • Randwick

If you want to come along and share your story or learn more about the StartUp Opportunities for ordinary people, make sure you subscribe to this blog to keep up-to-date.

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Xero: The Tradies Choice for Accounting Software

Xero and tradies

Rohan the painter tradie uses xeroI once wrote a post about Xero and whether it had the potential to strip MYOB of its crown as the market leader in accounting software, and I’m starting to think that maybe it will.

I spoke with a couple of tradies recently, and they’re both using Xero rather than MYOB because of its functionality and the way it ties in nicely with other cloud-based apps, allowing them to spend less time in the office and more time on the road.

EzyLearn added Xero training courses to our already existing suite of MYOB training courses a little while back after it became clear that it was a major player in the cloud-accounting space. When Xero first hit the market, though, many people thought it was unlikely to have any major impact on MYOB’s marketshare (just as QuickBooks had failed to in the past), given MYOB’s long-standing relationship with accountants.

Xero perfect for tradies on the go

What most people overlooked, though, was that Xero was undeniably easy to use. Coupled with its flexible delivery – it was one of the first cloud-based accounting programs supported with mobile apps – it became an appealing option for many small business owners who previously found MYOB too difficult or time-consuming for day-to-day use.

Rohan Calvert, the director of Men in White, a Sydney-based painting company, is one those small business owners. He had been using MYOB to manage his business’s accounts for ten years, but decided it was time he moved his accounts into the cloud. After initially looking to upgrade to MYOB Account Right Live, Rohan opted to make the switch to Xero, instead.

Xero interview with a painter

Here’s what he had to say about Xero in the cloud:

EzyLearn: What features of Xero do you find most useful for your business?

Rohan: For me, the best thing about Xero is that there is a direct bank feed, so my [Xero] dashboard will show my bank balance alongside the balance in Xero, which makes reconciling [his accounts] very easy. I don’t use the mobile app very much – the functionality isn’t there for me yet. Instead I use the web version on my laptop. My office is basicallymy laptop – I have a laptop stand in the passenger seat of my car. With Xero, I can do payroll and issue invoices while I’m sitting in the parked car.

EzyLearn: How is Xero’s cloud-based software better for your business, compared to the older versions of MYOB you had used previously?

Rohan: I have a business coach in the US and we can look at my financials in real-time while we’re talking on Facetime. I have put a lot of work into simplifying and understanding my bookkeeping and with Xero my reports are accurate and tell me exactly how I’m going, and all in real-time. Previously, when I used MYOB, the financial reports were meaningless and my bookkeeper had to print them out and edit a spreadsheet, resulting in a lot of double handling.

EzyLearn: What do you like most about Xero?

Firstly, it is elegant and intuitive; secondly, it comes from New Zealand!

For more information on our Xero training courses, you can visit our website or, alternatively, click here to enrol online.

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Get Paid Faster Using Your Mobile Phone!

get paid faster using your mobile phone
You can use your mobile phone to get paid – great for tradespeople as well.

No doubt about it, one of the biggest hurdles you face as a small business owner is managing your cash flow. A big part of this is ensuring your clients and customers pay your invoices on time.

Setting up email alerts to remind customers when your invoices are due is a great way to ensure you’re never – or at least, rarely – paid late, which we’ve written about on this blog and even cover in our MYOB training courses. Continue reading Get Paid Faster Using Your Mobile Phone!

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Are Xero and MYOB going to get SMASHED by QuickBooks Online?

Is QuickBooks Online the White Elephant in the Room?

I recently wrote about QuickBooks, once the great competitor to MYOB accounting software, and I thought I would delve a little deeper to see what has happened with the company that use to be their Australian distributor, Reckon and how big they are in the US. I looks to me like we have a period of consolidation on our hands with some very big companies and many of them listed trying to earn the cloud accounting dollar.

We have online courses in MYOB and Xero and are exploring a QuickBooks Online training course.

What do you Reckon about Reckon?

Reckon 5 year Share Performance
Reckon 5 year Share Performance. Information from Commsec. Click to Enlarge

As a public company you can see Reckons financial results and industry commentary at the ASX website and in their latest financial announcements they confirmed that they had parted ways with Intuit as the Australian distributor earlier this year (saving them $2.5M in royalty costs).

Reckon is now a competitor to their previous partners, Intuit, and a participant in the online accounting and bookkeeping software market with their own software service called Reckon Hosted.

If I were Reckon the scariest thing for me would be that the brand that I helped to build over such a long period is now strongly competing directly against me in the local market. Let’s hope they built some good relationships with accountants who’ll continue to work with and recommend their new product lineup. Their share price seems to indicate that they are currently falling out of favour.

Xero vs QuickBooks Online

Xero Oct 31 2014 Share Performance. From Commsec. Click to Enlarge
Xero Oct 31 2014 Share Performance. From Commsec. Click to Enlarge

Xero is the nameplate for online accounting software because they pioneered accounting software that ONLY works in the cloud. A major shareholder in Xero is Craig Winkler, the man who successfully helped MYOB dominate the accounting marketing in the PC era and sold out to Archer Capital who then sold to another large US private equity company Bain Capital.

I wrote about Xero’s financial performance not long after they listed their XRO shares on the ASX (they are a New Zealand company) but their recent share price performance seems to indicate that they are not popular in Australia. The next frontier in online accounting and bookkeeping seems to be integrations and accounting suite tools for accountants. These integrations and add-ons are one way of making their software more important in the suite of programs that small businesses use and a good example is the recent announcement of Xero’s integration with Microsoft’s Office 365.

Visit Xero’s website and you’ll quickly be able to get to their Add-on Market Place.

MYOB vs QuickBooks Online

Bain Capital paid over 1 billions dollars for MYOB to include it in it’s bag of technology investments – see if you can spot MYOB! Although they are no longer an Australian public company they are listed on the ASX and Aussies can invest in the company that now offers a wider range of services that just accounting software. Their revenue has grown significantly in the 2014 financial year according to their announcement on 25th August 2014.

MYOB had many partners in their PC based software but went through a very tough period when accountants were refusing to recommend MYOB customer upgrade their software. MYOB had to re-write their software to cater for the cloud accounting market and some integrations just didn’t work as a result. It appears that the online version is still popular with MYOB Partners and you can learn more about MYOB Add-ons here.

MYOB is still the market leader for accounting software in Australia an although they appear to be a laggard in the online space they are agressively competing with Xero for new customer acquisitions. A recent article by Peter Dinham at IT Wire about Xero and MYOB customer numbers highlights how dirty the fight is getting and how important accountants are in the sale of accounting software. Peter talks about MYOB being the 800 pound gorilla but when you explore the global market for accounting software you cannot ignore Intuit.

QuickBooks Online and the Global Accounting Software Market

Go to Intuit.com and you’ll be presented with a message that says “we’ve gone global” and the option to go to your local country website site. Let’s face it, they’ve been global for a while but it’s apparent that their online marketing for Quickbooks Online is becoming stronger. I read a recent blog post from Sholto Macpherson’s popular Digital First website about the Top 5 Most Popular Features of QuickBooks Online and note that at the bottom of his post he disclosed that he travelled to QuickBooks Connect as a guest of Intuit. It’s a sign of the impending marketing blitz that a massive US company is capable of.

Visit Intuit’s investor relations website and you’ll see that the revenue for Intuit in 2013 was almost 4 times the total capital purchase price that Bain Capital paid for MYOB when they bought it. With that size, established software brand in Quickbooks and a network of Intuit Pro Advisers ready to help small businesses I think this is the space to watch for online accounting software.

Again, as a very established software publishing company Intuit have an impressive range of Add-ons to help improve the functionality of the software as small business look for ways of integrating the ever widening range of cloud-based software they use.

QuickBooks Pro Adviser Offer

Whilst writing this post I became aware of the big launch that Intuit are doing in Australia to strengthen their network of accountants and advisers. It’s started with a blubbery story about the great history of a 30 year old US company, but I found this video which shows what they are willing to do to help Australian Bookkeepers increase their knowledge, get new sales and better support their customers (Small Businesses).

Here it is..

Join our Bookkeeper Directory

Startup Academy - work from home as an independent contractorIf you are a MYOB bookkeeper and want us to help you get exposure and find new small business bookkeeping clients register with our partners at Workface as we build a national bookkeeping database to help you find new clients and help small businesses find honest, hardworking bookkeepers who operate their own home based bookkeeping business.

To be a bookkeeper in this cloud accounting era means that you can perform bookkeeping from your own home office if you do a great job and have a good reputation. Although you can perform this work from home its becoming more important to get that reputation and one of the tried and trusted ways is by meeting people face to face at networking events. When people get to know you and like you they’ll start recommending you to people who they know need a bookkeeper and that is when you’ll discover the power of referral marketing.

Registering for the bookkeeper directory is the first step in our plan to help people operate a business from home. If you want to read more about how we plan to help ordinary people start their own business as independent contractors visit the StartUp Academy website and learn more. You can subscribe for the free guide that I created to help people on that journey.

 

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Google Displays Mixed Messages about Quickbooks Online

Who is Behind QuickBooks Online?

Intuit QuickBooks Google Ad with free trial button
Intuit QuickBooks Google Ad with free trial button

It was once seen as the biggest competitor to MYOB in Australia when accounting software reduced in cost from several thousand dollars (for software like Attache) to several hundred dollars. It was the time when the PC was the craze and suddenly normal people could do their own bookkeeping – so they say. I’m talking of course about QuickBooks.

I was doing some Google searches this morning about QuickBooks Online because I was interested in seeing how Reckon and Intuit now differentiate themselves online and I discovered a couple interesting things. The most interesting to me is how many companies are now putting up a landing page that expects you to make a purchase or sign up right there and then.

Landing Pages

Intuit QuickBooks Google Ad with buy now button
Intuit QuickBooks Google Ad with buy now button

Here are the two landing pages that I discovered when searching for QuickBooks Online on Google. One offers a massive 40% off if you skip the trial and the other says the same message but the action button says “Start My Free Trial”. To me it seems like they are still perfecting their online strategy and are doing some beta testing on what potential customers will do.

What I find most interesting about the current QuickBooks strategy is the expectation that people will register or buy straight away! Perhaps they will when this ad comes up because they have actually searched specifically for “QuickBooks” rather than just online bookkeeping or accounting software, cloud accounting comparisons etc.

Marketing Your Business on Google

Pretty soon, we’ll feature our own bookkeeper directory so every piece of information like this we see we make a note of to see if it is something we can use ourselves.

This also demonstrates something we cover in our Small Business Management Course about testing and measuring – that you don’t always get your message across perfectly every time. The most important thing to do is to make a plan and get started. The best thing you can do is take action and start, then you can measure the results and fine tune, tweak or completely change your marketing strategy.

Share Your Opinion About QuickBooks

I was looking at some of the bookkeepers in our bookkeeper directory and noticed that a good number of bookkeepers still use QuickBooks and know about it. I’m interested in hearing your thoughts and opinions about it.

  • Do you use it?
  • Do you prefer it to MYOB or Xero?
  • Are there things that QuickBooks Online do better than MYOB or Xero?
  • Do you still work with Reckon (who use to distribute Intuit products in Australia) and their online accounting software?

If you have something to share simply send us an email to support @ ezylearn.com.au or post your comments on our Facebook page.

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How Do Business Recruit Staff?

LinkedIn, Job recruiters and the Internet

Hiring-Time-vs-Money-comparison infographic by recruitloop-small - shows Linkedin is far cheaper than the old job ad alternativesToward the end of 2012, LinkedIn, the social media platform for professionals, reported that their stock had jumped a massive 20 percent in just one day, taking their annual revenue to $860 million. The results were impressive. Forbes magazine was speculating that the company, which was first publically just two years earlier, could soon outpace the revenues of employment website giant, Monster.com. It even looked as though LinkedIn could achieve what other employment websites hadn’t: combining job ads with the art of recruitment.

The main driver of LinkedIn’s success – and indeed the company’s main focus – is its Talent Solutions service, which allows companies to market itself and target talent directly, without the need for a middleman, like a recruiter. This, many have speculated, sounds the death knell for an already wounded recruitment industry, which has been about as secretive about the talent procuring process as Colonel Sanders was about those 11 herbs and spices.

Great For Jobseekers and Entrepreneurs

LinkedIn is a fantastic networking tool for businesses and individuals alike and an equally fantastic online resume for independent contractors and jobseekers; both are topics we’ve written about quite extensively on this very blog. But to truly determine how useful it is to jobseekers, we thought we should look at how useful it is for businesses.

The usefulness of something, particularly for a business, is usually determined in monetary terms – in other words, how much does it cost and how much time or money (though both time and money are synonymous in business) will it save us?

Fortunately, Aussie start-up, RecruitLoop, which is now based in both Sydney and San Francisco after opening offices there when they secured venture capital in 2013 for their new kind of online recruitment agency, ran the numbers for us. (they’ve subsequently grown via acquisition!)

The Old Recruitment Process

Traditionally, if you wanted to locate top-tier talent for your organisation, you had little choice but to hire a recruitment agency. They possessed the secret formula for procuring the right candidates and charged handsomely for it, usually in the vicinity of 15-30 percent of the salary on offer, per hire. RecruitLoop says you should expect to pay about 20 percent.

But first you have to find a recruiter you like. Conservatively speaking, this could take about two hours, including the time it takes to brief the recruiter on the position and candidate you’re looking for. Then it’s over to them – for now.

The recruiter may weed out the good candidates from the bad, but that’s literally it. You still need to interview each candidate, whether it’s two or three or more. After a customary 30 minute pre-interview phone call, it’s standard practice for a candidate to meet with the hiring manager at a company at least twice, sometimes three times. That’s a minimum of 7.5 hours.

RecruitLoop also pencils in time to wine and dine candidates. I don’t know about you, but I rarely hear of a junior or mid-level executive being wined and dined by an employer. This is a practice usually reserved for the top brass, so I’m going to reassign that time to checking out each candidates’ references.

Yes, this is the recruiter’s responsibility and it’s what you’re paying the big bucks for, but it’s precisely because you’re shelling out those big bucks that you should do your due diligence and check out each candidates’ references yourself. (I give you two good reasons why in this blog post.)

Altogether, you’d have spent 13.5 hours on the hiring process, in addition to the 20 percent finders fee you pay to the recruiter. Assuming the candidate’s salary is $75k, and your salary is around $90k (or $47 an hour), you’ve just spent $19k.

The New DIY Recruitment Process

In the RecruitLoop example, they listed multiple employment websites to advertise a job vacancy, but we reckon you only need to use two websites: LinkedIn, which they estimate costs around $1,500 an ad, and Gumtree, which is free.

It should take you about an hour to write your job advertisement, perhaps two if you’re a little rusty or the position is not quite straight forward, which in small business it rarely is. We’ll note down two hours for ad writing, and thirty minutes to post them both.

The average corporate job advertisement yields about 200-300 resumes from jobseekers, but as a small business you may receive less than that. Even if you receive as little as twenty resumes, you still need to cull that down to two or three candidates. That should take you about 3.5 hours.

Then comes the interview process. This shouldn’t take any longer than it would if you were using a recruitment agency, which RecruitLoop estimated would take about 7.5 hours (though they estimated 12.5 hours in their info graphic). Then tag on 4 hours to check each candidates’ references.

You’re looking at about 17.5 hours of your time, plus the cost of advertising on LinkedIn. Assuming your salary is around $90k per year (or $47 an hour), altogether the new DIY hiring process has cost you just under $2,500, though it could cost you as much as $4,900, according to RecruitLoop.

Accessing What’s Behind the Curtain

Since hiring a recruitment agency only saves you about four hours, but costs exponentially more in agency fees, it would seem that the only reason to go with a recruiter is to access to that secret Talent Procuring Process.

But given that the majority of recruiters are now using LinkedIn to target new talent, in addition to their existing database – and who cares about one recruiter’s database when LinkedIn has the biggest in the world? – wouldn’t you rather save your money, invest the time, and go behind the curtain yourself? I would.

The key, of course, is to ensure you’re using LinkedIn correctly, in the first place. After that, the rest is up to you. Next time you’re looking to hire a new staff member – or maybe even an independent contractor – I encourage you to think about the DIY way.

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The Great Compression Squeezes Out Home Based Businesses

There are lots of reasons why it’s a great time to start your own home-based business. I’ve talked about the perks of working from home before, for instance.

But perhaps one of the best reasons to start your own home-based business is that in today’s job market, it actually offers more job security.

Now, this may be pretty much the opposite of what nearly everyone else says about being self-employed, but bear with me. Continue reading The Great Compression Squeezes Out Home Based Businesses

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Rapid Induction for Contractors Online

Online Inductions for Rapid Learning

Rapid Induct your contractors and staff. Image from John Rozum
Rapid Induct your contractors and staff. Image from John Rozum

I’ve written in the past about how our MYOB courses help students get inducted into the role of a bookkeeper because they take them through the steps a bookkeeper goes through in the daily operations of a small business. I’ve also written about the various other benefits of having an induction course:

  1. Induction for contractors who come to work at your site
  2. Keep staff engaged and motivated,
  3. What you should include in an induction course.

I am writing today to let you know that we are in the final stages of completing a course that teaches you how to create an online induction course! We have been creating online courses for over a decade and have gone through the course creation process hundreds of times and we realise that many companies need to create their own induction courses.

Rapid Induction for New Staff

Just the other week I was speaking with a successful small business bookkeeper who asked me about the best way to get his new staff up to speed. After a long conversation it dawned on me that this person needs a system to educate his new staff about his business. He needs an induction course for new staff to get them up to speed rapidly and if he created this course as an online course he could save hundreds of hours in person-time over the course of each year.

I explained that he would just need to convert any written document into a presentation using Powerpoint, record audio over it as a video presentation and then come up with some test questions and…. then I realised that most people aren’t as familiar with this stuff as we are.

Create an Online Induction Course

If you are interested in creating an online induction course to enable rapid induction of your staff, contractors, even customers then stay tuned as the launch date of our course is imminent. If you would like to learn but at this stage just want one created for you then learn more about our online induction course creation service.

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Zoho Books, You don’t want to be a high risk do you?

There’s always Zoho Books

Zoho Books and Bank Feeds

You may have a different opinion when it comes to paying your suppliers but I believe you should pay quickly. I’m talking mainly about service providers rather that product suppliers, but I think in small business it doesn’t matter.

Everyone loves to be paid on time and if you can get paid earlier, even better. It once took me 16 minutes to pay a supplier – OK, I was making other payments at the time, but still, it looked impressive.

I mention it today because one of my team told me that I was categorised by their accounting software as “high risk” and I wasn’t too happy.

Continue reading Zoho Books, You don’t want to be a high risk do you?
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MYOB Bookkeeper Triples Income With No Extra Advertising Budget

MYOB Bookkeeper Provides Customer Service

Ever seen these headings in online ads? It’s sensational I know and I’d rather not revert to such tactics, but the truth of the matter is that the personal work you do to become a better networker and learn how to become a good referrer of business to other people will turn you into the “go to” person a lot of small businesses would like. The result is that you’ll pick up more business because people trust you.

I’ve written before about the power of combining websites like LinkedIn and good Referral Marketing techniques, but they worth mentioning again, particularly as Michael Griffiths is holding his next Referral Marketing Master Class very soon.

A recent example that Michael gave me about the benefits that one bookkeeper received because of their new-found referral marketing skills is Don Doolan from First Class Accounts. He was able to triple his lead generation just by focussing his efforts on effective networking and finding a way to help his network on contacts improve their business.

Is Referral Marketing just good Customer Service?

Customer service is an important aspect in every business. It’s so important that even the largest of Australian and US companies use it as a tool to generate more sales! We include Customer Service tips in our Small Business Management and StartUp Course from David Hall and I’m mentioning it here because both customer service and networking require a similar effort in modifying your approach to customers and listening to them.

When you listen to your customers in your regular conversations you’ll discover many opportunities to either:

  • Mention a product or service that you offer, or
  • Mention that you know someone who could provide them with exactly what they are looking for.

Just by writing this email I am referring Michael and his Referral Marketing course because I have seen the benefits from other people in our network and I know how important it is to have a good relationship with key customers.

MYOB Bookkeeper Marketing

If you are one of our MYOB Bookkeeping Course students and you are interested in taking the journey of becoming an independent consultant to provide bookkeeping services in your local area please make sure you read about our MYOB Bookkeeper Directory service.

Want help starting a bookkeeping business?

start a bookkeeping business
Business Opportunities for Ordinary People

We have now teamed up with the StartUp Academy to help our students (and anyone else) start their own home based business as a bookkeeper. You’ll be able to earn money by helping people learn how to use programs like MYOB, Quickbooks and Xero or doing the work for them. Learn more about starting a bookkeeping business.

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You’ve Already Got a Business Coach – YOU!

being your own boss
Every time you set goals and generally act like a boss, you’re serving much the same function as a business coach.

Ever since EzyLearn’s early days, when we still had our training centres in Sydney, I’ve always gained a real buzz out of helping our students start their own businesses.

I still do, which is why I recently presented a seminar at the Reinvent Your Career Expo and why EzyLearn has partnered with the StartUp Academy.

The StartUp Academy is a start-up incubator for entrepreneurs who want to work in industries currently experiencing rapid growth — like the work health and safety industry, for example — but who also want to have balance in their home and work life; to be their own bosses. Continue reading You’ve Already Got a Business Coach – YOU!

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Affiliate Marketing: Partner with Us to Start Your Own Business NOW

Start a Computer Training Business

start your own businessDo you want to start your own business? Perhaps a home-based business? At EzyLearn, we’re passionate about helping people follow their dreams and start their own businesses.

At the moment, we’ve got a host of opportunities available to people who would like to partner with EzyLearn and start their own home-based business with a focus on Bookkeeping. Continue reading Affiliate Marketing: Partner with Us to Start Your Own Business NOW