We’ve been offering MYOB training courses for a very long time and that’s largely because they have long been the market leader in accounting software.
But in the last few years there’s been a definite shift in the accounting software space, and with cloud-based technology, a number of other players have entered the marketplace. Continue reading Will Xero Dethrone MYOB as the King of Accounting Software?
In a recent post we talked about the times when businesses should work for free, which we referred to as ‘added value’. We cover value-related exercises, such as determining and setting your prices in the module of the same name in our Small Business Management Course.
Sometimes working for no charge at all and outlining where this so (that’s important — people need to be informed that you’re doing something for nothing otherwise they mightn’t know!) discourages hagglers and nuisance clients always looking for a discount at every opportunity. Continue reading Working For Free: Why You Should Give With No Expectations
We mentioned in a previous post about how our MYOB Training Courses are like an induction to the role of bookkeeper and how we provide all our students with workbooks and training resources to compliment our training video content and other online learning tools. Continue reading MYOB Training Courses: Lifetime Access Guaranteed
In our last post about getting bookkeeping clients for free, we mentioned how the Institute of Certified Bookkeepers (the ICB) only adds bookkeepers to its Practice Directory who are Cert IV-qualified. Having a Cert IV qualification in bookkeeping enables you to apply to the Tax Practitioners Board to become certified to provide BAS services to your clients.
Only Needed for Lodgement of BAS
However, most of the work carried out by a BAS agent is work that can be completed by a bookkeeper without a Cert IV; it’s just that only registered BAS agents can lodge a BAS return for their client.
So while it may be useful for some contract bookkeepers to get their Cert IV qualification so they can lodge their client’s BAS returns among other things, it’s not necessary if you only want to manage the data entry for your clients.
Bookkeepers Needed for Data Entry
In fact, bookkeepers carrying out data entry is one of the core functions required by a lot of small businesses and sole traders because they have become too busy to look after it themselves and because it takes them away from their core work.
An experienced bookkeeper that can look after a business’ books is still an incredibly valuable asset to any business, and as more and more Australians go into business for themselves, the demand for bookkeepers is going to increase.
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So if you’ve completed our LIFETIME access MYOB Training Course with the certificate option, contact us today to arrange to have your profile placed on the MYOB Bookkeeper Directory.
At EzyLearn we’re passionate about helping our students start their own bookkeeping businesses — it’s why we offer a suite of training courses to help you hone and develop the skills you need to start your own bookkeeping business. But we’re even more passionate about helping those people and businesses succeed long after they first start trading.
Two-Way, Trusting Relationships with Your Bookkeeping Clients
The key to your success as a business owner is having a pool of customers who need and value your work just as much as you need and value their business. This two-way relationship helps to establish trust; the foundation of every successful business relationship.
But sometimes finding these customers is difficult, even if you’ve been in business for some time already. This is where EzyLearn can help.
The MYOB Bookkeeper Directory: Connecting Bookkeepers with Clients
The MYOB Bookkeeper Directory is a service that helps connect bookkeepers with clients. Effectively, it’s a talent pool in which bookkeepers create and upload a profile of their business, their skills, location and so on, to the MYOB Bookkeeper Directory.
Each time a business is looking for a bookkeeper whose skills or location matches your profile they can make contact with the MYOB Bookkeeper Directory team, who will vet those businesses before putting them in contact with you.
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For EzyLearn students who have completed our MYOB training course, paid for lifetime access and receipt of the certificate, we are offering you a free 12-month membership to the MYOB Bookkeeper Directory. (Membership fees are usually $97/12 months.)
If you are interested in taking up this offer, drop us a line or contact our team by phone.
The hardest part about starting your own business is finding the first few clients.
At EzyLearn, we love helping our MYOB training course students start their own bookkeeping business, but we’re even more passionate about helping you make that business a success Continue reading Are You a Bookkeeper? Find Clients Online FOR FREE!
At EzyLearn we offer a handful of online training courses: Microsoft Office (Excel, Word, PowerPoint and Outlook), MYOB Accounting, and WordPress website design and blogging. There are many companies who promote courses online and that’s just what they do — promote courses online — but we try to be a little different.
Here’s why:
We offer only a handful of courses and we do them very wellOur Online Community
Our experience with thousands of students has taught us that some students need more interaction than just the videos. They also like to bounce off other people to better understand the software they are learning.
That’s why we provide our Student Community and Tutor Support — to provide our students with the ability to communicate with fellow students, as well as ask questions of our experienced community moderators. It’s like having your own tutor that you can ask questions to who can provide quality answers based on their own experience in their relative industries.
Our students range from job seekers to small business owners and existing bookkeepers wanting to learn more, to accountants who may be thinking of leaving the corporate world and setting up a small business for themselves (or even seeking greater work-life balance).
Qualified Moderators
Our student support community is moderated by our MYOB Bookkeeper and Registered BAS agent, giving students the benefit of both communication with other course attendees (to socialise and to learn) as well as obtain answers to specific questions.
Annual Membership
Our Student Community and Tutor Support is provided on a yearly membership basis and you can continue or opt-out as you please each year. The service is available to existing EzyLearn students or new students enrolling into any one of our courses.
At EzyLearn, we’re passionate about helping people follow their dreams and start their own businesses.
We have a number of opportunities available to people who would like to partner with EzyLearn and start their own home-based business.
Start Your Own Bookkeeping or Digital Business Continue reading Become a MYOB Training Affiliate Marketer
When you’re selecting a training course provider, it’s important to consider the training material and resources you will need in order to complete the course.
There are many online institutions that don’t provide any training material beyond the information available in their training videos or learning management system. Continue reading Bumper Content: 10 Training Workbooks Included in our MYOB Courses!
In a previous post we wrote about business bank accounts. Some banks, even though they offer business accounts, aren’t actually all that business friendly, and this can sometimes add hours to your bookkeeping and reconciliation processes.
Not all Business Accounts are Created Equal
If you’re starting a new business and going to open a business account, we recommend you do your research and shop around, because not all accounts are the same.
Some business accounts integrate nicely with your accounting software, while others, like a Bank of Queensland account, for example, does not because they transferred their credit card service to Citibank, preventing integration with the Banklink feature of MYOB.
Other business accounts don’t allow businesses to have a Visa or MasterCard debit card attached to their business account and only allow businesses to make online purchases using their own money.
Business owners can only use a linked credit card to make online purchases or a separate debit card. Either option still results in additional journal entries in your accounting software.
End of Financial Year – Best Time to Get Business Friendly
If you’ve been battling with your current bank, now that we’re approaching the end of the 2013/14 financial year, it might be the time to consider moving your accounts elsewhere so you can start afresh come July 1.
Or perhaps it’s not your bank that’s playing havoc with your bookkeeping – perhaps it’s your bookkeeping software. As we approach a new financial year, it might be a good time to consider switching your account keeping software to MYOB, or something simpler, like Xero (we have written in the past comparing the two).
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At EzyLearn, we provide a range of training courses for a number of different accounting programs from the basic Reach Accounting to the more sophisticated MYOB. For more information on our training courses, visit our website.
Earn Income by Simply Recommending Our Courses
We are looking for anyone who has completed our MYOB training course to become an affiliate marketer and earn money by recommending our training courses to people you know.
How Does Affiliate Marketing Work? Continue reading Become a MYOB Training Course Affiliate Marketer
Our MYOB training courses are more than just training course in software. They also function as a quasi induction to the life of a bookkeeper, in that they train you in the day-to-day processes and procedures of a bookkeeper as well.
Even though you still need to have completed a Certificate IV in bookkeeping to become a registered BAS agent, you can still provide clients with basic bookkeeping services if you’ve done our MYOB training course.
Quizzes and Knowledge Reviews
The MYOB workbooks provided in the training courses contain practical exercises that students can complete to familiarise themselves with the software, which they are then later tested on to through a series of quizzes and knowledge reviews.
By the time you’ve completed our MYOB training course, you’ll be proficient not just in the MYOB software, but also in the day-to-day of a professional bookkeeper.
Some of our previous students are already business owners themselves and our MYOB courses provide them with the necessary skills to take care of the data entry and bookkeeping for their own business.
An Entry Point to Your Home-Based Business
But a good many more of our students also use our MYOB courses as an entry point to starting their own home-based bookkeeping business, providing other businesses with data entry while they’re completing a Cert IV in bookkeeping.
This is a great way to familiarise yourself with the bookkeeping process while you’re still learning, and even help you to network with accountants who could later help you become certified with the Institute of Certified Bookkeepers and supervise your work.
We also offer a Small Business Management Course to help those people thinking of starting a home-based bookkeeping business develop a business plan, carry out marketing activities report on financial activity, and so forth. Currently we’re offering this course for just $897 (for a short time only!).
For information on our courses, visit our website or contact our team.
In our Small Business Management Course there is a module on determining and setting your prices, which includes factoring in things like travel expenses if you’re going to be visiting clients and so forth.
But what about things like, installation costs – should you bill your clients for this or work it into the price or just let it slide?
Some businesses work those sorts of prices into their final cost; others – think Foxtel, for example – charge installation fees; but a surprising number of businesses let it slide. Continue reading When Should You Work for Free?
At EzyLearn, our flagship training course is the MYOB training course, which is sort of like an induction into the role of a bookkeeper in that it provides students with an overview of the duties typically carried out by a bookkeeper. Most of our students take our MYOB training course because they both want and need to know how to use the software in order to find work as a bookkeeper.
In the world of business training and coaching, this is called the Will vs. Skill Matrix. Employees who have both the will to succeed and the skill to succeed are highly desirable in the workplace.
Transparency, Will and Skill
Employees who have only one of those attributes, however, are less desirable. Helping staff maintain both the will and the skill to succeed in their jobs has a lot to do with how transparent you are as an organisation.
We’ve mentioned transparency in business before, notably in relation to induction training programs. Induction training programs are a highly efficient way to communicate easily and efficiently with your staff, while also testing their will and skill to succeed at their jobs.
While most induction training programs are used to merely address the requirements of the Work Health and Safety Act, or to induct contractors and consultants to a business’ premises, induction training programs can also be used to further your employees’ professional development.
Furthering your employees’ professional development can be done by providing your staff with online training courses that are relevant and useful to their jobs, such as a Word or Excel training course. By delivering this content online, it allows your staff to complete the course at their own pace, in an informal environment – at home or at their desk at work, rather than in a dedicated training centre on a dedicated day – and it also allows you to monitor their progress.
As the business owner, by being able to see how your employees are getting on with the training courses can illuminate areas where your staff could benefit from further training; it can also highlight those staff member who possess the will and the skill to succeed.
Those staff members who are have both the will and the skill to succeed in their jobs also happen to be highly engaged, and as we mentioned in a previous post, more productive.
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If you’re looking for ways to keep your staff highly engaged with your business, we can help you tailor and deliver highly engaging induction training courses to your staff. Visit our website for more information, or contact us today for a quote.
WE HAVE PREVIOUSLY TALKED about what sort of information you should include in your new-employee induction training program, which we said helped boost staff morale.
Company morale is important for any company, because it helps foster engagement between your staff and their work. If your business has a team of highly engaged staff members, they’re likely to be more productive and ultimately that’s good news for you as the business owner.
Keeping your staff engaged with their work and your business isn’t as hard – or as expensive as it seems. While money certainly plays a huge role in how satisfied employees are in their jobs, it’s not the be all and end all – just look at companies like Google, which have a highly engaged workforce, but which also allows their staff to bring their pets to work with them and includes an onsite games room. Your staff spend more time at work than they do at home – so they want to feel happy and appreciated while they’re there, otherwise they’ll go elsewhere.
But you don’t need to institute a ‘bring your pet to work day’ (although you could if you wanted), nor do you need to set up a pool table in the lunch room, because employee morale and engagement starts by opening the lines of communication. If your organisation has a policy of transparency, and routinely communicates new policies and procedures with their staff, they’re more likely to trust you and feel that as an organisation you trust them in return with company information.
An induction training program, which is used both for new employees, contractors, consultants and existing employees is the easiest and most efficient way to demonstrate that transparency to your staff. And online induction training programs make it easy to deliver this information to your staff, while also making it easy to keep the information up to date.
Whether it’s a new procedure relating to work health and safety, or a new way of sending in invoices, you can create the content and deliver it to your staff with ease. Best of all, you can monitor and track which staff have completed their training and which staff haven’t, allowing you to follow up with them. This helps you ensure your due diligence as an organisation, and helps to boost that all-important staff morale.
For more information on online induction training programs, visit our website or contact us for a free quote today.
EzyLearn Excel, MYOB and Xero online training courses count towards Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for bookkeepers and accountants. We’ve been an accredited training provider of the Institute of Certified Bookkeepers ever since the organisation started in Australia. Find out how CPD points can be of benefit to you.
We’ve been talking about induction training a lot lately, and it’s because an induction training program is hugely important for all businesses, especially small businesses often using contractors or consultants. But induction training is also an important aspect of acclimatising a new employee to your organisation.
What’s Important for Newbies?
An induction training program should include all of the work health and safety measures that relate to your organisation, along with common information about where employees can find parking or the local café.
But most importantly, it should also include specific information that relates to a new employee’s department or position.
Things to include in your induction training program could be: who an employee reports to, how often the company carries out performance reviews, and what the pay cycle is.
This may seem overly basic, but these are common questions employees usually have when they start a new job. By providing this information upfront it demonstrates a level of transparency, and helps newcomers feel at ease – after all, there’s nothing more awkward that having to ask your new boss when you’ll be paid.
Your Employees’ Responsibilities
But you should also use your induction program as an opportunity to highlight the expectations and responsibilities of that new employee, by outlining their tasks and duties and when they’re expected to have them completed by.
You may have covered this in the interview process, but anecdotal evidence shows that the vast majority of new employees still don’t know what is expected of them until their first day on the job.
If their responsibilities and goals are still not properly communicated to them on their first day, they often spend the first few days and weeks uncertain about what they should be doing. This leads to frustration, which ultimately leaves them feeling disengaged and invariably wastes time and money – and they haven’t even started their job yet!
A properly executed induction training program helps to define the responsibilities and expectations of your employees, and also helps boost company morale and engagement – two important ingredients in any successful business.
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If you would like to learn more about induction training programs, visit our website or request a quote from us.
