We often talk about the benefits of studying an MYOB course online or how using cloud-based accounting software to telework benefits employees and employers, but we don’t often discuss the benefits of cloud computing to the environment.
A recent study commissioned by internet giant Google and carried out by Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory in the US, found that if the entire US workforce moved into cloud computing — where employees would now work from their home offices — it could save up to 87 percent of the energy used to power IT systems. That’s enough energy to power the entire city of Los Angeles for a year.
Using the Cloud Means Going Green
For Google, this showed just how great the energy saving potential of the internet is — something we’ve often discussed in posts about operating a home-based or virtual bookkeeping business.
In fact, the Green Factor is another reason why we moved all of our training materials and content online in 2007; it meant we would no longer have the costly overheads of powering physical training centres (and adding to our carbon footprint), allowing us to deliver the same high quality training courses at a lower price.
Of course, being an internet company, Google only looked at the IT energy savings to be had if every worker in the US began working from their home offices. They didn’t look at the potential knock-on effect this would have when two or more people in a household were both working from home.
The Communal Office
So while saving some 23 billion kilowatt-hours in energy is a massive feat, we wonder how much of that energy would be reinvested in individuals’ upsizing their homes or renting office spaces once working at home with the whole family became more distracting than it did productive? Perhaps, then, a chain of communal office spaces might become the next McDonalds of the digital world?
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Regardless of whether it’s a saving of 23 billion kilowatt-hours of just 23 kilowatt-hours, increasing our energy efficiency and reducing our carbon footprint is always a good thing; cloud-based software and studying online goes along way to doing just that.
It’s all too easy to be distracted but if you do you’ll work harder and longer with less results.
As part of the Lifetime membership when you do an EzyLearn MYOB training course, you get ongoing access to the content we are constantly updating to reflect the ever-changing bookkeeping industry.
If you’re one of the many bookkeepers who have started your own business after completing our online MYOB course or perhaps you’re thinking of starting your own business, then today’s post is here to say loud and clear — don’t waste time on things that don’t matter!
As part of our range of courses, EzyLearn is now offering a small business management course which will give you the skills you need to start your own business. It will also teach you how best to spend your time by doing tasks that result in profits, rather than getting distracted by things that don’t matter. (It’s a little frightening just how many business owners do, though!)
Classic Time Wasting
We’re all guilty of it: logging into Facebook to post a quick update and spending an hour watching cat videos. Wasting half a day trying to create the perfect flyer/postcard/ logo/webpage/cover image/thinga-ma-jig when you should have outsourced it or settled on version #5. Taking a week to make a decision because you “need” to have all of the facts.
Here’s the thing. Wasting time may seem innocent enough. But it is destroying your business. It is causing you to work too hard and too long. It is causing you stress and making you feel unproductive.
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If sales and marketing are what you do when you have time or when you get around to it, then you will never have the business you want.
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The List of Main Priorities
Your main priorities should be (in order of importance):
1. Servicing current clients.
2. Having a sales conversation with hot prospects.
3. Cultivating warm prospects.
4. Identifying leads and getting referrals.
5. Marketing your business with social media and other tools.
6. If you have a website, creating content that people want to read.
7. Creating new products (that is, solutions) to service your client’s needs.
8. Everything else.
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There’s no better time to start than right now (a tad cliched, but true). Spend the first hour of today only working on things that will get you more clients. That’s it. Nothing else. Only tasks that will grow your business. See how that feels. You’ll find it feels a whole lot easier doing the same thing tomorrow. And the next day. And the day after that. Learn to always prioritise and you’ll really start growing your MYOB or small business.
Print out our checklist of what you need to complete before the end of financial year.
If you have recently started your own business after completing our online MYOB training course, and this is your first time doing end of financial year (EOFY) analysis, never fear — here’s an EOFY checklist to make sure you’re ready!
Even if you’re a veteran bookkeeper, these are still handy tips that are often overlooked in the rush to get everything ready by 30 June.
Before the EOFY:
Make sure you present and clear any old cheques before 30 June before you reconcile your bank accounts — you don’t want to leave these until the following financial year, as it create problems later on down the line.
Also chase-up any outstanding debtors (people who haven’t paid an invoice that’s overdue) as, again, if it’s paid after 30 June, this can create problems later on.
If you have any outstanding debtors that are more than 12 months old, cut your losses (so to speak) and claim back the GST.
You should also write off any old stock if it is also more than 12 months old.
Once this is done, reconcile your accounts — is your un-deposited funds account bank to nil? If not, you need to go back and investigate why.
Make sure you have all of your employees’ tax file numbers before 30 June.
Pay your June Superannuation Guarantee Charge (SGC) by 30 June this year to ensure you actually get the tax deduction this year.
Also make sure you pay all your SGC obligations before 28 July 2013 to avoid SGC review and all the time-consuming paperwork that goes with it.
Don’t leave your payment summaries until the last minute — by law you have to provide these to your staff by 14 July, so you give yourself plenty of time.
Remember: In MYOB the software requires you to enter a tax file number for all employees regardless of whether they have one or whether you have to print a payment summary for them or not.
In this instance use the following codes:
For a New Payee that has not made a TFN Declaration, but 28 days have not passed use: 111 111 111
Payee is under 18 years of age and earnings do not exceed $350 per week, $700 per fortnight or $1,517 per month use: 333 333 333
Payee is an Australian Government pensioner payee use: 444 444 444
Payee chooses not to quote a TFN and has not claimed an exemption from quoting a TFN or does not fit into any of the above categories use: 000 000 000.
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And while we’re dispensing handy tips, we find that if you have a checklist of all the things you must do for as part of your end of financial year analysis, you’re less likely to forget anything. So why not print out this list and keep it by your desk so you don’t get caught out.
Where do you live? If you live on the east coast of Australia, there’s a good chance the National Broadband Network (NBN) is already available in your area, and if you’re not already connected, you should be. With high-speed internet piped straight into your home, completing one of our online MYOB courses or operating an home-based business that uses cloud accounting software like MYOB Account Right Live is a cinch.
The NBN will make it possible to share and upload files to online storage software like Dropbox and it will become commonplace to video conference with people locally and internationally. Further, slow download and upload times, or choppy video that stalls and jams will become a thing of the past.
The NBN is currently available in these Australian cities.
The Growth of the NBN
However, according to the NBN Co, in December 2012 it was estimated that there was already some 34,500 homes connected to the NBN — out of the 758,000 homes and businesses where the NBN was already available, mind you. This is means there’s a great deal of Australians not connected to the NBN when they could be. The map on the right shows the areas of Australia where the NBN service is currently available. (You can find out more information on whether the NBN is available in your area by click on the map of visiting the NBN website.)
The advances in the education, business and even health industries, created by the NBN will be limitless. In the education space, particularly in the area of e-learning, online videos will become the delivery method of choice — and later, even live conferences between students and teacher. Though online video is being used more regularly than it was just five years ago, it’s not being used to its full capacity. But the NBN will change all of that; so you can say goodbye to reading an endless scroll of text on a webpage or printed learning materials.
Opening up the Use of the Cloud
The NBN also gives small businesses the ability to streamline their processes and procedures — previously reserved for large organisations that could afford the cost to implement them — with cloud-based softwares that make working with people from different sites, sharing data and even storing data, quick, easy and (importantly) viable — which accounting software like MYOB is already doing.
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So if you haven’t done so already, find out if the NBN is available in your area (click on the map above to find out if your home can be connected to the NBN). If it turns out the NBN is available to your home the next step is simple: contact one of the NBN’s preferred service providers (a list is available on their website) who can help you make the switch; from there, it’s all systems go — you’ll be connected to a world of possibilities.
Ah – the freedom of running your own small business!
A large number of bookkeepers who have completed our online MYOB course have successfully started their own businesses and to reiterate a recent blog post from Steve, the first step in starting your own business is making the decision to begin. Secondly you have to come up with the idea, and whether it seems like it or not, all of us every day are full of ideas. It doesn’t matter what your level of education is or how old (or young) you are — we all have ideas and desires, so the initial stages of starting a business are really pretty simple. And never think you’re alone; did you know that small businesses (defined as having less than 20 employees) employ a whopping 47 percent of Australia’s total workforce. That’s a lot of people who had ideas and keep growing them.
Making Sure You’re Relevant
The actions you take after you’ve come up with your idea and how you develop this idea into a product or service that others are interested in or need is critical. We provide online training for Australia’s most popular accounting software, MYOB, and it’s clear there’s a strong demand for bookkeeping skills in small businesses around the country. Indeed, if you have accounting or bookkeeping skills and qualifications and are interested in starting a business, then there’s never been a better time to explore a Small Business Course that has now been loaded on our Learning Management System (LMS).
The Small Business Management Course for Self Starters
Our Small Business Management course covers all the aspects you need when starting a business. Our first subject covers ‘Originate and Develop Concepts‘. As you progress, the course provides you with the skills you need to create a business plan so you end up with something tangible and that ensures you’re idea can actually come to fruition. But the course is not only suited to those people thinking about starting a business; it’s also a terrific course if you want to elevate your skills in your current work too.
Our course has been designed by Maggie Richardson from the Australian Small Business Centre. Maggie has helped over 1,000 people build business plans that have turned their ideas into profitable realities.
Remember: Businesses are proven to be more successful when they operate to a business plan.
If this is your year to start a business, come and join us online with the Small Business Management Course or visit the Australian Small Business Centre and get started by subscribing to their blog posts.
In the dark ages when technology was primitive, the fear of losing data left people in a constant state of printing. Archive-box-after-archive-box was filled with printouts and photocopies so that, in the event of a system crash, records could be easily re-entered — after first wading through archive-box-after-archive-box filled with printouts and photocopies to retrieve the lost data, of course. Now, thanks to cloud accounting software, that’s all changed.
Cloud Accounting Stops the Fear of Crashing
We’ve recently blogged about some of the benefits of cloud accounting software (namely avoiding the commute on cold, winter mornings!) — but two of the other great benefits are no longer having to live your life in fear of a system crash and those dreaded three little words: did you back up? Nor do you have to house a labyrinth of archive boxes filled with enough paper to blanket a small country.
Cloud accounting software backs up all of your data and stores it on an online server, so if you change computers or (heaven forbid) your computer crashes, it won’t require a computer genius to retrieve your important information — just a username and password. Plus, most cloud accounting software — like Reach, Xero, FreshBooks and Zoho — is accessed through a web browser, which means you can access your accounts from any device, anywhere.
MYOB Account Right Live and the Cloud
The only exception is MYOB Account Right Live (which, by the way, we also teach online). With MYOB Account Right Live, before you can access any data stored in the MYOB cloud, the software must first be installed on a main device. However, by having the MYOB software installed on your computer you can safely “check out” a client file to work on offline. By checking out a file, other users are then only able to view a “read only” file, so you don’t have to worry about whether another user will update the same file you’re working on.
It’s worth nothing that this option of working on a file offline is limited only to MYOB Account Right Live and isn’t available on other web-based cloud accounting software — FreshBooks does allow you to download a file to work on, but this doesn’t stop another user from updating the file in the cloud at the same time.
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In short, using cloud accounting software offers you enormous flexibility. By using a cloud-based accounting package, you’ll put an end to the printing and hoarding of hardcopy files, or worrying about hard drives and backing up. Instead, you’ll have piece of mind that all your data and important information is stored safely on an online server, accessible at any time. Sounds good, huh?
We’re often talking about start ups, starting a new business, what it takes to succeed, and we cover many of the practical aspects of owning and operating your own business in our Small Business Management course. We’ve also touched on prepaid legal services for bookkeepers who have completed our online MYOB training course and the latest provider to enter the prepaid legal fray: LawPath — which is also the latest venture of start-up incubator, Pollenizer.
Pollenizer: How it all Started-Up
Based in Sydney’s Surry Hills, Pollenizer, which was founded by Mick Liubinskas and Phil Morle — the former chief technology officer of infamous file sharing site, Kazaa — aims to co-found companies and grow them to a point where the founders can then exit for a profit.
Pollenizer’s most recent success story is that of group-buying site, Spreets, which was sold to Yahoo for $40 million dollars after only 12 months.
When Morle and Liubinskas spot a start-up they’re interested in, they invest up to $150,000 to help get what is often just an idea scribbled on a napkin off the ground.
Pollenizer’s Start-Up Science
How do ideas make it to some kind of fruition? This involves employing what Morle calls the Pollenizer “start-up science” where each start-up is dragged over Pollenizer’s so-called technical and marketing coals.
Discovery, Validation and Efficiency
Starting with discovery, the Pollenizer team looks into whether a particular start-up solves an existing problem and whether customers will pay for the solution. Next, is validation — testing whether real people will actually want to pay for the product. The last stage is efficiency: ensuring the business is capable of operating when more customers come on board.
But about half of the start-ups don’t make it past the second stage.
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But one of the most interesting aspects to the way Pollenizer operates occurs before you’ve even opened your doors for business, so to speak: Pollenizer’s “start-up science”.
By methodically looking at your business idea and what your business aims to do, you’ll discover any pitfalls you may encounter, giving you the chance to modify and refine your business idea.
We all like to think we have a great business idea that could change the world. But as Pollenizer shows, for half of us it’s just an idea.
That doesn’t mean give up; it means research, reassess and retry.
As the mornings get colder, darker and less inviting, getting up to go to work is that much harder. But what if you didn’t have to get up at the crack of dawn and commute into the office? What if you operated your own bookkeeping business from your home office? With cloud accounting software like MYOB Account Right Live — you can. (If you’ve never used MYOB Account Right Live before, our MYOB Training Course will help you get up-to-speed.)
The Rise of the Cloud
Although cloud computing has been around since the mid 2000s, its use had largely been limited to those companies with access to high-speed Internet; your average sole trader using cloud-based accounting software was rare, confined mainly to contract IT experts.
But as time went on, access to high-speed Internet connections increased — and will increase even more when the NBN rollout is complete — which made cloud computing more easily accessible for individuals working from home; even bookkeepers.
MYOB entered the cloud accounting space in 2012 with their MYOB Account Right Live software that still looks and feels the same as their hugely popular offline versions, but with the added benefit of using an online storage server.
Benefits for Bookkeepers
Cloud accounting software is making it easier to work from home.
In moving their software online, MYOB’s intention was to make bookkeeping easier for the business owner, but MYOB also made it easier for a bookkeeper to access their client’s accounts. It also made operating a home-based bookkeeping business easier, too.
[quote]You’ll be pleased to hear that our Small Business Management Training Course has a slant towards operating a business from home using the latest internet based services like Google, WordPress and more..[/quote]
For bookkeepers one benefit of having their client’s accounts online is that they don’t have to physically go to their client’s place of work; instead, bookkeepers can login to their client’s accounts from their own home or office.
The ability to work offline (known as “checking out”) also means that if your Internet connection is down, you can still keep working as normal; once you connect to the Internet again, MYOB syncs the data with the version stored in the cloud.
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For bookkeepers, cloud accounting software like MYOB Account Right Live makes operating a home-based bookkeeping business a more convenient career option — in more ways than one. Avoid cold mornings and the long commute; start a bookkeeping business.
How will reforms to the Privacy Act affect your business?
As EzyLearn provides what, in our humble opinion, is the best Small Business Management Course in Australia (yes, blatant plug, but we firmly believe this and can show you why) the issue of privacy, and the way people’s privacy is handled by small business, is of concern to us.
In November last year, the Gillard government’s Privacy Amendment (Enhancing Privacy Protection) Bill was passed in parliament, marking some of the biggest changes to the Privacy Act in the last 20 years. The reforms, which are due to come into force in March next year, give individuals greater control over their personal information and who has access to it, making it essential for all businesses to review the way they handle their customers’ details to ensure they’re not in breach of the Act.
Australian Privacy Principles and Direct Marketing
Perhaps the biggest change to the Act is the introduction the Australia Privacy Principles (APPs), which, by streamlining previous policies relating to privacy into one set of guidelines, will limit an organisation’s ability to use unsolicited information; regulate the use and disclosure of personal information for the purpose of direct marketing; and introduce new responsibilities for organisations transferring information overseas.
For the first time, the Privacy Act — by way of the APPs — takes issue with direct marketing, particularly whether or not an individual would reasonably expect an organisation to use and disclose their information for the purpose of direct marketing.
So for every business that collects email addresses and other personal information during the course of their operating procedures and then uses that data to contact lapsed customers or remind them of “special offers” this could well be in breach of the Act.
Regardless of whether organisations offer individuals an “opt-out” mechanism, greater onus is now being placed on how the organisation came to hold the individuals information in the first place.
Individuals will now be able to request that organisations tell them how they got their personal information or request that an organisation doesn’t disclose their information to anyone for the purpose of direct marketing.
This could potentially put an end to the practice of organisations renting data to or from other companies for the purpose of direct marketing, or at least reduce the instances of it.
Privacy Breaches
The reforms also introduce a new scheme for credit reporting — making it possible to be denied any future credit if you miss or pay a loan or credit card payment late — and give the Information Commissioner greater powers over privacy breaches.
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For every business dealing with their customers’ personal information, the new reforms should serve as an impetus to review your current policies relating to data collection to ensure you’re in compliance with the Act. To start with, does your business or website have a readily viewable privacy policy? You can find a variety of free online templates and more at LawLive.
And on a lighter note — Happy Mother’s Day to all the Mum’s out there.
If you are like me, or pretty much any other living, breathing person on the planet with access to the Internet, then you’ve probably Googled someone in the last 24 hours.
Actually, I Googled someone while writing this post; had a gander at their LinkedIn profile and then went about the rest of my business.
If you’re a jobseeker and you need to overhaul your LinkedIn profile, then some things to avoid:
Lying: Lie on your resume à la ex-Yahoo CEO, Scott Thomson, and you’re running the gamut of being found out at some point; lie on your LinkedIn profile and you will definitely get found out (either by a colleague or former employer), but lie on your CV and not your LinkedIn profile: now you’re not only a liar, you’re also a stupid one!
It’s simple: don’t lie. Ever.
Too many recommendations: if a prospective employer is scoping you out — perhaps to verify some of the claims in your CV or interview — and you don’t have any recommendations it’s likely they’ll consider you a dud networker, or worse: a dud employee.
To remedy this, send out a few recommendation requests. But don’t overdo it (when you’re job hunting, for example) — a slew of recommendations all at once makes it obvious you’re job hunting, which your current employer may not think too highly of.
Your job description is vague: maybe you think it’s mysterious, but vague or ambiguous statements in your job description is just plain elusive, and it makes you seem as though you’ve something to hide. Like maybe you’re not as fabulous as you let on you are.
The statement “assisted with the grand opening of a new store” could mean anything. For all we know, you could have put out the plastic cups people were drinking their complementary bubbles from. Instead, write what you actually did. No matter how small the task was.
No photo: this isn’t a beauty contest, nor is it the correct medium to post a picture of yourself drinking from a seven-foot beer bong. But the option to upload a picture is there for a reason.
A picture tells a thousand words and like it or not, visuals are important. If they weren’t, we’d never have to go for an actual job interview.
Ambiguous keywords: choose your keywords wisely; avoid overused buzzwords like “proven track record” or “team-player”. They may sound impressive (to you) but they really aren’t.
Instead of saying you have a proven track record in sales, show people what that proven track record was — if you pitched and won a multi-million dollar account for your company, say that. This turns an empty statement into a quantifiable accomplishment.
The Government announced the self-education cap two weeks ago and since then, speculation has been rife that the cap will deter employees and businesses from undertaking further study.
Of course, costly face-to-face study and post-graduate degrees aren’t the only learning methods available. Online training courses — in all kinds of areas for instance, MYOB, Excel and WordPress — have become popular, not just because of their flexible delivery method, but because online study companies don’t have the same overheads as face-to-face institutions and can offer courses at considerably lower prices — the average cost of an online training course at EzyLearn, for instance, is less than $270!
Although the cap on self-education expenses could do well to be a little higher — $5,000 per person, say — the cap itself won’t deter people from further study; from gaining the power of knowledge. It will only serve as an impetus for individuals and businesses to investigate other non-traditional learning options, such as online study and training methods.
Our Online Courses Below the Cap
For budding entrepreneurs or individuals seeking the skills to start their own business, or to manage a small business, our Small Business Management course is currently only $1,397 — well below the proposed cap.
We have reduced the price of our Small Business Management course, which is usually more expensive, for a limited time to allow you the opportunity to gain the necessary skills you need to start their own business or gain employment managing a small business without exceeding the self-education cap.
Take advantage of this great offer now and enrol in our Small Business Management course; discover the valuable skills you need to successfully manage a small business, including writing a business plan, conducting market research, legal and risk management, and much more!
We are constantly refreshing the content of our MYOB training course so that you are privy to all the latest information you need for becoming a bookkeeper, running your own bookkeeping business, or doing the books for the businesses of others.
Certainly, technology has reshaped the way most of us work, learn and interact with each other. Whether working from home or from an office, many of us spend the bulk of our time online, and for many, it’s not uncommon to feel increasingly disconnected from others, lonely, even. However, in this ever-increasing virtual world in which we live and work, there are ways to combat loneliness — things we’ve probably learned from our mother’s and grandmother’s: to mind our P’s and Q’s.
Everybody Emails
If you are thinking about working from home and running a bookkeeping business in 2013 (or you already do this), it goes without saying that things are substantially different to the way they were 20 years ago; different, even to just 10 years ago. Instead of seeing your clients often and chatting regularly on the phone, you email. On a daily basis, your Inbox fills with emails from clients — emails you rarely read in full, scanning instead for keywords or instructions that you mentally note down for later; the email is then closed. Rarely a response longer than “No problem”, “Done” or “Sure, will do” is sent back (something I’m guilty of myself!).
However, there was a time when a client would have phoned through their request or query, you’d have chatted, built a relationship, and some of the loneliness of working from home would have been assuaged. Today, we rarely indulge in such pleasantries — and we complain we’re lonely.
Building Relationships
But loneliness is so easily rectified, particularly in business. Instead of emailing a one-word email back, engage with your customers. Get to know them; ask them how they are, how business is travelling and, above all, thank them for continuing to do business with you. People like to feel appreciated; they like to feel that they’re not alone in the world.
At EzyLearn, we’re in the business of helping people build profitable businesses working from home. With all of our online training courses, we strive to ensure our online students don’t feel detached or lonely. We know that studying online can sometimes feel like you’re missing out on the student-teacher, student-student interaction, making your road to graduation a long and lonely one. It’s why we implemented the ZenDesk customer support system — to handle and respond to your queries quickly and efficiently — and why we’re also active on social media so you can connect with us quickly and easily, every time.
Next time you feel lonely when working or studying online or from home, perhaps consider whether technology has effectively placed a barricade between you and those around you. Are you likely to be regarded as a real person by your clients, or more a faceless, voiceless email that happens to bear your name? Use technology, instead, to connect (or reconnect) with people — and what better place to start than by saying, “Thank You”!
We made the decision to use WordPress for our website because it’s easy to use, inexpensive yet looks professional. It’s great for blogging and bringing visitors to your website and is also really flexible — with an abundance of features, layout options and plug-ins.
Yet, when it comes to websites, there are still thousands — yes, thousands — of business owners who don’t have one. These are people who still believe in phone books.
Phone Book Uses
Phone books are pretty handy things. They’re handy for fashioning into a makeshift monitor stand to prop up your laptop. They’re handy for wrapping glassware and crockery when you’re moving house. They’re pretty darn handy for killing really big spiders. And if you’ve got a stack of them collecting dust in your garage since, say, 1982, then why not build a fort? Surely that’s pretty handy for someone, somewhere — the kids, maybe?
Phone books are not particularly handy, however, for finding a telephone number or business listing in 2013. Why flick through some-seemingly million pages searching for something you could easily find with a click of your keyboard, a glide over your tablet device, or a quick chat with Siri?
Get a Website
If you’re a business owner and you don’t have a website, our strong advice is: get one! Today, when people are searching for a business, product or service they invariably Google it, so for anyone in business, a website is an essential online marketing tool.
Again, we highly recommend WordPress. Business owners can manage their own content, which gives you enormous flexibility and it comes with a host of attractive themes and options. We offer an online WordPress training course, designed to help you understand things like SEO, working with plugins (including mobile sites and RSS feeds) and much more.
The 7 Website Must Have’s
If you’re a business owner and you already have a website but it looks like a 90’s relic with loads of Clipart, an endless-scroll of 10-point, Times New Roman copy, punctuated periodically by headings that are underlined, in bold and capped off with 73 exclamation points, then it’s time for a makeover.
There are 7 things you must do when building or renovating your website:
1. Establish Goals: Like anything in business, you need to establish some goals for your website. Things like: Why will people visit my website? What information do I want to provide? What do I want people to do next? You need to answer these questions before you begin.
2. Don’t Forget to be Mobile: The Internet is literally in the palm of your hands; so don’t forget to consider a mobile strategy during the planning stage. You’ll need to consider the main reason people will be visiting your site — for information about your products and services, to purchase your products and services, or something else — and build that into your mobile site, make it the most prominent feature.
3. First Impressions: Your website is your brand, your personality, and your reputation all rolled into one. If your website resembles the shambolic mess we described above, that’s how people are likely to view you and your business: as a shambolic mess. Photos from online photo libraries, like iStockPhoto will give your website a professional finish, but don’t forget to add a bit of you into your website. Too many stock-standard images and you run the risk of seeming generic, uninspired, bland. And bland is boring.
4. Keep it Simple: Don’t overwhelm your visitors with too many links, too many choices. This isn’t a Pick Your Own Adventure novel, it’s a website. Ensure your menu and links are intuitive and consistent. If you want to point people to the “contact us” page in your copy, use the same language that’s in your navigation menu — this will eliminate confusion.
5. Use a ‘Call-to-Action’: Your visitors are here for a reason; capitalise on that. Make sure it’s easy for them to find what they’re looking for — display contact details, proceed to checkout links, or your mailing list prominently — and encourage them to take the next step.
6. Less is More: The endless scroll of copy has got to go. It doesn’t matter how multifaceted or interesting your business is, people won’t read it. They don’t care. If you can’t whittle your business and services down to two or three (short) sentences, get someone else to — we recommend you use a professional copywriter.
7. The Need for Speed: Load times are critical. If people can’t open your page within ten seconds — that includes mobile devices — they’ll try a website where they can. If you’re taking your own photos to include on your website, remember that huge files require huge download times. Make sure to reduce the image sizes to a few kilobytes rather than a few megabytes.
You can master the skills to build a fabulous website a lot sooner than you think! Check out the details of our WordPress Course Outline
Online study (or correspondence or distance learning, as it was once known) has long divided people into two camps: those who see online or distance students as being self-motivated and dedicated, and those traditionalists or purists who see face-to-face learning as being, in some way, superior.
Truthfully, both sides are probably right. Face-to-face learning does force interaction between students — a precursor to real-life interaction and networking in business.
Business Means Dealing with People
We have often said that one of the fundamental requirements when starting a business is being able to plan. Another, however, is being able to interact and communicate with people from many walks-of-life. And from time-to-time, this means respecting the ideas and opinions of your colleagues whether you agree or not.
Managing or running a business often has less to do with balance sheets and more to do with managing people, or rather, managing different personalities. To a large extent, these are skills you learn in the playground; the university campus.
But they’re also frequently skills a person either inherently has or hasn’t. University doesn’t teach these skills as much as it brings them out in people already possessing them.
Take Mark Zuckerberg — an ambitious Internet visionary — but someone ill-equipped to deal with people and personalities (it’s Sheryl Sandberg who does that), even though he studied face-to-face at university, where Facebook was born. It’s true that face-to-face learning can sometimes conceal a great deal of unmotivated people — people that require constant direction, attention and supervision.
Online Study: If YOU Like Being in Charge
Online study doesn’t allow you to be unmotivated and in constant need of direction; it’s wholly autonomous and requires students to have a great deal of self-motivation, drive and ambition. These are traits that, for a person completing a course in bookkeeping with the intention to work as a sole-trader, will go a long way in determining your success a business owner.
Online students also show a great deal of technological savvy — the ability to work with new systems without a person at the ready to prompt you or answer your questions is an invaluable trait for business owners that often only have themselves to rely on for guidance.
In many ways, online students are problem-solvers; where it’s human nature to put our hand up for help, online students are forced to really look at the problem-at-hand logically, and thoroughly exhaust their options before sending off an email or picking up the phone.
But like universities don’t teach social interaction — they merely foster it — online study doesn’t teach autonomy. I would say that online students are attracted to online study because they already possess those traits likely to make them successful in business.
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When you enrol in one of our MYOB training courses, you should be happy to know that you’re among a group of self-motivated, ambitious individuals with the drive and determination to succeed.
Together with EzyLearn, you’re on track to become the next small-business entrepreneur.
In the past, we have talked about debtor management, the ways you can avoid late-payers by keeping an eye on your cash and assets cycle, and now we thought it was time we talked about the ways you can keep on top of those outstanding invoices without even lifting a finger!
Why Getting Paid on Time Matters
Dealing with late-payers is frustrating, time-consuming, and at times, downright awkward. For freelancers, sole-traders and small businesses, getting paid on time is essential to keeping your cash flow under control.
If you’re not in the position to turn down those perpetual late-payers’ business, then you need to put strategies into place to best manage those late-payers.
Gentle Email Reminders for Getting Paid on Time
Sending a polite, yet firm reminder email to clients a few days before their invoice becomes due is a good way to remind people an invoice is due to be paid, particularly if you have terms of 21 days or more. Often you’ll find most people will pay you once they’re given a gentle nudge via an email reminder.
Of course, there are always those who’ll still try and stretch it out as long as possible — it’s likely their cash flow isn’t much chop; in a sense, by paying you late they’re robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Most of the time, these clients are hoping you haven’t noticed. By sending them a follow up email reminder a couple of days after your invoice was due will show them you have noticed, you haven’t forgotten, and they’ll likely concede defeat and pay — if they still don’t respond, it may be time to implement some of the strategies we discussed here.
More Stringent Payment Terms
But if you find emailing you clients each time their invoices come due and then again when they’re late is not only time-consuming, but also awkward, try setting up the parameters in your invoicing software so that automatic reminder emails are sent out before and after your invoices come due.
Most cloud-based accounting programs, like Freshbooks, Zoho, Shoebooks, Saasu and Salestastic now offer this automatic reminder facility, freeing you up to concentrate on the other areas of your business.
For businesses that have a dedicated accounts receivable department, the ability to send automatic reminders could, depending on the size of your business, save hours, even days of manpower. Plus, it eliminates any awkwardness you may feel chasing someone for a $50 invoice — sure, that one $50 isn’t much, but over time they do add up.
So get paid on time without even lifting a finger by using the automated reminders in your accounting software.
Remember:If you have already completed one of our MYOB training courses and need a bit of a refresher on the Accounts Receivable module, which deals with the ways to get paid on time, you can review it again for FREE if you are within your 12 month enrolment access period OR if you selected our additional option of Lifetime Access.
The average employer or HR department spends approximately 35 seconds on each resume or CV before deciding to toss it in the “NO” pile or read on. Some employers are not even doing this, opting for technology to search your CV for them.
Resume Mistake #1: No Goal
The most important part of your CV or resume is your goal or objective. People often dwell on spelling and punctuation errors being the most important thing, and while it’s an important consideration, if you’re really serious about a position, then checking for these should be instinctive.
Most people leave writing their objective until the rest of their CV or resume is done. Then they often write a one-size-fits-all, generic summary of the kind of position they’re looking for that’s then regurgitated for each job they apply for. Big mistake! This is the only part of your CV that tells a prospective employer what you’re looking for — use this space wisely.
Resume Mistake #2: Leaving the Reader To Guess What You’ve Done
Don’t wax lyrical about “challenging work environments” and “putting your creativity to good use” — these aren’t quantifiable objectives; save them for your interview.
For example, if you’re applying for a position as a computer engineer, tell them why you want that position and why you’re suited to it, referring to your previous work history. This will get the reader far more interested in your CV.
Also people are often too ambiguous with the actual wording they use. Don’t use vague statements like “assisted with” or “handled” — these leave the reader wondering what you actuallydid.
Your CV should tell employers exactly what your role was — if you wrote and distributed press releases to national media outlets, tell employers that.
But don’t fall into the “my responsibilities involved” or “my duties included” trap — these outline your job description, not how capable you were at your job.
The sentence:
My duties included writing and distributing press releases to national media outlets to publicise the national launch of Revlon’s midnight red lipstick.
would have more impact if it was written as:
To publicise the national launch of Midnight Red lipstick, I wrote and distributed press releases to various media outlets, resulting in national coverage in The Weekend Australian and the Nine National News.
Here, people can see that you’re actually (very) competent at your job.
Resume Mistake #3: Not Using Bullet Points
If you’ve worked somewhere for several years, chances are you did a lot more than write one press release.
This is where writing a three-sentence description for each of your accomplishments becomes impractical — and if you do, your resume is more likely to resemble War and Peace than a CV — a massive turn-off for recruiters.
Bullet points are not only easier to read, they’re also space savers, great for breaking up dense blocks of text.
Wrote and distributed press releases, resulting in national coverage for Midnight Red Lipstick in The Weekend Australian, Nine National News.
Resume Mistake #4: Getting the Length All Wrong
Then there’s the subject of much conjecture: resume length. Some people believe a resume shouldn’t be longer than one page. And in adhering to this rule, there are many resumes out here with an overwhelming amount of 9-point text crammed into one page.
As a general rule of thumb, if you have to choose between crammed-in text and another resume page, go with the latter.
White space is your friend! Use it liberally. There’s nothing more daunting than having to sit and read a page-full of dense text that leaves no safe place to rest the eye.
Would you rather work from home? We help many students operate their own home based business by giving them the software skills to do it. Here are some home based business opportunities from our professional partners.
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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…
