Finally, after 23 years we’re making our training manuals available for sale! Not the ones we created 23 years ago but our latest versions of course.
Training manuals are an important learning tool for our courses because they contain the step-by-step exercises that the course is based around. Our first release of training manuals covers credit management, accounts receivable, accounts payable, data entry of quotes, invoices, purchases and payments – all the things that most businesses need.
Looking through Seek for data entry jobs yesterday reminded me of the training courses we offered when we operated our Dee Why training centre. It was the dotcom boom and MYOB Accounts Receivable and Payable courses were our popular weekend courses but most students needed more basic data entry skills.
Data entry skills include typing, editing documents, entering data into spreadsheets, saving files and then opening, editing and saving them again!
More job seekers have data entry skills but there’s so much more to know about basic Word and Excel usage that employers need you to know.
THE DEFINITION OF a training course has changed a lot over the last 20 years. With new online internet technologies comes new ways of learning. The concept of the “micro course” is gaining momentum as students look for information when they need it, known in the industry as “just in time learning”.
There are lots of time and cost pressures for students as they juggle part-time work, kids and mortgage payments. As a result, we’re launching a brand new Online Training Service for past EzyLearn students AND new students — EzyLearn’s Video Training Library Membership.
The payment plan for the MYOB AccountRight COMPLETE Training Course package for $20 per week has proven to be popular and is still currently available. Better still we’ve just launched a payment plan for the Bookkeeping Academy COMPLETE COMBO – that means you can pay a low weekly fee of $20 and receive training on EVERY major accounting program in Australia, from Beginners’ to Advanced!
The dollar is tanking, trade is down, house prices are still going down, consumer spending is the lowest for a decade, wage growth is slow! It sounds pretty bad when you read the news and business articles isn’t it?
One thing I’ve noticed for sure is that course prices are going down and competition is increasing, not just from other physical training centres in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth but also larger US and overseas companies who will promise anything to make a sale!
We’ve always prided ourselves on offering low course prices direct to students and now we’ve gone a step further.
I’ve written many times in the past about free accounting software but I just discovered a company that has a great Point Of Sale system and is now offering a free invoicing and payment system.
When I compare them to Tesla, I mean they are tech savvy, have a pedigree in digital platforms and provide their services direct to the public – no middle person.
Many experienced BAS agents have told me that data entry, accounts receivable and accounts payable skills are the ones that they’re looking for in potential employees.
Many students who’ve completed a Cert IV in Bookkeeping and Accounting however think they’re above these skills and here’s how you can beat them in job interviews.
Are you chasing money? If so, you’ll probably know the hard way that credit management is about chasing money owed TO a business (Accounts Receivable) and managing the money owed BY a business (Accounts Payable).
Credit can be a very scary thing when money and cashflow is tight! Machines and software are replacing humans for many data entry type tasks, but nowadays this is also the case for chasing money owed (Accounts Receivable).
There are so many wonderful ways business owners are using technology every day for their digital marketing, as well as point-of-sale (POS) and bookkeeping.
Last week I met Cherie. Cherie owns a relaxed cafe in the holiday haven of Forrester’s Beach, NSW, and she let me record a short video of a customer paying for their meal using Square.
IF YOU’RE RECEIVING the job alerts everyday — indeed, you may even have applied for some jobs already — but you’re still not getting called up for interview, then the following questions of doubt may be brewing:
In our educational guide, Bookkeeping Beginner Basics, which you can download from the EzyLearn website for free, you’ll learn how to record journal entries in your accounting software, whether you’re using MYOB, Xero or QuickBooks. Most bookkeeping newbies don’t know what a journal entry is, though, which is what this blog post – the latest in our Bookkeeping Beginner Basics guide companion series – is going to help you to understand.
The journal vs. the general ledger
An accounting journal is the record that keeps accounting transactions in chronological order (i.e., as they occur), while the general ledger is a record that keeps accounting transactions by the account – see our previous post on the chart of accounts [Bookkeeping Beginner Basics: The Chart of Accounts] if you need help understanding what the term ‘account’ means in this context. Before computers, bookkeepers used to log all the financial transactions of a business in paper journals, and then at the end of the month transfer these journal entries into the general ledger, which was divided into various accounts that is now called the chart of accounts, and all the transactions were posted to these accounts using a method called double-entry bookkeeping.
Journal entries using accounting software
Today, however, accounting systems, such as MYOB, Xero, QuickBooks and the like, will automatically record most business transactions into the ledger immediately after the software prepares sales invoices, issues cheques to creditors, or processes receipts from customers, and as such you don’t have to create journal entries for most of your business’s transactions.
That being said, some journal entries still need to be processed, in order to record transfers between bank accounts and to record adjusting entries. You would need to make a journal entry, for example, at the end of each month to record depreciation or to record interest accrued on a bank loan.
Double-entry bookkeeping
If journal entries and general ledgers and the double entry bookkeeping method sound a bit too much, and you think you’d rather stick to the cash-based accounting method instead, prepare yourself for bad news: all businesses, whether they use the cash-based accounting method or the accrual accounting method, use double-entry bookkeeping to keep their books, and all accounting software applications, by default, are set up to adhere to the double-entry method, too. The double-entry bookkeeping method reduces errors and also ensures that your books balance, so as complicated as it may seem, it’s much easier in the long run.
If you still feel a little out of your depth, however, you can hire a reliable bookkeeper to manage your bookkeeping system and deal with all the journal entries and double-entry business for you, instead. Visit the National Bookkeeping website for to find a highly qualified bookkeeper whose experience and skills suit your business needs.
This blog post is part of our Bookkeeping Basics series, which are being published to complement our new educational guide, also titled Bookkeeping Beginner Basics, which you can download for free from the EzyLearn website.
ONE WOULD THINK that an accounting software program that is actually developed by accountants would be the best. However, some believe that the user experience is better with QuickBooks and Xero.
In doing so, it’s interesting to note that QuickBooks, for small business owners, at least, was the clear winner against MYOB in terms of reporting and user experience. But how does QuickBooks stack up against the increasingly-popular Xero? You may be surprised at the results.
DO YOU GET frustrated when you see the little box at the bottom of the BAS lodgement form? You know, the one where they ask how long it took to complete the form because I feel like writing, “It took 10 minutes to complete the form, but 4 hours to do the data entry and bank reconciliation work!”
Junior bookkeepers, accounts receivable and accounts payable clerks, and office administrators will all share that their most time-consuming work is data entry, coding and bank reconciliations. However, there is software available which almost totally automates this work — and it’s becoming increasingly accurate and speedy.
The sales spiels of many of the notable online accounting software packages like QuickBooks, Wave Accounting, Outright, Kashoo, LessAccounting, Clearbooks and even Xero, claim that this feature will save you time and effort as it imports your bank transactions. The truth is, this is not foolproof and won’t work 100 percent of the time (even if it’s just a matter of not being able to get your software and your bank to “connect” just as your mobile phone connection inexplicably doesn’t work sometimes).
Therefore, always double check your bank transaction data has been imported accurately. This said, importing your bank statement into Xero (or whatever accounting software you use) is a really important step in the bookkeeping process that a lot of business owners forget or don’t know how to do. And the technology is only going to get better!
Using the correct format
To import your bank statement into Xero, you must ensure it’s in the correct format. Xero can only work with a CSV file of your bank statement. Depending on your bank, you might be able to download your bank statement as a CSV file from your internet banking, or you will have to create one from scratch.
Creating one from scratch isn’t too difficult. If your bank doesn’t give you the option of downloading a bank statement as a CSV file, you can create one yourself in Microsoft Excel.
You can download an Excel template from Xero. It includes the recommended fields and is already set up as a CSV file, so all you need to do is add in your data.
Set transaction rules
Once you’ve created and uploaded your bank statement to Xero, you’ll need to set up transaction rules for recurring expenses. You’ll learn how to do this in our Cash Flow Reporting, Budgets and ROI Xero Course.
Setting rules for recurring transactions helps speed up the reconciliation process, which depending on the type of business you operate and how often you reconcile your account, can be the most time-consuming part of the process.
Importing your bank statement and creating rules for transactions that occur each week, month fortnight, year, etc, greatly speeds up this process.
No CSV? Use bank feeds
If your business has lots of expenses every week, and your bank doesn’t let you download your bank statement in a CSV format, you may find that manually creating one in Excel each month is too time consuming.
Set up bank feeds instead. Bank feeds is the process of linking all of your business accounts, whether they’re credit cards or bank accounts, to your accounting software, so that each time you make an electronic purchase, it’s automatically imported into your accounting software.
This will allow you to reconcile your account each fortnight, week or more frequently, if you desire, than once a month when your bank statement comes in.
Learn Microsoft Excel from scratch or brush up your Excel skills, at your own pace, with our affordable Excel online training courses — where you get THE LOT (that’s 9 courses in total) for ONE LOW PRICE — everything included! Volume corporate discounts are available and our courses count towards CPD Points. NOW is the time to learn to use Excel, one of the most-used software applications in the world.
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