Expenses are payments made by business owners, employees who have expense accounts and as part of the purchasing department daily procedures.
The Purchasing Department (Accounts Payable) role is orderly and organised because they go through the process of creating purchase orders and then keeping track of services provided, inventory received etc but keeping track of adhoc expenses by employees or trades people when they go about their daily activities can be much more tricky.
One of the best ways to manage Expense tracking is to use receipt capture/scanning software that scans and stores the original source document. Some receipt scanning software goes one step better and extracts the relevant data using OCR. Even better than that is when they extract the data and create the expense transaction (using the correct expense code) into your accounting software.
I ran a CloudPBX Business Telephone System business several years ago that combined products and services just like most tradies – some of the items sold were in the technicians truck while others had to be ordered in for each new installation. It is the perfect case study for our Data Entry, A/R & A/P Courses for MYOB, Xero and QuickBooks courses because I knew about it intimately and it’s very similar to how most tradies operate.
When we design a course we follow these steps:
come up with the scenario,
create the data examples,
run through the scenarios, and then
create the training workbook (then the videos and assessments)
The Xero Data Entry and Credit Management Training Workbook – we call it “Daily Transactions” – is now available separately as an instant download!
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.
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.
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.
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.
In many industries, no two jobs are the same, making estimating job costs and resources tough. Job tracking is one of the best ways to develop an accurate budget and avoid blow outs.
But this can be hard work. Are the latest job costing and tracking functions in MYOB AccountRight, QuickBooks Online and Xero making life easier?
There are plenty of reasons that you have no experience: Changing careers, new graduate or re-entering the workforce after many years away (like when you’ve started a family and been out of the workforce as a parent). These circumstances justify your lack of experience but there are things you can do.
Our team has reviewed the features of some of Australia’s biggest job boards for accounting jobs and we’ve used some of the features that can help job seekers receive notifications when new jobs become available. There is hope and there are things you can do.
Xero is complicated, let’s be honest. I know that Xero tell you the software is beautiful and simple to use but in reality it’s accounting software and if accounting software was easy then everyone would have their BAS’s lodged on time and have no credit risk issues.
It also depends on what kind of past experience you’ve had with accounting and bookkeeping work, but there is a way to up-skill in Xero quickly.
My first thought when a software company changes its navigation (in a significant way) is that there were issues with the previous version.
THIS BLOG POST comes in the wake of Xero promising to improve their navigation in October 2018. Xero has now subsequently released those changes and our online support team are receiving lots of requests for help!
First and foremost, if you’re an EzyLearn student, please note that we’ve already created an update addressing the navigational updates and this is available in all of our online Xero Training Courses.
MANAGING EXPENSES AND capturing source documents, like receipts, is the bane of most accounting department managers. But can this now be done with ease?
Before I sold the business for AccessID/EzyAccess Safety Management software, I used the business credit card for all business-related expenses. However, credit card or not, the Financial Controller for our financial team was constantly asking for hardcopy or electronic receipts.
I RECENTLY HAD the pleasure of visiting the Reckon head office in Sydney to learn more about their new Reckon One product — and it’s quite a compelling offer.
To start with, Reckon, a listed company, was not allowed to sell its accounting practice management software (APS) to its competitor, MYOB, because Xero HQ wasn’t much chop.
Yes, that’s right, Xero HQ was deemed so “insufficient and unsophisticated” that it wasn’t viewed by the ACCC as offering any competition in this marketplace whatsoever and therefore they wouldn’t allow MYOB to hold the monopoly.
This made me, and no doubt, many others, realise just how powerful Reckon could be in the online accounting market if it had the right software offer — and now it does.
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.
WE’VE ENTERED QUARTER 4 for the 2016/17 financial year, so we’ve been writing about the things your business should be doing this quarter in preparation for the end of the financial year. In our last post we wrote about writing off stock and inventory. Now we’re looking at business expenses.
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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.
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