Are you finding work quiet this time of year? We’ve just been handed down our budget and emails are starting to fly around showing what it means to us.
Its the time of year where we find out how well we’ve done financially. It’s the time of year where workers will see how much they can borrow to buy property in the 2025 financial year and where they need to cut back.
Most of this financial information will be worked out using Microsoft Excel.
Most people like to watch some videos about how to use Xero or Excel and then try to replicated it.
This works well when exercise files are provided to help you practice. This is particularly important when you get into the Intermediate Excel training where you learn skills like formatting and formulas.
Tradies are the critical workers in the Australian property market. They’re responsible for new home builds as well as renovations and extensions. Since Covid they have been in hot demand and one builder I spoke to said he use to advertise and not even get one response since Covid.
They also run some of the most complex businesses and need the help of bookkeeping software like MYOB and Xero, particularly where it relates to Project or Job Tracking.
In the 2024 Australian Federal Budget they got some good news.
We’ve just updated our Job Outcomes page to showcase some of the jobs that EzyLearn students apply for. Most of our graduates are looking for Office Admin or Business Admin jobs but others want to start their own business.
There is a huge responsibility in being a receptionist because in many ways you need to know a lot about various parts of the business and the right employees to refer callers to. Imagine you have just started a receptionist job and you can people calling all day long about accounts, sales, technical issues and how their project is progressing!
The one thing I’ve found fascinating in accounting and bookkeeping is watching technology companies try to win clients. I’m not just talking about the special offers, features and pricing but how they use technology to make bookkeeping seamless – to replace some of the bookkeeping tasks!
The most recent event I’ve witnessed is NAB bookkeeper service that has a six month free trial and is $20 per month thereafter.
When you read the fine print it is revealed that Thriday is the technology behind NAB bookkeeper.
I want to thank the following students for choosing EzyLearn and graduating from their Office Admin and Bookkeeping short courses.
At this point we don’t speak with some students again because they have the new skills they want and they use them to find work or do better in their jobs. That is a sad part of the training business for me.
Some students take advantage of our Career Academy services and stay around to get exposure to employers and other students.
There are many finance professionals — who does your business need?
Does your business need a bookkeeper, accountant or perhaps just a BAS agent – or a little bit of everyone?
WE’VE MENTIONED PREVIOUSLY THAT finding a bookkeeper, when you may not know much about bookkeeping, can be a difficult task.
In fact, a lot of new business owners assume their accountant will take care of everything for them, which may be costly if their accountant has to perform a year’s worth of bookkeeping in order to file the business’s tax return. But bookkeepers and accountants can work harmoniously in your business.
As a general rule, every business needs at least two finance professionals working on their business accounts, but which two professionals you’ll need to hire depends on your business needs. If you’re not sure who you need to hire for your business, here’s a cheat sheet to help you out.
Bookkeepers (not registered with the TPB)
An independent bookkeeper not employed by an accountant and not registered with the Tax Practitioner’s Board (TPB) may only perform basic bookkeeping services, such as the
entering of receipts,
coding financial transactions,
generating invoices and purchase orders
accounts receivable and accounts payable
If you hire this type of bookkeeper, you’ll still need an accountant.
BAS agents
BAS agents must, by law, register with the Tax Practitioner’s Board (TPB), which certifies that they are qualified and have completed the necessary continuing education requirements to perform the tasks of a BAS agent, which involves carrying out most of the bookkeeping tasks mentioned above, in addition to preparing and lodging business activity statements on a business’s behalf.
If your business is registered for GST, you will need to file regular activity statements. If you hire a BAS agent, you’ll also need an accountant. In some instances, you may find a BAS agent who’s also a registered tax agent and vice versa, who may be able to take care of all your taxation needs.
Tax agents
Although tax agents, like BAS agents, must also register with the Tax Practitioner’s Board (TPB), a tax agent is focused on income tax — how much income you have to declare, how much you can claim back, etc.
This is distinct from a BAS agent who is concerned with the day-to-day financial tasks of your business (bookkeeping and BAS lodgements). That said, some tax agents will also perform some the basic bookkeeping tasks on a regular basis, though they primarily specialise in lodging tax returns.
If you’re not registered for GST, and your tax agent will also perform regular bookkeeping tasks (or you can do it yourself), you may not need to hire an accountant. In some instances, you may find a tax agent who’s also a registered BAS agent and vice versa, who may be able to take care of all your taxation needs.
Accountants
An accountant is mostly concerned with planning and strategy. Unlike bookkeepers and BAS or tax agents, an accountant will assess and advise you on what actions you should take to maximise your income. Great accountants will get involved with planning the direction of your business and ensure it’s been structured properly and that you’re meeting any additional tax obligations.
They’ll also help you to make strategic purchases for equipment and machinery, and work with your BAS agent or bookkeeper to ensure these decisions are reflected in your daily financial records. An accountant is also able to prepare and lodge tax returns on your behalf.
How much should I pay a bookkeeper?
Check out the National Bookkeeping Directory, which features the details of bookkeepers, capable of doing data entry and clerical tasks, through to high-level accounting work as undertaken by BAS agents, accountants and CFOs.
You can also see the National Bookkeeping rates page to find out what level bookkeeper your business needs.
The features that each of these companies provide is invaluable for businesses. We can’t do without most of them in some way and when they started you, like me, probably turned on all the features and opted into their “labs” to test out new features. Then things changed.
These companies are now mature and they command respect as market leaders. Their financials are also very healthy because they’ve managed to monopolise some aspect of their market. These are some of the things that has happened to me over the years, has this happened to you?
I’m a Google fan, from the simplicity of using most of their software programs to their low cost services I’ve always loved how they compare to Microsoft who charge a licence fee for their software.
But once upon a time I was a Microsoft fan because of the low cost model they had compared to Apple.
I’m watching this Artificial Intelligence race with interest (everyone on Linkedin is commenting about it) but I noticed something recently that shocked me.
Are you earning $50 per hour at the moment? If you aren’t it can seem almost impossible to believe that you could, particularly when you look at your boss and imagine yourself asking them for a pay rise.
I searched online to see who earns $50 per hour and most of the search results in Seek and Indeed showed up saying you have to be a doctor, pharmacist or HR Manager but bookkeepers earning this much regularly.
The constant need for some companies to continue to grow revenue or subscriber numbers can make the employees do things too aggressively.
Xero has always done a great marketing job against MYOB because it was easy – all they had to do was have good software that was easier to use and in the cloud – now they’re ALL in the Cloud!
Xero focused on a cloud only model and the integrations between it and other online software programs. This was a marketing strategy that may have stretched the truth a little!
MYOB’s problem was that is WAS a Windows based software program. This made using the software harder because you had the constraints of running only on a Windows computer and had to upgrade that software regularly. It also caused issues with their Mac version and they ended up having to discontinue that software and push their Mac users straight to their Cloud version, MYOB Essentials.
I recently wrote about the Internship opportunities for selected business and office administration training courses – this work can all be done online, remotely working from home.
One of the best things about running an online training business is that we can deliver our courses to the thousands of students who live in remote parts of New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland and the rest of Australia!
Read on to discover how you can up-skill and learn how to become a remote working virtual assistant performing business and office administration work from your own home
One success story worth watching in Australian grocery retailing is Aldi. With their special buys, weekly catalogue and well known overseas brands (that no one knows here) they have an unbelievable advantage in price and differentiation.
One thing they did that really stood out to me a couple years ago was their $299 toilet offer, including installation. Who else includes installation as part of the sale of something that NEEDS installation!
Harvey Norman do and both operate a certain way to do it.
The tricky parts of this marketing strategy are:
Installation quality can vary from site to site
Installation issues can vary massively depending on how old the home is
Co-ordinating plumbers in every suburb is a huge job
Managing the ordering of trades for new purchases is a customer service hot spot
Aldi nailed it all and provided a good quality product and service. How do I know? I tried it out!
Business Course – How to create a Perfect Joint Venture
Learn how they created a Joint Venture that enabled them to sell a product that is normally delivered and installed by a trades person.
Not only did they sell a good quality product at a good price but they also helped their Joint Venture partner earn some money too.
One of the biggest risks that trades people have is credit risk, particularly the credit risk of supplying a product AND a service and copping the risk on both items.
Harvey Norman and Aldi use “perfect scenario installations” to sell their products. Very few installations are perfect so most people will need extra services and that is how both parties benefit from the Joint Venture.
Digital Marketing, Customer Service and Sales Training
Creating the perfect marketing offer is a strategy to increase sales but the follow through and communications from your team is what makes it successful.
The Targeted Ads, Customer Service and Training course gives you the knowledge and tools to create marketing strategies that provide results that you can measure.
It is built for micro businesses who sell products and services and one of the case studies is someone starting a bookkeeping business.
Daily Transaction bookkeeping using Xero and MYOB Courses, and
Courses in Payroll Administration using Xero and MYOB.
The Online Business Admin Course is well priced and includes most of the skills you need to perform the work but you also get access to the FREE Student Inclusions shown here.
Office Administration and Business Administration Complete Training Courses Combined
If you have decided to go all the way with your office and business administration skills and/or want an ongoing resource for your work or business I present to you the Office + Business Administration Certificate Course.
This includes all skill levels from beginners to advanced skills in the leading bookkeeping software programs and Microsoft Office – including the Microsoft Forms bonus course.
Enrol into and complete this course and if you join the Bookkeeping Academy we’ll take you on as an intern!
We’ll create an online profile for you to help you get discovered online and pass on leads for bookkeeping work or tutoring clients.
We receive a lot of inquiries from students who are interested in changing careers to do accounting work or become a bookkeeper and you DO need to know about bookkeeping to do this work.
This training manual goes through and explains common transaction types that relate to:
Assets,
Liabilities,
Income, and
Expenses
You don’t need bookkeeping knowledge to do an EzyLearn Xero or MYOB Course
Apart from the bonus Basic Bookkeeping training manual the reason you don’t need to have prior bookkeeping knowledge is because we lead you through all the transactions in a logical, well explained course.
We’ll show you step-by-step how to perform the bookkeeping transaction you’ll enter when you work for an employer.
One of the hardest things about creating an accounting course is designing the flow of transactions for students to enter to ensure that they receive comprehensive knowledge. We’ve been refining our office admin and bookkeeping courses for over 25 years using case studies of different business types and with the help of our humorous business owner, Jerry Lame.
Learning bookkeeping can be fun and we try to combine serious knowledge with humorous and REAL case studies of what really goes on in many businesses.
Bookkeeping Academy MYOB & Xero Courses
MYOB and Xero are completely different software programs and MYOB has several versions! For the most comprehensive bookkeeping training we offer these courses in a combination package and at a discounted price.
Bookkeeping Academy courses also include an online listing to help you get discovered by local businesses and employers.
Do you remember what happened during the Covid 19 pandemic? Apart from the sick people, vaccine mandate and isolation the biggest difference has been the cost of it all and it seems like we are STILL paying for it!
Real estate prices are up a ridiculous amount as well as the cost of almost everything: Petrol, food, rent and Interest rates – all up. If you have a mortgage you will know exactly what I’m talking about.
Some people think that it is the result of the cost of all that spending by our governments but I don’t want to get political!
I’m writing to let you know of our current promotion for most COMPLETE course packages – Pre Covid pricing. Check out the offers and enrol now and learn at your own pace.
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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…
