Category: Small Business Productivity

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Running Multi-Period Profit and Loss Statements

multi-period-profit-and-loss-statement-reporting

Be Aware of the Ebbs and Flows of Your Business: Multi-Period Profit and Loss Reporting

Nearly every business has its busy periods and its quiet ones. Crucial to the success of a business is knowing when these busy periods and quiet ones occur, so you can capitalise on them.

For a lot of Australian businesses offering professional services, December through January is usually when business winds down for the year. In the hospitality and accommodation industry, however, it’s typically the busiest time of the year, so planning for increased business is essential. Continue reading Running Multi-Period Profit and Loss Statements

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The Secret to an Error-Free BAS Report

What To Do So You Don’t Lose Money When Doing Your BAS – 6 steps

If your business is registered for GST, it means you have to file regular activity statements with the ATO, usually each quarter. A lot of business owners export their Business Activity Statement (BAS) data straight from their accounting software, like MYOB or QuickBooks, and quickly prepare their BAS’ that way. But this is an imprecise method, and one that could be costing you money.

Tracey Marino, an experienced bookkeeper based in Rockingham, WA, knows how important it is that businesses of all sizes keep their Business Activity Statements error-free so as not to end up costing business owners money.  Continue reading The Secret to an Error-Free BAS Report

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5 x MYOB Training Courses and 12 Months Access

MYOB Training Courses delivered in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth, Darwin and HobartMYOB Courses

Because it’s the beginning of the year we are receiving a lot of calls from students who are looking to do an MYOB Course so we are thrilled to confirm that we offer access to ALL of our MYOB Courses for one low price and 12 months course access.

When we say ALL, we mean

Why All MYOB Courses for One Price?

You can follow our journey from operating training centres in Sydney’s Dee Why, to the decision to go 100% online at the About EzyLearn page on our website, but I’ll sum it up in 1 paragraph here:

We can guarantee consistent course content to every student, with MYOB Course content developed over 15 years in teaching people how to use MYOB and from some of the best MYOB Trainers in Australia. By creating our own MYOB courses and updating them we are able to focus on the content of our courses as well as the systems to support it online rather than paying for office rent, computers and software licences, trainers and advertising.

MYOB Course Options

The only decision you need to make is whether you want an MYOB certificate and 12 months or lifetime course access. Remember that unlike some MYOB course providers our students can move freely from one course to the next as they please and use the course as a resource while at their new job or operating their own bookkeeping business.

MYOB Videos, Training Workbooks and Knowledge Reviews

With a 100% focus on MYOB Course content we create every form of training material for MYOB accounting software: Videos, Workbooks (with step-by-step exercises) and Knowledge Reviews that test your skills. You can watch a video and try to replicate it with the free MYOB software or follow the exercises in the MYOB Trainingg Workbooks to perform tasks that bookkeepers perform every day in their working environment.

Money-back Guarantee

When we were the first training company to offer MYOB courses online in 2008 we offered the money-back guarantee because not everybody had great broadband Internet speeds, not everyone knew how to navigate around websites and online learning management systems and people where generally scared to use their credit card online. Now-a-days we find that the biggest reason some students find it a comfort is because many students are Mac users and are not sure that they would learn by using MYOB Course content created for the Windows versions of the MYOB software.

Why Thousands of Students Choose EzyLearn for MYOB EVERY Year

We use the Content Marketing approach to building our brand and product awareness and it takes a lot of effort to put the amount of detail we put on our website and in our blog posts. We do it because it shows an ongoing commitment to openness but also to leave no doubt as to exactly what we offer and how we support it. If you want to get to know more about us read some of our blog posts or watch some sample videos. If you are ready to enrol into an online MYOB course then enrol now online and start by 5pm next business day!

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69% of MYOB Skills Test Students Failed – Would You?

MYOB Skills Test and online training coursesMYOB Skills Test

It’s that time of the year again when people are acting on their new years resolutions and embarking on training to improve their knowledge and skills. In 2011 we introduce a free MYOB online skills test that anyone can do to test their knowledge of MYOB software and it interesting to see that the average score has increased from 40% to 55% over the last 4 years!

What more interesting is that most attempts resulted in a fail score – 69% of students failed to pass. You can do the test several times if you want and if you get an answer wrong the skills test can show you the correct answer – it helps you learn.

We have a test like this at the end of each section of each course (ie. there are lots of them) and we focus on using them to help students consolidate what they’ve learnt as well as show them what the correct answer is. We see our knowledge reviews as a teaching aid rather than something to be scared of.

If you are interested in learning how to use MYOB to find bookkeeping work or start your own bookkeeping business look at what is included in our MYOB Courses (5 courses for the price of one) and start your journey on a new career or the flexibility of having your own bookkeeping business.

 

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Who really cares about Sensis? Yellow Pages? Content Marketing shows you care

content marketing versus yellow pages and sensisYellow Pages vs Content Marketing?

A client of ours showed me an email that came from Sensis and it looked a little sad. It showed how many times an ad appeared and how many people clicked for more information. The saddest part is that this Billion dollar company is now just another online directory. It’s another example of how a traditional business, that hires professional and persistent sales people to sell high cost packages is dying an accelerating death. The other large one I recall was Encyclopaedia Britannica – remember those door to door salesmen who made a good income selling these for your children’s benefit? OK, now I’m assuming you’re over 45 😐

Why Content Marketing

We decided many years ago to go down the blogging route because it makes sense. These days the correct term for blogging for business is “Content Marketing” and it’s great because it’s a way of:

  1. Constantly informing readers,
  2. Demonstrating an active business and website
  3. Informing website visitors about changes in the business,
  4. sharing stories about how people use our services and
  5. Making general announcements.

How Bad is the Yellow Pages Directory Going?

Telstra recently offloaded their majority ownership in the Yellow Pages business they branded as Sensis and in the fine print on page 15 (2013 year) and page 18 (2014 year) you can see that the revenue for this business declined by 11.7% and 22% respectively.

I remember when most local tradies (plumbers, electricians, chippies, builders etc) would spend tens of thousands of dollars per year to keep their position in the large display ads. I even remember the days of the golden phone that Yellow Pages use to make available to business to PROVE just how many phone calls would be coming in the door as a result of advertising with them. If anyone remembers the golden phone offer I’d love hear from you on our Facebook page..

Where do you spend your marketing money?

The idea for this blog post came as a result of being forwarded an email, but it ties in nicely with our Small Business and Startup Course which is now available at a hugely discounted price! Read on to see how we changed our pricing structure.

Marketing and Communication course for small businessIn this course we have two subjects which cover marketing for small business and we have some great interviews with Michael Locke who shares information about the 4P’s. Sensis would represent an excellent case study of where the marketing function may not have been submersed in the strategy business decision making to stem this significant change in their business model.

Small Business Management and StartUp Course

The recent change we made to this course was to separate the business coaching and assessment options and make them available separately. In this way the Small Business and StartUp course is much like our MYOB course where you can work through everything at your own pace and request support if you need it.

If you are interested in doing a number of different courses as well as the Small Business Management course you might want to enrol at the Australian Small Business website where you can choose our software courses at a discounted price (when combined with the small business management course). This way you’ll be able to use WordPress for your content marketing, MYOB or Xero for your accounts and Excel for any spreadsheet work.

References:

Telstra Annual Reports 2013, and 2014

PS. By the way, you can still get Britannica and online it’s just under $70 pa. You can also still buy the printed edition for under $700 and you can pay $2500 for a whopping collection of short stories, plays and poems..

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Do You Really Need to Be Nice in Business?

Being nice in business
It may be difficult at times, but it really does pay to be nice in small business.

In our Small Business Management Course, you learn all about starting and managing a small business. One thing we don’t teach, however, is customer service.

In fact, it’s often said that the golden rule of customer service is that the customer is always right, even when they’re wrong.

But what happens with your suppliers, when you’re technically the customer — does this give you free reign to be as demanding as you like? Or does it pay to be nice? Continue reading Do You Really Need to Be Nice in Business?

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Invoice Your Customers Directly Using PayPal

We were recently surveying our PayPal account and discovered that you can now invoice customers directly using PayPal. While it doesn’t eradicate the need for a good piece of accounting software, this facility makes it very easy for people to get started in business — particularly businesses with very few expenses. Continue reading Invoice Your Customers Directly Using PayPal

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When Should You Work for Free?

It's ok to do work for free, but your clients should be made aware of the extra value you're adding.
It’s ok to do work for free, but your clients should be made aware of the extra value you’re adding.

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?

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Will vs Skill: How Desirable are Your Employees in the Workplace?

Employees possessing both will and skill are the most desirable in the workplace.
Employees possessing both will and skill are the most desirable in the workplace.

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.

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Keep Your Staff Engaged and Boost Morale with an Induction Training Program

An online induction can be a great way to open up the lines of communication with new and existing staff.
An online induction can be a great way to open up the lines of communication with new and existing staff.

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.

Why is Morale Significant?

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.

‘Talk’ to Your People

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.

Induction — A Great Way to Open Up the Lines of Communication

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.

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For more information on online induction training programs, visit our website or contact us for a free quote today.

Online bookkeeping accounting training courses for CPD points

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.

 

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Induction Training: What Info Should You Include?

You'll be surprised how much information new employees lack - something which can easily be remedied by an online induction program.
You’ll be surprised how much information new employees lack – something which can easily be remedied by an online induction program.

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.

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Marketing Hacks: What Kind of Business Should Advertise in the Paper?

Advertising in your local newspaper can be great if you're offering your services to a local market.
Advertising in your local newspaper can be great if you’re offering your services to a local market.

There’s a module in our Small Business Management Course about marketing and undertaking marketing activities, and in that module you learn about researching the market and determining the best mediums to use to advertise your business.

With the advent of the Internet and social media, there’s been a lot of discussion about declining advertising revenues in newspapers, which has led many business owners and marketers to erroneously think that advertising in the newspaper is no longer efficient.

But really, advertising in the paper is just as efficient as it ever was – it all depends on the business and whether a newspaper is the right medium for it.

So what businesses should advertise in the paper?

Where Oh Where to Advertise?

The answer to that question really depends on the business and the newspaper. For a local business, like a restaurant or a retailer or a plumber looking for local customers, a newspaper that’s highly read and engaged with by the local community is definitely the way to go, as opposed to a larger metropolitan newspaper.

But it’s important that you consider why you’re advertising in the first place. If you’re looking to build brand awareness, a regular advertisement in a relevant section – such as dining, or professional services, for example – over a significant period of time will pay off.

If you’re looking for new customers and fast, then a smaller number of ads, towards the front of the paper clearly advertising that you’re opening soon or running a special deal will deliver the immediacy you’re looking for.

How Far Will People Go?

It’s important to remember that the majority of people don’t travel further than between 3 and 3.5 kilometres to do their groceries, and a maximum of about 12 kilometres for larger purchases like a car or white goods.

This is what makes local newspapers highly efficient for local businesses, whereas national businesses find both local and national newspapers efficient in delivering their customers.

Global Reach

But what if you’re not looking for local customers from any specific region because you’re an online business whose customers can reside anywhere in the world?

In this instance, a local newspaper, while it would deliver a number of highly engaged customers, would only deliver a small section of your target market, making it highly costly.

While metropolitan or national newspapers would work better here, they still wouldn’t deliver those overseas customers. This is where online and social media advertising may work better for you, assuming that it’s highly targeted the your ideal customer.

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The key to successful marketing is always understanding exactly who your customer is. This comes from efficient market research prior to starting your business. It’s for this reason that we recently introduced a new short course called the originate and develop new concepts course, which takes you through the all-important first step of business: researching the market.

For more information on our originate and develop new concepts course, visit our website or contact us for more information.

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Induction Training is Most Important for Contractors

Online inductions are vital for keeping contractors safe and informed.
Online inductions are vital for keeping contractors safe and informed.

In a recent post, we mentioned how our MYOB training courses are like an induction into the role of a bookkeeper; we’ve also written about how to engage your staff with your work, health and safety training material. But induction training doesn’t just deal with the potential safety risks contractors may encounter at your organisation.

Who is a Contractor, Exactly?

The word ‘contractor’ doesn’t just relate to tradespeople, like plumbers or electricians, who may come to your business to perform work. It also refers to the IT or marketing consultants or temp workers who regularly come to your office to work.

Even though they are usually employed by another organisation, or perhaps even self-employed, while they are at your office or premises you are still bound by a duty of care to ensure their safety.

This means providing them with work, health and safety training – although they are not required to provide a safe work method statement (SWMS). (That is a requirement only for tradespeople.)

Induction for Info Beyond Safety

But safety aside, it’s important you provide induction training that also covers where contractors can refer customers for customer service or more detailed product information.

Induction training is even necessary to advise contractors of common things, such as where they can find parking, where local amenities – like cafés and train stations – are.

Many companies provide this information in the form of hard copy ‘welcome packs’, but it’s much easier and more efficient – particularly if your organisation uses contractors often – to deliver this induction information using an online training course.

Further, besides creating and updating the training material itself, online induction training courses require very little maintenance. And the training material can be as simple or elaborate as you like. By delivering your course online, you can add steps to ensure people actually read the material. It’s as simple as creating the course in PowerPoint, recording your audio and uploading it to your learning management system.

The Importance of Due Diligence and Morale Building

The most important part of an induction training course is that it shows evidence of due diligence. That is; you have made a concerted effort to ensure contractors are aware of certain process and procedures within your organisation.

Induction training is also an important aspect of building team morale. Whether it’s among your permanent staff members or contract and temp workers, if the morale within your organisation is low, your business will suffer as a result.

A key way to build team morale is to ensure your staff, contractors and temp workers understand what is expected of them in terms of performance – and what they can expect of you in return.

And though no one likes to think about the negative things like this, induction training is very important should you ever find yourself involved in legal action over something a contractor should have known about.

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If you would like to learn more about induction training for your organisation, visit our website, or request a quote from us.

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Small Business Finances: Should You Start Your Business in the Red?

Don't fall into a credit trap by running into debt to finance your small business before you even have your first customer.
Don’t fall into a credit trap by running into debt to finance your small business before you even have your first customer.

The ‘Plan small business finances module‘ of our Small Business Management Course takes students through the steps to creating a financial plan for their small business. Many small businesses get loans and credit from banks and other finance institutions, but how wise is it to get into debt before the doors to your business are even open?

Is Credit the Best Way?

About 20 years ago, the only way businesses could make payments easily was to apply for a credit card from a bank. The bank would then give you an amount of credit, $5000 say, and the more you used it, the more credit you would be offered.

This is great if you have the means to pay it back immediately – and if you do actually pay it back immediately. However, if you’re like most people, having access to large sums of money that can be paid back at a later date – in 30 days, 55 days, 3 months – can lead down a dangerous path for your small business.

Start-Up Finance

We spoke to one entrepreneur who had an idea to start a gourmet packaged meals business aimed at a demographic of busy professionals. He had planned to go the conventional route and borrow $200K to finance his start-up; even though at this point, he didn’t have a single customer.

But there were plenty of other options available to get his business off the ground, rather than getting into debt before he even had his first customer. We suggested using another company’s equipment, contracting the manufacture of the products to another company, or re-branding an already existing product.

The term used in the start-up community for using your own money is called bootstrapping. But it’s one way to guarantee that you will do all the research and determine the most cost efficient way to run your business before outlaying substantial sums of money on equipment or other overheads.

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With new technologies like cloud-based software and high-speed internet, many small business owners have been able to significantly reduce their overheads, which has enabled them to avoid starting their business in the red.

Business is about taking calculated risks for a reasonably predictable reward and it really all comes down to research and knowledge. Live with an asset mentality and don’t get caught in the credit trap. You’ll find out all the best financing options for your small business in our Small Business Management Course.