Posted on August 24, 2015August 19, 2015 by Steve Slisar

Seriously, Why Wouldn’t You Use WordPress for Your Website?

Finding Income Opportunities for EzyLearn Students

We’ve had some exciting news in the last couple of weeks: EzyLearn students who are completing the MYOB Training Courses and WordPress Courses are starting to earn money because we’re helping them get customers AND improve their skills!

I’ve been working with the team at Workface and we’re assembling a training and mentoring program to help EzyLearn students start and operate a business from home. The best part of this, and something I am passionate about, is that we’re helping people from all over Australia become remote contractors (teleworkers, call it what you want) and work from anywhere via the Internet.

Yes, you can start a business & work from home

I recently wrote about how cloud-based software is enabling people who live in regional Australia perform work for businesses in the capital cities (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide etc) and also about the Teleworking hubs that are starting to appear around the country as part of the evolution of people living outside the cities and working at home or close to home.

You may also recall that we’ve also launched the Startup Academy this year to provide formalised and structured training and mentoring support. It’s for you so if you are interested in starting a business and working from home we’ve teamed up with some products/service providers to give you a flying start and projects to start on right away.

Explore running your own business from home now

Bright VIC to Melbourne Virtual Assistant is doing content marketing for infant massage business in Sydney — Imagine travelling this far to work for a client. Content Marketing can be done from anywhere

There are opportunities to provide office/admin support services, content marketing, business telephone systems and IT support and of course bookkeeping services and if you’d like to start a business in one of these areas then explore the business opportunities.

When you sign up and join our team you’ll gain exposure to many new online (cloud-based) software and services that enable us to:

collaborate,
share files,
work on project together,
set and manage goals and daily tasks,
turn to each other for support,
create and build your own online profile, and
many more skills that will enable you to work for yourself and generate your own income, no matter where you live.

Remember our goal is to help you start a business and work from home – NO MATTER WHERE YOU LIVE. Helen from Bright is our latest virtual assistant and she is doing some website design and content marketing for an infant massage business starting up in Sydney’s Northern Suburbs! I looked at a Google Map and discovered that she’d have at least 3 hours travel if she wanted to work in her nearest capital city!

Are you looking for someone to help you in your business?

We’re going to document our journey with these remote contractors and share with you some of the growth they go through as they grapple with the new frontier of internet working.

If you are a business looking for any of these services you can Find a Contractor through Workface and our team can get to work for you too.

[button link=”http://workface.com.au/services/find-contractor/”]Find a Contractor[/button]

Posted on August 20, 2015May 26, 2016 by Steve Slisar — 2 Comments

Is Xero now more appealing because of Inventory Management?

MYOB Account Right Plus Has Inventory Management, But…

Yarra Junction to Melbourne city for online MYOB, Excel, Xero training courses The premium MYOB product with the PLUS on the end of its name has always come with Inventory and Payroll. These have been the major services that justify the premium price that users have been willing to pay. Now Xero comes with it as standard! Is it another nail in MYOB’s coffin?

The great thing about Sue…

Sue highlights yet again one of the great features about running an online business and working remotely in the cloud. Any business can work with staff or remote contractors from anywhere (in the world!). Sue is located over one hour’s drive from Melbourne and I’m sure the commute would be hell – it would cost her time and money in transport – yet because we operate on online environment our team are all over Australia! No more travel time, no more traffic, no more sitting in a carpark on the city roads in peak hour. Just a good internet connection and some competent computer skills and we’re off.

If you’re not sure by now, you’ll be happy to know that my focus has always been to help people learn how to use software. Why? So they can get the job they’re after or start their own business. If you like, you can watch a short video (sorry for not shaving for it!) where I talk about my Work at Home Seminar (or WAHSeminar) which is a program we’re constantly working on to help people operate a business or telework from their own home.

If you haven’t already read about it, read the blog I wrote about teleworking centres that are springing up all over regional areas of Australia. Make sure you ‘like’ this blog and share it with your friends on Facebook because the more we all encourage teleworking and the use of technology the more we’ll be able to take back dozens of lost hours each week in travel time (and cost).

All existing Xero course students receive this training

Like all EzyLearn courses, we offer all our training courses for one low price and include every training resource we create. This Xero training course content is the same – every student who has enrolled into the Xero course within the last 12 months will be able to access these new training resources when they’re published.

If you are a business looking to move across to Xero, feel free to write your questions or comments. If you are trying to find a way of working from home, please make contact. We’d love for you to share with us what you are going through. We can very probably help – and others can learn from it.

Posted on August 13, 2015August 13, 2015 by Steve Slisar

How does $20,000 mortgage repayments equate to $47,598.02?

Microsoft Excel Course now includes a mortgage spreadsheet

A mortgage for your home is a huge debt, particularly for those living in the swelling capital cities with soaring house prices. The pro and cons of buying your own house and living in it are:

You don’t pay capital gains tax on a property you live in, but
You can’t claim the interest component of your loan

The big problem with this is the interest charge – you can’t claim the cost of it yet it’s a massive component of each and every payment you make on your mortgage. You’d need your house price to go up at least at the interest rate you are paying to make it a good investment – and right now you’d be doing fine (perhaps except in Perth now).

Bigger payments reduce the interest paid

Our Microsoft Excel Training Course now includes an Excel spreadsheet file that will help you see just how much money you’d save if you paid even a small amount off extra each month!

You can use the mortgage comparison file to compare two mortgages, make extra payments or even shorten the term of the loan to see how much you’d need to pay each month if you want to pay your mortgage off quicker.

If you are an existing Excel Course student you’ll find the new file at the end of our Microsoft Excel Advanced Course 309.

Take 10 years off your mortgage while its easy to

I don’t want to turn this into a financial education blog, but there are several reasons to open this spreadsheet and start seeing the resulting figures to workout the best way to allocate the money you earn. Interest rates are at record lows, house prices ‘may’ be peaking, some people say that Australian banks are so highly leveraged to the residential property market that they’ll need to hold more capital reserves.

Either way you look at it, why not use your Microsoft Excel skills and play with some calculations to see how much better off you could be if you are financially prudent now. You can also use this Microsoft Excel file to do a stress test and see how much your mortgage would be if interest rates do go up as many people expect they will.

Free Microsoft Word Course (or Xero Accounting) when you enrol in Excel Certificate Course

Note that if you enrol into Microsoft Excel Courses and choose the certificate option you’ll receive a BONUS course in either Microsoft Word (to create a professional resume) or Xero Accounting! Read our BONUS course offer announcement.

Posted on August 10, 2015August 11, 2015 by Steve Slisar — 1 Comment

Free Xero Course with Excel and MYOB Courses

It’s a Good Year for Xero Cloud Accounting

Many accountants and businesses are now using Xero instead of MYOB so it’s important for bookkeepers to be trained in this.

It’s been a surprising year this year for our Xero Training Courses. Xero must be doing something right with their marketing and strategy because we’ve seen a significant increase in the number of students enrolling for this course.

I was just speaking with one of our students only recently and she mentioned that of all the software programs she uses (and she uses them all) that Xero makes bookkeeping so easy that some of her clients who’ve gone onto it have reduced the number of hours that they employ her!

[quote]It’s a scary thought if you are an independent contractor who doesn’t have a professional services agreement in place for regular work with their clients, but it’s also a sign of the times for bookkeepers in the cloud (online) software era.[/quote]

The biggest reason for the ease of use? Bank Feeds. See below for our free Xero course offer..

Do Bookkeepers Need to Change What They Do?

I recently wrote about content marketing and whether a bookkeeper is someone who can discuss or even recommend this service to the people they work for. The best way to think about this is how the bookkeeper role works in many companies, for example, do small businesses look for a bookkeeper who can provide a wider range of services than just bookkeeping? It’s common for a bookkeeper to work in the administration areas of a small business because finance and administration go hand in hand and it’s common for contractors who understand cloud based services to delve into and explore other cloud based services.

I was speaking to another bookkeeper who is a Registered BAS Agent about her website and online marketing and she was telling me about all these fantastic things she was doing to promote her own business.

[quote]After talking to her for an hour I started thinking that she is a good person to talk to about Internet marketing – and that perhaps she starts offering these services to her clients too![/quote]

In the end it often depends on the size of a bookkeepers clients and the type of work they want to do. When you develop your bookkeeping and accounting skills you become more valuable as an accounts contact, particularly as a Registered BAS Agent, however you can become more of a small business administrator if you are aware of how to manage many different parts of the business.

It’s a Great Time for Free Xero Courses with MYOB Course enrolment

Sorry, I digress.

[box type=”tick” size=”large” style=”rounded” border=”full”]What I really wanted to announce was our new fantastic special offer of a free Xero course or Microsoft Word course when you enrol into a Microsoft Excel or MYOB Training Course with EzyLearn.[/box]

Xero is great to know if you want to delve deeper into the various software programs available to do bookkeeping (and a great tool to offer if you want to operate a bookkeeping business from home). Microsoft Word is a great program to master if you want to create documents for yourself or the business you work for and the tool of choice for creating a great resume so you can get that next job you’re going for.

Posted on July 28, 2015July 28, 2015 by Steve Slisar — 1 Comment

Don’t pay for Microsoft Word when you enrol into Excel or MYOB Training Courses

It’s not a freebie we’re proud of

I recently asked our course development team to review the contents of our online Microsoft Word course and got some feedback about the versions we’re currently using in that course. Let’s just say that although the structure of the course is excellent and it takes students from the basics to intermediate and advanced tools using Microsoft Word, we use an earlier version of Word in most of the Workbooks and Training videos. The RESULT – we are offering the Microsoft Word Courses for free for any student who enrols into our Microsoft Excel or MYOB Accounting Training Courses from the www.ezyLearnonline.com.au website!

This offer is available for a limited time only and may be withdrawn at any time.

[quote]Microsoft Word Training Course is currently free when you enrol into Microsoft Excel Course or MYOB Training Courses.[/quote]

Commitment to Improve

The excuses are that we were focussing on MYOB, Xero, Excel, WordPress and the Small Business Management and Marketing courses AND our new National Bookkeeping service, but the truth is that we didn’t give the Word course enough attention and that makes me sad. So, we are currently creating updated workbooks and videos so our students will once again have not only beginners to advanced Word courses for the one price, but also several different versions included for the one price – just like we do for our Microsoft Excel and MYOB Training Courses.

The great news for students who enrol into this Microsoft Word Course is that they’ll also have access to all of the updates and new course content we’re currently creating!

You’ll still learn a lot

As I was writing this blog post I realised how fantastic the Internet is. How it enables me (and all other small businesses) to speak to their students and prospective students and make offers like this one. Although I am not proud of the fact that we haven’t updated our Word course the same way we have with our Microsoft Excel Training Courses it is still a fantastic course that covers LOTS of topics that are relevant regardless of which version you use.

Knowledge covered in the course includes tools that will help you make a professional looking proposal, letterhead, flier, brochure, pricelist and many other important documents for small businesses. These skills are relevant regardless of how the navigation changes between the versions and they include:

tabs and tables,
styles and tables of contents,
ruler and margin settings,
how to manage data in a mail merge etc
text, paragraph and page formatting
headers and footers
inserting and aligning with images
working with text boxes and text wrapping

Take a look at what is included in the Microsoft Word Courses

Have a look to see what’s included in the course and I’m sure you’ll agree this is fantastic value. The most popular documents that students want to create are:

Invitations
Letterheads
Flyers and brochures
Proposals
Training / Education Guides
Menus
Resume

[button link=”http://ezylearnonline.com.au/courses/microsoft-word/”]Microsoft Word Course Contents[/button]

Posted on July 15, 2015July 15, 2015 by Steve Slisar

Microsoft Excel Online Training Course Includes Beginners to Advanced with LIFETIME Access

9 Microsoft Excel Training Courses from Beginners to Advanced for One Price

Most students know about us because of our online MYOB Training Courses (5 courses for the price of 1) but we have a fantastic offer for Microsoft Excel Training Courses where we include every course from Excel Beginners, Excel Intermediate and Excel Advanced for one low price.

We create our own courses so we have the perfect combination of:

Training Videos (where we use the exercise included with the course to demonstrate how to use all the features of Microsoft Excel),
Training Workbooks (where we lay out the exercises in a step-by-step approach so you can practise every new skill at your own pace and in your own time – even without internet access),
Microsoft Excel Exercise files so you can open them and see exactly how each of the Excel features work in a real life scenario
Knowledge Review Tests to make sure you remember the most important aspects of each training course and can receive a certificate of completion (if you enrol for that option)
Microsoft Excel Training Course Certificate to demonstrate the completion of your course

Worksheets, Charts and Databases

Microsoft Excel 2007 Beginners training courses and certificate Our Microsoft Excel Training Courses will teach you about ALL of these uses for Microsoft Excel and provide you with dozens of files to learn, practise and even use in your own home or business.

[quote]Charts or Graphs are visual tools that can make mundane data interesting and useful to demonstrate patterns.[/quote]

Excel charts are based on data that is entered into a worksheet but can also be produced from more advanced tools like Pivot tables.

Charts are introduced in our Microsoft Excel Beginners Courses, along with worksheets and databases and it is covered in more detail in the Intermediate Microsoft Excel Training Courses AND in the Advanced Microsoft Excel Training Courses that include pivot tables.

[box type=”tick” size=”large” style=”rounded” border=”full”]We even include the example of how we used enrolment data from 2003-2004 to find out the best time of the day and day of the week to offer our class-based Microsoft Excel Training Courses when we had our Sydney Training Centre in Dee Why.[/box]

12 Months or Lifetime Course Access

One of the fantastic things about operating an online training business is we can give students as much access as they need even LIFETIME course access. We can do this because we use a LMS (Learning Management System) called Moodle that is used by well regarded universities around the world (as well as many more humble training organisations like ours.

When we operated a class-based training centre we offered students free repeats so they could refresh their Microsoft Excel skills if they didn’t use the software for a while after their course – now we can offer unlimited access to all courses for 12 months or LIFETIME access.

No Need to Choose Between Beginners Intermediate or Advanced Excel Courses – you get them all

A skills assessment is the normal procedure a HR manager puts their employees through to understand how much their staff know and where they need to improve. It’s also the assessment that students used to go through with us over the phone when they had to decide between the different skill levels of courses (Beginners, Intermediate or Advanced), but because we include EVERYTHING in our online course there is no need to perform a skills assessment.

You can bone up on any Excel basics, reinforce your existing skills and hone some new skills because all courses are included when you enrol into Microsoft Excel with EzyLearn!

Learn more about what is included in our Microsoft Excel Course Outline and see our Enrolment page for detailed pricing and course options.

[button link=”http://ezylearnonline.com.au/courses/microsoft-excel/”]Microsoft Excel Training Courses[/button] [button link=”http://ezylearnonline.com.au/enrol/” bg_color=”#038a20″]Enrolment Prices and Options[/button]

Posted on June 15, 2015June 15, 2015 by Angela — 1 Comment

Saasu, Westpac, St George Bank Can Help Reach Independent Contractor Clients

SAASU and the Big Four

Saasu recently announced a new partnership with Westpac bank to deliver direct bank feeds to Saasu and Westpac customers, including those with St George business accounts. Among the new features, the Westpac/Saasu partnership promises ‘real-time insight into cash-flow with online invoices, expenses, banking, budgets, payroll, inventory and financial reports.’

We’ve been following emerging trends in accounting software to ensure our training courses meet current market demands. It’s why, in addition to our flagship MYOB Training Courses, we offer training courses in Xero and are currently developing an Intuit Quickbooks Online Training Course.

As a St George customer, one of our team members was interested in what this new partnership would mean for Saasu customers, and even wondered whether it would be worthwhile making the switch from MYOB, given Saasu’s relatively cheap offering of cloud-accounting software.

SAASU could easily replace Reach Accounting

I recently wrote of the sad news of Reach Accounting software shutting down and there might be some good news for independent contractors who operate their own business. SAASU – a privately owned Australian company has a $15 per month plan aimed at helping small business manage their bookkeeping in the cloud with cheap accounting software.

Direct bank feeds without the use of third-party providers

What I discovered was promising. For Westpac customers, the partnership brings the ability for Saasu to provide direct bank feeds for free, without the use of a third-party provider, which so many other cloud-accounting platforms use – even MYOB utilises BankLink, for example. For non-Westpac customers, little will change in terms of bank feeds; Saasu will continue to utilise the services of Yodlee for bank feeds just like Xero and Zoho.

Bank feeds eliminate nearly all of the data entry associated with bookkeeping, and they’ve been a revolution for small business owners and bookkeepers alike. As the most time-consuming, yet crucial, part of the bookkeeping process, automatic bank feeds, which pull your bank transactions into your accounting software, allow BAS agents to get on with actually preparing a client’s BAS, while business owners have an up-to-date picture of what’s happening with their cash-flow as it’s happening.

Bank feeds are changing the role of the bookkeeper

Note that I’ve mentioned BAS agent, rather than bookkeeper. Technically, the BAS agent I’m talking about is a bookkeeper, but with bank feeds now pretty well commonplace among most cloud-accounting apps, there’s really no need for them to engage in that tedious data entry process, freeing them up to take on more clients and earn more money.

So will our team member be switching to Saasu? No, not just yet. The latest Westpac partnership is promising and our independent contractor certainly liked the pricing, but Saasu lacks one major feature that our independent contractor couldn’t live without: a mobile app, or at least a well-functioning one. The current Saasu app hasn’t been updated since 2011, and doesn’t work on an iPhone running IOS 5 or higher, so despite the volume of small businesses that invoice from the road (think: tradies), Saasu appears to have neglected it’s mobile properties.

Mobile is the future of cloud-accounting

MYOB has the MYOB OnTheGo app that businesses can use to check outstanding payments, create invoices, and even update customer records. The app allows users to manage their accounts when they have the time – like in the few minutes waiting to meet with a business associate for lunch, for instance – rather than forcing them to set aside large portions of their time to stay on top of their accounts, which is really why bank feeds and cloud-accounting have become so popular. Of course, MYOB isn’t the only company to offer a mobile app – Xero, Quickbooks, and Zoho all offer mobile apps to compliment their desktop offerings.

As for Saasu, they’re certainly the ones to watch. For what was once a nimble Aussie startup to have partnered with one of the big four banks, it shows that there’s a new frontier of cloud-account nearly upon us.

Posted on May 28, 2015May 26, 2015 by Angela — 3 Comments

Finally! Tax Deductions for Cars for Small Business Owners in the Federal Budget

Instant Tax Deduction, Just Add Money

invoicing small business — Here’s a carrot to start a new business and get instant tax deductions rather than deptreciation

In a recent post about subsidised childcare, I wrote about how the federal government has made it easier for families with one parent working at home to access subsidised childcare. In that post I also mentioned how much easier it is to start your own home-based business (for one, you’ve got all these marvelous training courses from EzyLearn to guide you on your way!) now than it was a few years ago.

But there’s some more good news for small business owners: the government also announced a raft of tax cuts and bonuses to the tune of $5.5b in this year’s federal budget, among them an unlimited number of tax deductions for buying cars, machinery or any other equipment valued under $20k each.

The government to inspire innovation

This is a huge increase to the previous amount small businesses were able to claim as tax deductions, which was a mere $1000 per item. Anything above that $1000 had to be depreciated via the decline in value process. Treasurer, Joe Hockey said the reason behind the tax breaks for small businesses was to encourage and inspire innovation in Australia, which has for years, suffered from a lull in home-grown innovation.

[quote]“This will be of enormous benefit to their bottom line and help businesses with their cash flow. It means innovation. It means jobs. It means more money to invest and grow your business,”[/quote] Mr Hockey told parliament in his budget speech.

For purchases over $20,000, they can also be claimed but will go into a pool to be depreciated; at 15 percent in the first income year and then 30 percent for each year after that.

But wait! There’s more: tax cuts and FBT allowances

Small businesses will also enjoy a tax cut of 2.5 percent for the 780,000 small companies with an annual turnover of fewer than $2 million, while sole traders will get a 5 percent tax cut, capped at $1,000.

Small businesses that give their employees more than one work-related portable electronic device (tablets and laptops, for example) will also be eligible for a fringe benefits tax (FBT) exemption from April 1^st 2016. This could prove to be a big motivator for small businesses that would like to see more of their employees working remotely from home or while they’re out on the road.

If you’re already in business and you’ve been thinking about upgrading that PC or company car, if you do it before June 30 this year, you’ll be able to claim it as a tax deduction for this financial year. The same goes for those of you who may have been thinking about starting your own small business, be it a home-based one or otherwise – any of those capital purchases you may need to make to get your business off the ground can be immediately claimed as a tax deduction so long as they’re under $20k.

For now, though, you can still get yourself skilled in MYOB before you start your business and claim it as a tax deduction by taking one of our online MYOB training courses, which give you access to ALL MYOB Training Courses for 12 months or LIFETIME access. Or for more on starting a home-based business, subscribe to our blog or browse the many training courses on our website.

Oh, and Did I Mention The Bookkeeping Business Opportunity?

I hinted at the 30 day money back guarantee that we now offer for the Bookkeeeping Business Opportunity, but you’ll be thrilled to hear that we will shortly also be announcing the inclusion of all of our software training courses!

Posted on May 20, 2015May 12, 2023 by Steve Slisar — 4 Comments

Can a Bookkeeper Give Online Marketing Advice??

Outsourced Online Content Marketing and Bookkeeping

What is Content Marketing and Does it Work?

Measurement of success of content marketing campaign

I recently wrote about content marketing and how we have used it for years to ensure our MYOB and Excel Courses appear in Google’s organic search results. I touched on the topic of “who is your audience”, why it’s important and how it may affect your writing style – in reality you just need to write like you are sending an email to a friend, don’t you think – but one of the most important things is to measure the results of your work.

We started using WordPress as our website development platform because it’s relatively easy to use, but mainly because millions of people use it around the world and there are LOT’s of great tools within the platform. These tools are called plugins and they enable any business owner to take control of their website and improve it bit by bit every week or month.

WordPress is like the Microsoft Word of content management systems (CMS) and enables all of the functionality that most people want to see in a professional website, including the capability of enabling a mobile friendly site (important with the new changes in Google for mobile optimised websites).

If you are starting a content marketing strategy I recommend you work at your website every week or two, writing great new content that is relevant to your customers and prospects.

The above chart demonstrates the success we had helping one company improve their organic rankings (in a pretty competitive market). All they did is kept adding relevant text and images to their website that helps website visitors find them and answer their questions.

Want To Learn How To Do This?

Can anyone do this? Yes they can. Like most things there is a formula to success and it takes constant work and regular improvement. I’ve teamed up with a content writer and a digital strategist (could you imagine seeing that job description even 15 years ago?!), to create a course designed to help you learn how to plan and execute a content marketing strategy.

Can a Bookkeeper Do Content Marketing?

I was speaking with Ray from the Startup Academy and we were talking about what makes a good bookkeeper. He mentioned a conversation he had with an experienced bookkeeper he knows who has been bookkeeping for quite a few years and she mentioned that her focus is changing, that she is now starting to spend time on all sorts of aspects of the finance and administration of the businesses she works for. Because of her knowledge and experience she is able to take over many of the other “operational and administration” aspects of her clients businesses and as a result she can:

Do more work for fewer clients (easier to manage, yet still spreads her risk between several clients)
Perform more varied tasks for her small business clients
Earn a higher rate of pay

Can a Bookkeeper Become a Small Business Manager?

Have you read about our relatively new initiative to help people start their own bookkeeping business? One of the training courses we include is the small business management course and we’ve included it because it helps you clearly define the operational aspects of your business plan. Things like

how many customers do you want,
how much do you want to charge,
what type of work do you want to do etc.

Although there are fairly standard rates that bookkeeper charge for bookkeeping work, these rates can increase if your skill base is broader and you can become more valuable to your clients.

I read a recent article in the Sydney Morning Herald (from Feb 27, 2015, by Alexandra Cain) where she talks about the number of bookkeepers there are in Australia (estimated to be 250,000) compared to the number of bookkeepers who are registered with the Tax Practitioners Board as How to become a Registered BAS Agent (12,000). Alexandra introduces the topic of what type of work bookkeepers do and it’s highly practical for them to venture into many other parts of the business.

Every Course To Be Included in National Bookkeeping Package

Start a bookkeeping business not a franchise

This is the news that I have been waiting to announce – that we will be including ALL of our courses and any future courses to people who join our new bookkeeping business opportunity, National Bookkeeping. New members will receive thousands of dollars worth of training courses in EVERY course we have so they’ll have knowledge (and access to a knowledge base) about

Marketing,
Website design, Blogging and Internet Marketing
Content marketing, plus using Microsoft Office Applications like,
Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint etc

We have courses on using help desk software like ZenDesk (that we use), Dropbox and stacks of other short online courses, PLUS we’ll be creating new ones during the year (and the next and the next) that National Bookkeeping Licensee will have access to.

If you are interested in exploring this opportunity further, feel free to go through the Bookkeeping Business Opportunity FAQ’s or make contact with us for more information.

Posted on May 11, 2015June 18, 2019 by Steve Slisar — 5 Comments

Content Marketing Gives You Organic Success on Google

When I started my blog more than 5 years ago, I felt a bit like a computer nerd. I mean, who wanted to read about how to do bookkeeping and accounting using MYOB?

Then cloud accounting became a thing and software once more became exciting.

MYOB vs Quickbooks vs Xero Training Courses — *Share price information for MYOB via Comsec*

Incidently, the big fight to become the most successful Cloud Accounting Software is now well underway with MYOB having just been relisted on the ASX and its share pricing diving very quickly.

They’re competing with Xero and we wrote about the fierce competition looming against MYOB in 2010 when Craig Winkler (the man who build MYOB into the success it become now being a significant shareholder in Xero).

What made bookkeeping exciting to so many more people?

Bookkeeping became exciting, in large part, because of the flexibility it offered busy people wanting more control over their working lives, and busy parents trying to juggle priorities.

We could create a content marketing strategy about how cloud accounting makes bookkeeping faster and easier for small business, while also making it possible for parents to work closer to home (or at the family home), performing bookkeeping tasks and avoiding traffic, congestion and time you never get back commuting.

I should also confess that, at the time, I didn’t realise how important AND time consuming content marketing would be. Every blog post takes at least an hour!

You may ask how what appears to be a relatively simple blog post can take that long? In reality, a well researched blog post, including topic research, finding images, finding the right page(s) to link to can take several hours and that’s what we’re going to share in our soon-to-be-launched Content Marketing Course & Services.

Why does it take so long to write a blog post?

content marketing training courses and services — *Content Marketing is worth the effort and now is the time.*

If it were the case of just writing some sentences, it wouldn’t take that long at all. But what’s the point of that?

I’m not going to insult people, particularly people who have proven that they take the time to read my blogs on a regular basis, with poor quality, rushed content.

Furthermore, everything I write relates to something else we do and it involves:

Carrying out research to back up what I write about (like the above information about MYOB shares and a previous blog about both MYOB and Xero getting smashed by a huge US based competitor)
Referencing our own landing pages for the services we provide, and
Linking to relevant blogs that I’ve written.

Getting found: Optimising your blog posts for Google

I haven’t even mentioned the time and effort in optimising each and EVERY blog post for the keywords that are important to us. That involves:

Tags
Keyword density
Relevant landing pages
Keywords in headings
Images

Outsourcing blog writing to the Philippines, India or the Ukraine?

Tempting isn’t it? The thought that you can get someone to write a great blog post for your business for $2-3 per hour!

I mean in one day you could get all your writing done and then just schedule the blog posts to be published in something like your WordPress Blog over the next month or two. But it’s not that easy it is?

We are in an age where just stringing some words and sentences together isn’t going to get any one to pay much attention, particularly if there is a hint of broken English or disconnect with the topic. And anyway, if you’re going to write content you need to be an expert don’t you? Who wants to read some words that have just been sprayed onto a page because they have relevant keywords?

Content Marketing Strategy — who is the reader?

Like many tasks involved in small business, the most important part of the work is creating the Content Marketing Strategy; the plan for:

Topics that will interest your readers and potential customers
The keywords to be used in those articles (blogs)
The landing pages that will convert potential customers into customers

Some of these components have nothing to do with the intended reader, but if your content marketing is going to be effective you’ll have to have a clear description of your reader in your head — I like to give them a name, imagine how many children they have, where they live, why they’re using my products/services, who their friends are, how they are going to talk about our company etc.

A wise old business owner I use to speak with regularly kept asking me the question, “Who is your customer, Steve?” This relates to everything. It relates to content marketing, but it also relates to when our courses are available, how we combine several features into one offer, how we try to do more for that market, like find other ways for them to benefit by using our service, hence National Bookkeeping!

What are you doing for your reader?

Most of our online training students use our services for MYOB Training Courses, Excel Training Courses, Xero Courses and Small Business Management Training.

For most people it’s because they’re looking for bookkeeping work or want to start a bookkeeping business. Finding out as much as possible about why our students do our courses enables us to develop products (and write content about) what they need.

Join our Bookkeeping Directory TODAY

We partner with a bookkeeping directory which is aimed at helping people (our students primarily) find bookkeeping work or start a bookkeeping business. It’s also a great way for small businesses to find bookkeepers who are close to them.

Find out how you can promote your bookkeeping services to a much wider circle of people by engaging in content marketing.
List yourself on National Bookkeeping

Posted on March 30, 2015March 30, 2015 by Steve Slisar — 2 Comments

MYOB Accounting – Fighting to Stay In Control?

Is MYOB Just Another Program In Your Control Panel?

I was cleaning up my computer this morning and went to my Microsoft Windows Control Panel to discover MYOB Accounting Software sitting in the program list. I was removing any programs that I may have installed to test or get to know with a goal of REMOVING all that I didn’t need, when I saw MYOB software in the list.

I didn’t see WordPress and I didn’t see Commonwealth Bank Internet Banking in the list and at that moment I felt a little sad, realising that if I changed computers that I would need to go through the program installation process with my accounting software AND that EVERY person who needed to access our bookkeeping software would have to go through the same process.

Cloud Software Doesn’t Need to be Installed On Your Computer

I’m used to going to websites, logging in to do my work and then logging out at the end. Yes, with some I have to change the password regularly and others there is 2 level authentication using a mobile phone number as well, but the great thing about these “cloud-based” services is that I don’t even need my own computer! I can log in using an iPad, laptop or even my smart phone.

Cloud accounting should be like Xero and Quickbooks online With services like Google Apps, we can run our entire company “server” in the cloud and have experts make sure it is up and running all the time for the cost of less than $100 per month, compared to several thousand dollars to buy the hardware (and have the floor space, data, power and air conditioning) , thousands of dollars in software licences and then having to hire an expert IT service person to manage it all for thousands of dollars per year – particularly if something goes wrong.

I’ve always wondered why MYOB didn’t focus all of their efforts on building a fully featured accounting program for the cloud only and wrote about how it seems like MYOB is computer based accounting program with the functionality of Dropbox. Some people think it’s more secure or safe to keep your accounting information local, but I’m not convinced.

How does MYOB compare to Xero and Quickbooks Online

I recently wrote about Ken from Love My Home Theatre and why he loves Xero Accounting Software (not Zero) and also about how the new market for cloud accounting software is not only introducing new competitors like Xero, but also enabling MASSIVE competitors like QUICKBOOKS back into the Australian market for accounting software once again.

If you are a regular reader you’d also know that we’ve had Xero Training Courses for quite a while now and that our focus is to help people looking for bookkeeping work AND small business owners learn bookkeeping software to help them run their business more efficiently and be compliant with the ATO.

The most impressive features of Xero Accounting Software are:

Xero can be accessed from anywhere at any time
Xero can accommodate multiple users (accountant, bookkeeper, business owner) no matter where they are located (which is great for virtual assistants doing bookkeeping from their own home)
Xero integrates with other cloud software programs (watch the video interview about Xero accounting with a small business that love it)

The best thing about cloud based software services (apart from having experts making sure it is always up and running) is that when new features are built they are available to you immediately. Xero recently announced the capability to create quotes and manage inventory which brings it even closer “feature wise” with MYOB and although I haven’t had a chance to see it in action, Margaret Carey (who contributed to our XERO vs MYOB feature comparison) notes that:

[quote]Any business that requires more than basic tracking will need to continue to look at the add on solutions such as Unleashed or Dear but it is a promising start.[/quote]

Xero is Definitely Becoming More Popular

Whether Xero has just done some great marketing this year, or that people genuinely want the benefits of a cloud-based accounting program, we are experiencing increased enrolments into our Xero Training Courses.

It could also be because all of our Xero courses are included for the one low price – we don’t sell them separately AND we include new content during a students membership period.

We use all of the major cloud-based accounting programs and I can say personally that I like what I have seen with Xero and Quickbooks Online. The fact that you don’t have to go through that labourious process of downloading, installing and registering your software (for each user) is a great bonus, but the fact that you can use these programs from any computer is even better.

Stay Tuned for QuickBooks Online Training Courses

This year will become a very interesting year as online accounting software companies fight for your business as well as loyalty from bookkeepers and accountants. I can reveal that we have started writing the content for our soon to be launched Quickbooks Training Courses! Jacci, our Register BAS Agent is working to replicate the small business accounting processes we use in our MYOB and Xero courses to teach students how to manage business accounts using Quickbooks Online.

If you want to receive updates and launch information about this course please visit our Quickbooks Online Training Course page.

Is there a wave of innovation in online accounting from Canada?

Wave accounting has 1 million users and is free_free Would you like to hear about MORE innovation in accounting? Want to learn about a cloud-based accounting program that boasts more than twice as many users as Xero?

I was speaking with an insurance agent who is contributing to the risk management components of our Small Business Management course and he was telling me about this great accounting software that is completely free unless you use their merchant services and/or payroll. I haven’t confirmed any of these features of the software, but a quick visit to their website shows an interface that looks very much like Quickbooks Online with the navigation panel on the left of the screen.

My insurance agent friend Ruben is sharing information with us about how Workcover works for small business owners as well as public and product liability. He’ll also share with us how these relate to contractors who might work for you and go to perform work at a customers site.

If you decide you’d like to take a look at Wave Accounting or you are already a customer of this accounting program please share your opinions with us at our Facebook page.

Posted on February 22, 2015 by Steve Slisar

Beginners to Advanced Microsoft Excel Course for $197 inc Exercise Files

$197 Beginners to Advanced Microsoft Excel Course includes Exercise Files

One of the best ways of learning how to use a program is to use that program during your training. Some people can sit with programs like Microsoft Excel and learn by trying something out and making mistakes and then trying again.

[box type=”tick”]We’ve discovered that Microsoft Excel course students want to work with real world files in a logical step-by-step method that uses the exercise files for the basic skills and then keep using that file for the more advanced skills.[/box]

By the end you’ll have a powerful Microsoft Excel spreadsheet using advanced skills and because you learnt in a logical and methodical way, using gradually more complicated tools, you’ll have learnt most of the Microsoft Excel skills you’ve wanted and won’t even notice the time go by.

Real World Use of Microsoft Excel Spreadsheets

The main uses for Microsoft Excel are as a:

Worksheet that enables you to lay out information in a logical fashion and then perform calculations with that data
Database that lists all of the information in a tabular format that can then be filtered and manipulated into a format that can be used in mail merges etc, and
Charts and graphs that visually present the information in a worksheet or table so that we humans can make sense of the information

Here are some of the ways that we use Microsoft Excel for our training business.

Present information for use in newspaper ads

In Microsoft Excel Course 303 we look at formulas and formatting and one exercise file we share with students and an example of what’s possible using Excel is the artwork we created for the newspaper ads for our courses at our training centres in Sydney. The table structure of Excel enables us to lay the information out precisely and if we need to change the dates

What costs us the most money

Yes, you can see the costs of running a business in a simple table, but when you put it in a chart you can visually see the differences in costs and in our 305 course on charting we’ll show you how to create the various different types of pie, line and bar charts as well as many other types. You’ll learn how to format the charts to make certain areas stand out and you’ll learn how to demonstrate trends.

Budgets and forecasting

It’s great when you have historical information to work with because you can spend a lot of time working out percentages, margins, budgets etc to try to figure out how you will go in the future. We include many exercise files in Microsoft Excel Course 306, including files to help you:

Maintain a household (or business budget)
Calculate sales margins and commissions for sales people (we have several different versions of this file to demonstrate how the file should look at the various stages of creating it).
Create a price list (including all wholesale product costings – that will be hidden from view)

Making the right decisions

When we operated our training centres in Sydney we spent a lot of our time scheduling courses. We had to allocate training rooms, roster on our great trainers, print training materials and we needed to know when people where coming to courses. We discovered that most people who wanted to learn Microsoft Excel did a night class. We had these variables to work with:

The courses
What days people had come to these courses in the past
The time of the day that students had enrolled into these courses: morning, midday, evening or weekend.
Different training methods (class-based and Flexible Learning)

By discovering the best days and times that students had enrolled into courses from the past we were able to better schedule our courses to get the most students. It means we didn’t need to cancel courses.

See the contents of Microsoft Excel Course 308 for more information.

Figure out how to make more profit

In a business you can build a bigger business and make more profit by

increasing sales,
cutting costs,
focussing on your most profitable customers,
focussing on your most profitable products,
decreasing the time it takes to get your money (cash sale or terms).

Using Goal Seek in Microsoft Excel we discovered something that’ll help all independent contractors run a better more profitable business.

Posted on January 29, 2015January 29, 2015 by Steve Slisar

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

Yellow 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:

Constantly informing readers,
Demonstrating an active business and website
Informing website visitors about changes in the business,
sharing stories about how people use our services and
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.

In 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..

Posted on January 9, 2015January 2, 2015 by Steve Slisar

Prevent Russian Attacks on Your WordPress Website with Google Analytics

Traffic from Russia, Eastern Europe, Philipines and India?

We’ve been busy these last couple months in upgrading and optimising our websites, fine tuning our online marketing and studying our Google Analytics and came across a Russian based website that was sending a lot of traffic to several of our sites. After closely monitoring our website traffic, landing pages, bounce rates, time on site etc, we found a lot of in bound traffic from a Russian site called Darodar. It made me wonder why we’re all so scared of web traffic from the USSR. In fact it’s a reminder of the fact that labour is very cheap in some of these countries and some companies or individuals can go to great lengths to

The best thing to come from all this really is that by looking at our statistics regularly, updating all scripts and plugins and server side applications not only do we have an up-to-date website with security and protection against online risks, but we understand our website traffic in detail. This is helping us fine tune our website content constantly to provide our website visitors with what they are looking for.

I don’t normally write like this

Google Analytics - Channels, Sessions, Conversions, Sources, Aquisition, Behaviour I don’t normally like to write about all the technical details we have to go through as an online training course provider, but we’ve been assembling some marketing information about our new online business opportunities and realised this is exactly the type of information that we’ll be sharing with students who come along on our online marketing business opportunity.

As it turns out the type of traffic we were getting is called HTTP Referrer Spam or just Referrer Spam and hundreds of people are talking about it online already. Here’s a snipped of some of the sites we discovered. There is a lengthy conversation on an official WordPress Support Forum, and an article on a popular article site called Reddit.

The Best Answer

The best answer we found was this link that confirmed that this type of attack is not malicious to your website, is not a server side issue and won’t affect the ranking and traffic to your site. The biggest issue is that we spent all this time and even ended up going to the site in question (that’s one of their goals!!) and that it distorts our Google Analytics information.

We disable the Darodar Spambot and any traffic from this location. It’s not the best solution because we can’t do this for every website that performs this type of activity, but again, it gives us more clarity about what is happening with our website traffic.

Who cares?

If you want to get to know more about our online marketing contractor business opportunity go visit the StartUp Academy website for more information. I’ll be sending more information out shortly so stay tuned – including the services we are launching to help people start their own bookkeeping business..

Posted on January 5, 2015December 23, 2014 by Steve Slisar

Did I Mention a Free Excel Beginners Course?

Free Excel Beginners Course

I recently wrote about our Microsoft Excel [link] Training Courses and how they have the features that make all of our online training courses popular, but I forgot to mention that we make the Excel Beginners Course available for free. These free training videos AND Excel Course workbook will give you the confidence to understand the main uses for Microsoft Excel.

Microsoft Excel can be used for lots of different things, but the main uses are:

Worksheet (to do calculations)
Chart (to visually show the data)
Database (to store data)

Our Excel Beginners Course videos will give you the basic Microsoft Excel knowledge very quickly, but the Excel Beginners Course workbook and exercise files will give you the chance to replicate what you see in the videos and LEARN BY DOING. You’ll get the training workbook to print out and we’ll also send you the excel files that we use in our demonstrations.

Excel Intermediate to Advanced Courses

Don’t worry, once you master the basics you’ll either want to know as much as you can about Microsoft Excel or decide that you’ll just use the software when you need it. Either way, with our LIFETIME course access option you can complete and repeat the course as often as you want and with all skills levels (from Beginners to Advanced Excel) you’ll be covered.

We’ve been teaching people how to use Microsoft Excel since we started at Lane Cove in Sydney in 1996 and we look forward to helping more people learn Excel to become more productive, more employable and more successful.

Make sure you share our free Excel Beginners Courses with your friends on social media.

[button link=”http://ezylearnonline.com.au/courses/microsoft-excel/free-microsoft-excel-beginners-course-training-videos/”]FREE Excel Beginners Course[/button] [button link=”http://ezylearnonline.com.au/enrol/” bg_color=”#99050c”]Enrol Now[/button]

Posted on December 29, 2014December 23, 2014 by Steve Slisar

Forecast a Positive Future Using Microsoft Excel

Time to Reflect, Thank and Plan

sales-forecasting-using-microsoft-excel-training-course We had our office Christmas party (for our Sydney team) this week and I went through and individually thanked each of my team for their contribution during the year. I’m very lucky to be working with a great bunch of people – although, you know what they say:”The harder I work the luckier I get” – and I used our Christmas lunch to thank each of them publicly (in front of their peers) for their efforts because I think it’s important.

We started a lot of diverse and interesting projects during the year and they include:

Assembling a course to teach people how to create their own course – ideal for sites that want to create their own online Inductions for contractors,
Worked with the Australian Small Business Centre to create new sales and marketing courses for their Business Management Course.
Created a MYOB Bookkeeper Directory to help our students start their own bookkeeping business and find new clients
Established the StartUp Academy to help ordinary people start their own business working from home

Treat Yourself as you Plan for Success in 2015

Sales forecasting using Microsoft Excel Training Courses and MYOB Data One of our team members said she’s going on holidays and really needs the time off because she will be studying VERY hard next year. She’ll have 5 weeks off and she’s 21. I started to wonder if I am a workaholic, am a little twisted in my opinion of what makes a good holiday or that I just love what I am doing, but I offered to give her work to do while she was on holidays overseas for that long period of time – after all, isn’t it great to earn some money working from your computer, using the internet for a couple hours each day and then getting into the festivities!?

I was thinking about my ideal holiday – work a couple hours every morning (early if possible so no one is awake to distract me), then feel rewarded and REALLY enjoy the rest of the day and night. It gives me the feeling of still being connected to the world at home, while achieving something workwise and then cutting off completely from work for the rest of the day.

When I think about the festive season and the quiet time between Christmas and when most people come back to work (5th January 2015 or later) I see an opportunity to stay in Sydney where it almost becomes a pleasure to drive on the roads and spend the time in thought and contemplation to plan for the coming year. It’s usually the time when I write down my major goals for the coming year and start to clearly define them, how they’ll look and operate and what is needed to achieve them. It’s the time when I end up getting on my computer and powering up Microsoft Excel to do those once a year checks on the past and forecasts for the future.

Microsoft Excel Course for Financial Forecasting

Export Sales Report information from MYOB AccountRight to Microsoft Excel

Forecasts are those interesting things that investments are based on. Someone with a spreadsheet and a business plan will guess how much they’ll earn in the forthcoming year/quarter/month etc and back it up with all their evidence in the business plan. To many people it’s a waste of time because “who can really predict the future”, but to those people who do it it’s a way of crystalising your plans into monthly or quarterly objectives that are based on the past (in most cases) and on intelligent estimates of what the market needs.

Export Your MYOB Reports

If you already use MYOB Accounting Software to manage your bookkeeping and accounts you can easily export a report about last periods sales and use that as a basis for next years forecasts. Many slight changes can result in more sales and higher profits in 2015, including:

new products,
expanded services or
price increases

But your decision to no longer provide 30 days credit terms or be more diligent with late payers can help you earn your money twice as fast. Either way you do it, now is a great time to export that data from MYOB, or Xero or Quickbooks and get it into a spreadsheet (worksheet) so you can start to do some mathematics to show how much more you’ll earn in 2015.

Online Microsoft Excel Training Courses

If you’ve followed our blog posts you’d know that we have a very popular MYOB training course. I wanted you to know that we have a popular Excel Training Course too and it comes with the same benefits as most of our online courses:

12 months or LIFETIME Excel Course access
Assessment and Certificate Option
Includes 9 skill levels from Excel Beginners to Advanced
Includes exercise files to practice
Includes multiple version of the Microsoft Excel Software
Each of the 9 courses includes an Excel Training Workbook with step-by-step exercises
Comes with a 30 day money back guarantee