We use this blog post to introduce new content for our online MYOB training courses as well as our Excel, Word and WordPress courses. This new content has been created after a MYOB Course Q&A Support request from Andrea in New Zealand.
We wrote a blog post in September 2011 about data file formats that are used in our MYOB Bank Reconciliation Training Course. In that blog post we wrote about exporting the accounts list that MYOB uses as the foundation for the company file and that all transactions are then based on. This accounts list is known in the accounting world as your Chart of Accounts.
Today we announce some new training videos for our MYOB Reporting and GST Course (code 504). It covers the exporting of Payroll information from MYOB of employee card files and Payroll information using both the Report Centre in MYOB AccountRight version 12 as well as the Import/Export wizard.
As an EzyLearn student you receive LIFETIME access to the MYOB Training Courses so feel free to login to the training site and go to the GST and Reporting Course to view videos 504301 and 504302. If you are not a student learn about what’s included in our training courses and see why hundreds of students enrol with us every year.
This is a tool that I use all the time when I am surfing and searching the Internet and I thought you’d be interested to learn about it.
My last post was about the new WordPress search field we implemented on our WordPress Employment Training Blog site but it occurred to me that you might like to use a great search tool you are already using – Google.
If you want to search for PAYG and Microsoft Excel information in our blog site, you simply need to type the following information into the Google search box:
payg excel site:ezylearn.com.au/wordpress
You will end up seeing results very similar to the image in this blog post. Notice that you:
Type the word site: before the domain name of the website you want to search
Don’t need to type www
Can search within sections of a website (ie. the /wordpress)
We’ve written over 200 blog posts since 2008 and we’ve found them to be very popular but some readers have mentioned that it is hard to go back and find ones that they were very interested in reading again so we’ve done something simple. Added a search box. I know, it seems simple but it took a reader to ask for us to implement it. Thank YOU 🙂
While we are on this topic, did you know that we use WordPress to manage our blog site? It’s a great blogging platform but even fantastic for just creating a normal website that you can edit and make changes to as you please. The best part is that it’s open source so effectively it’s free! All you have to do is learn how to use it and we have a course just for it, our WordPress Website Design Course and just like our MYOB Training Courses it comes with LIFETIME student access.
So, if you want to find out the blog post where we wrote about PAYG tax tables and how you can workout the taxes that you owe for employees doing a search for “payg excel” and you’ll come up with these results. See what else you can discover.
Today we announce the official launch of our Student Career Support services. We have a new team member on board and her role is to help us provide extra support to help students find, apply for and get their next bookkeeping job.
When you enrol into our MYOB Bookkeeping Training Courses with the lifetime membership and certificate option you will now receive access to our Career Support Services for free. We’ll help you find bookkeeping jobs, prepare your resume and cover letters as well as follow-up letters and letters of recommendation for students who join our Bookkeeping Academy CPD program.
Not only will you learn new skills using Australia’s leading accounting software program, lifetime access to use the training material as your own personal resource and a Certificate, but we’ll help you refine your job seeking skills and tools to help you get your next bookkeeping job.
As part of the research into our Continuing Professional Development (CPD) program for MYOB training course students we are exploring different webinar platforms and we thought you’d be interested to learn about it. For existing EzyLearn students it will mean free MYOB Bookkeeping webinars in the coming months.
We’re proud of our online MYOB training courses and thousands of students are too, but we’ve found that students are interested in lots of other skills relating to earning money for themselves as either an employee or a contractor. Things like using Word to write a resume, using WordPress to manage their own website, how to use online CRM (Customer Relationship Management) programs to keep track of all their contacts etc. We mentioned in a early blog post about our plans to provide more training resources for working mums and we’re getting closer to our final goal.
The purpose of a webinar is to deliver educational content similar to what you would experience with a seminar except that you save on time, travel, money, petrol and you can even watch the presentation at a later date. Our team has been in contact with accountants, career professionals, online service providers and a host of other industry professionals who will be providing information, training and tips and tricks at our webinars and I hope you can join us in this journey.
If you are an existing student and have some idea or suggestions of topics that you would like us to cover, this is your chance. Send your suggestions to sales@ezylearn.com.au and we’ll discover the most popular and work on a schedule for the rest of the year. If you are not a student yet, this is the time to enrol. Stay tuned for more updates shortly.
As part of our CPD program for bookkeepers we are discovering, compiling and happily sharing the results of our research. In this blog post we reveal a valuable link of essential tools for bookkeepers.
As a bookkeeper you help you clients with ABN information, Business Activity Statements, Payroll and PAYG Informtion and a host of other activities. It is also common for you to be more accessable than a business’s own accountant so you are often asked for official information relating to communications with the Australian Tax Office.
This link is an essential tool for bookkeepers because it contains a table of links and instructions about topics you may be asked about as a bookkeeper.
I’ve written a series of blog posts about various aspects of resume writing and other tips you can use to help secure the next great job and it’s fitting that we explore why Linkedin is a serious place for you to promote your MYOB Bookkeeping skills.
I was fortunate enough to attend a social media club (Sydney) education event that was presented by the managing director of Linkedin and he went to great lengths to explain just how deep the company wants to go into the recruitment and talent market. Upon visiting various parts of the LinkedIn website I found some links that might further encourage you to recognise the importance of Linkedin in your employment or business building journey.
Linkedin has a page for talent departments and case studies for companies that have used their services and employers can even place recruitment ads within the site to clearly target the right job applicants.
We found a great article written by Susan Heathfield about how Linkedin is being used as a recruitment tool for the HR team at many businesses. Do you need help in your job searching strategy? Stay tuned.
There have been some big tax changes this year and as part of our Bookkeepers Continuing Professional Development Program and our MYOB Training Courses we’re writing some short articles about key information that you can pass onto your customers or employers regarding their bookkeeping.
In conjunction with the recent announcements regarding the carbon tax, the ATO has made significant changes with regard to the Tax Free Threshold and Write-off for capital purchases.
Businesses with less than $2M turnover previously had to depreciate any assets which cost more than $1,000 over several years. From 1 July 2012 this has changed to a whopping $6,500. If you buy an asset valued at say, $5000, it can be “expensed” straight away, no need to include it in your depreciation schedule. It’s like an instant expense which reduces your taxable income .
The benefits are aimed towards smaller business owners as it affects their cash flow almost immediately, rather than being depreciated and split over a number of years. Want to receive these tips and tricks in your email inbox? Subscribe now and remain continually updated.
We’ve added new training content to our MYOB Reporting course about how to handle these tasks at the end of each financial year as part of our constant content updates. Make sure you subscribe to this blog to be abreast of all new training content as well as some free tips and tricks.
We help people earn money as independent contractors as well as employees with our WordPress Website Design and Blogging Course and as a result we learn about internet issues that face our students and customers. We recently heard about something that would interest most people with their own website.
A customer was waiting to receive an order and was shocked to hear that emails being sent to their email address were being blocked. This began a long journey of discovery and if you have a heart for technical mumbo jumbo read on. If you know someone with their own website and domain name pass this onto them because they may experience the same problem.
What’s your IP address?
It all comes down to IP Addresses. An IP address identifies you via your connection to the Internet it also helps browsers locate a website that they’re looking for. Did you ever wonder how police are able to confirm that a criminal was looking at a specific websites? Remember the Collar Bomb Hoax in Sydney?
The modem in your home or office that connects you to your ISP has an IP address. Sometimes this IP address is fixed and sometimes it is temporary (also called dynamic) and it’s very easy to find out what your IP address is, just go to http://whatismyipaddress.com/ and your IP Address will be displayed on the website. Yep, that’s right, every website you visit can keep track of your IP address, even the training site for our online MYOB, Excel and WordPress courses keeps a record of the IP address you log into from!
What’s the IP Address of your website?
Every website you visit is really just a number of website files stored on a “host” computer somewhere in the world and most host computers also host other websites (unless you spend a couple hundred dollars per month for a dedicated server). This means that if another website is sending a lot of spam or even if their hosting has been hacked and spam is being sent illegally then the reputation of your website may also be affected. The good news is that these issues are often identified quickly and can be rectified quickly as well, but they are still a pain in the #$&web!
What can cause the problem?
Click on the image to see a larger version
The problem that we recently experienced was caused by a blacklisting at Barracuda Central, but rather than telling us exactly what the problem was, we were given a list of potential causes. See if one of these has ever happened to you? What you might notice as very strange is that the problem could even have been caused by a local PC that is infected with a virus!
As you might imagine there are services available that claim to “protect” you from this type of thing happening again, but they charge a fee. We like the comment made at the WhatisMyIPAddress.com website:
WhatIsMyIPAddress.com does not run, manage, or have any direct relationship with any blacklist. We provide a single location to check the status of an IP address on 3rd party blacklists. WhatIsMyIPAddress.com does not recommend the usage of any specific blacklist and does not condone blacklists that require payment for removal. Our inclusion of such blacklists are for the purposes of completeness and should not be consider to be in support of that blacklist’s usage.
Do you want to read some more?
This is a great explanation of what a blacklist is and how they work, and if you want to read more about a company that wants to help you not get blacklisted read the about us at EmailReg.org.
You’ll be thrilled to hear that the problem was resolved. We asked to have the blacklisting removed, we signed up to EmailReg.org and did some tests, but we never found out exactly what caused the blacklisting and what we did to get of that blacklist….
Are you still receiving your Business Activity Statements via mail? We receive our notification that the BAS is ready at the ATO’s Business Portal but the Business Portal is much more useful than just a way to deliver your BAS.
There are some great features of online tax lodgement:
You can lodge your BAS immediately online
You can see historical lodgements
You can change your contact details
The most complicated part of dealing direct with the ATO is the setting up of a digital certificate, but once that is sorted out you have all the convenience that you have come to expect from your internet banking and any other online service. All the information is there, you don’t have to rely on the mail to send or receive your BAS and you know exactly where you stand. If you have missed a lodgement you’ll also find that information at the portal.
The website address for the portal is https://bp.ato.gov.au/ so check it out and get through your compliance issues faster.
Our MYOB Reporting, GST and BAS course (which includes bank reconciliation) shows you how to get to the BASlink to produce a BAS using the data that you have already entered into MYOB. If you have entered everything correctly you will just need to complete your contact name and number and how long it took to complete. Then you can print that form out and keep it in your records. The information you see in the totals can then simply be entered in the Business Portal and submitted to lodge your BAS and get your compliance tasks out of the way so you can focus on running your business.
I’ve recently attended some business building and networking events and have been fascinated at the number of people who speak about the importance good first impressions and having a professional website. What’s most amazing is that many of these people have a website that hasn’t changed in 2 years!
The most important thing about a website though is that it is often the first time potential customers get to know something about you and how you operate your business. Your warehouse and office are things that they may never see, plus, you can use your website to give them some important information that makes them buy from you straight away.
Our WordPress course contains all the training you need to setup a professional website and start adding and modifying the images and words when and as you please. Plus, we have cheap student hosting through 123ezy online services. If you are an MYOB student that wants to start their own business, this is the next course you should take.
We’ve made a simple online MYOB quiz available for anyone who wants to test their MYOB bookkeeping skills. It’s a very simple test designed to show people how online knowledge tests work and also have some fun and see how much they know. We did an export of all the results (minus the students details of course) and you can see them in our Microsoft Excel Training Course.
These test results show how long it took students to complete the test, their results, overall score and more and the datafile is available in our Microsoft Excel Course 308 which includes:
Understand 3D formulas between worksheets, cleaning up data using advanced filter, create a pivot table and change the value field settings, create a pivot chart to visually show the stats, using advanced functions like CHOOSE, VLOOKUP, HLOOKUP, MATCH and INDEX, look at advanced functions within functions (Nested Functions) and how to protect the worksheet and workbooks
The knowledge reviews in our online training courses are much bigger and more complicated and they provide us with a great tool to identify areas of difficulty for students and help us constantly update and improve our MYOB training courses.
At a recent business owners breakfast I heard someone speak about blue ocean and red ocean strategies. I’m going to write some blog posts about how to build your business as part of our project to help our MYOB students start, maintain and build their own bookkeeping businesses and this article is a fitting way to start.
The Blue Ocean strategy involves finding new demand in an uncontested market which essentially means to innovate. This essentially means create something new, but I think for many small business it could means package your services so that you can demonstrate a difference between your bookkeeping business and others. The Red Ocean strategy is all about competing head to head with your competitors to try to get existing customers to move away from someone else to use your services. You can get a better idea of what Blue Ocean strategy is at their website.
We try to innovate in our services by offering lifetime access to all courses, provide all skill levels in one course (ie. beginners to advanced) so you don’t have to waste time trying to figure out which level you are at and provide different versions of training for Microsoft Word and Excel (ie. 2000, 2003, 2007 and 2010.
This table shows the key differences between the strategies. See which strategy you are pursuing.
Are you looking at starting or growing your business?
Do you want to start a business? Do you want to create a business plan? Does it all seem a bit daunting?
[quote]We are working with Maggie Richardson, author of “Starting a business in Australia” to get her Cert IV in Small Business Management online.[/quote]
This course not only gives you a well rounded education of the requirements to start and build a small business, but you will end up with one-to-one help in creating a business plan as part of the course! Read more..
One of the most popular office productivity programs in the world is almost taken for granted these days as a program that everyone knows how to use, but there is a lot to learn to really master it. We’re talking about Microsoft Word of course, and we’re currently having new training content recorded for Microsoft Word 2010.
You might recall from previous posts that we offer lifetime access to our training courses. You might also recall that our Microsoft Office courses include most versions of the software so you can enrol knowing that all versions are covered. We also include access to beginners to advanced courses all for one low price! That’s our learning guarantee.
You will have the chance over the following weeks to see some of these new videos right here so stay tuned and make sure you subscribe to receive these posts via your email.
You’ll get some insights into tabs and tables. They are extremely powerful Microsoft Word tools that help you make your Word documents look professional. If you get the wording right in your resume and use your Microsoft Word skills to make your resume look good you’ll increase your chances of getting that job.
Tables are like spreadsheets
Even though you often see the borders of a table in Microsoft Word you can change the formatting so that they are invisible and this is a great way to get some structure in the content in your work document while not showing that your using tables. Tabs are also very handy but you need to remember that tabs are paragraph formatting so if you forget to apply them to each paragraph you are working in you might find the whole process very messy. There are also the option of using the default tab stops to make text line up, or setting your own (which we recommend because you can make the text line up as centres or right aligned and even to the decimal points if you are putting a pricelist together).
Formatting your resume
If you are using Microsoft Word to create your resume you’ll definitely make it look better with the use of some structure, after all, it’s the structure and layout that often separates a professional looking resume from an average looking one. If you are not sure how to create your own resume, let one of our professional partners create a professional resume for you and provide training so you know how to make any modifications yourself.
Discount Coupon for MYOB Training Courses
We also mentioned the discount coupon available to you for our online MYOB training course, but we forgot to mention that the discount coupon actually applies to all courses!
There was a letter from the Energy company sitting on my desk today. I took a deep breath, prepared myself for a new invoice and opened it. To my pleasant surprise there was no bill, instead I received a letter with an accompanying brochure, warning me of my impending bill.
But it wasn’t really a brochure, it was my terms and conditions. I am certain that I had seen this before so why did they send it again? What I was most impressed with was how they sent these terms and conditions. Rather than send them in fine print on lengthy A4 pages it came in the form of a brochure. That alone made sifting through them easy to digest – very smart Tru Energy.
We thought we would use this opportunity to share with you a great story about how one company, EnergyAction used our Excel training course at a training centre near their Sydney office in Parramatta, to teach their employees how to create excellent spreadsheets that demonstrate how much money they can save on their electricity costs.
We’ve been approached by many different Groupon type companies. There seems to be hundreds of these sites popping up every day and they are famous for offering you almost unbelievable discount coupons for almost anything but most commonly services like pedicures, restaurant and cafe meals etc. We’ve always ensured our prices are competitive and bookkeeping students receive good value for money, but our Training Partners have tried them and we’ll share their opinions with you.
For business owners (or merchants as we are called) group buying sites promote the possibility of receiving hundreds of sales of your product (so you better make sure you can service the demand) but what do they want in return. Here’s a classic scenario:
Normal Price: $200
Group Buying Price: $100
Saving to you: $100
Margin that goes to the Group Buying Site is typically 50% of the discounted price, ie. $50
This means that a merchant that would normally receive $200 for something, will now receive $50! Is it worth it? Then why not just sell it on special for $100 and spend some money advertising it? As you can see, we are pessimistic about the future of group buying sites. Our training partners workface.com.au offered a discount on their Microsoft Excel training courses only to receive a handful of sales.
And there are hundreds of these group buying sites. See if you can recognise some of these names: Cudo, Groupon, AlltheDeals, Spreets, Living Social, Grabone, BizzBuzz etc. At the beginning of 2011 a local Australian startup in the space was sold for $40M! If you have time read a review by Choice Magazine.
The main reason we don’t like the big group buying sites is because of some of the conditions imposed.
When you buy the discount voucher the group buying site earns the money. Some of the more selfish sites will then only pass this money to the merchant when the customer uses the voucher. In other words, if the customer doesn’t use the voucher within the “valid period” the merchant earns nothing and the customer loses the benefit!
By the way, I was at a software training function last week and a birdy told me that consumer protection laws might come into affect that provides protection for buyers of these discount vouchers – if you buy a $50 product then you can receive $50 off after the offer period has expired. Watch this space…
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Xero is a great bookkeeping program for tradies who are on the go and using their phones (or a tablet) all the time. From receipts scanning to creating quotes and invoices, receiving payments and keeping track of project costs.
bookkeepercourse.com.au/produ…
We use this blog post to introduce new content for our online MYOB training courses as well as our Excel, Word and WordPress courses. This new content has been created after a MYOB Course Q&A Support request from Andrea in New Zealand.
