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Google Apps is now Google Drive. Is it better than dropbox?

Google Drive and smart devices storage in the cloudAs users of Google Apps, the EzyLearn Team are always interested in learning about new technology and how it can be used to increase productivity, reduce cost and allow us to do great new things.

We recently received a message that Google Docs is now Google Drive. They’re tying it all into Cloud based storage and services and it looks like a great move, but will we use it instead of Dropbox?

We recently wrote about MYOB in the Clouds, we use a small business telephone service that is in the cloud, our training courses are in the cloud and our website are built using a cloud-based website builder (WordPress) so it’s natural that we try to keep abreast of what the big technology players like Google are up to.

Below is a simple video (if you are reading this blog post via email, click on the heading to see the video at our blog site) that shows what you can do with Google Drive and all your devices including smartphones that are connected to the Internet. How does it compare to Dropbox? I agree with Ed Bott from the prolific technology writers at ZDNet.

Feel free to share your experiences on our Facebook Page

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What is a PAYG tax table and how does it work?

ATO 2013 tax tables for online MYOB payroll training courseWe recently announced our updated MYOB Payroll Course videos and training workbook and were asked to explain PAYG tax tables in a bit more detail. We’ll explain tax tables using the data from the ATO website relating to tax tables for the 2013 financial year.

We recently witness a federal budget and there are usually some changes in each budget that relate to tax tables or tax thresholds. These tax tables simply define how much tax you pay for each threshold and the simplest way to describe it is to define the first category. This category is called the tax-free threshold and it is the level at which you don’t pay any tax. The annual pay for this level will be $18,200 from 1st July 2012 (the beginning of the next financial year). Any money you earn up to this level you don’t pay any income tax on.

Any money you earn over this tax-free threshold amount but less than $37,000 will be taxed at 19c per dollar.

The most important thing to note is that just because you earn $50,000 doesn’t mean you will be taxed at 32.5c in every dollar you earn. You’ll be charged

  1. zero for the first $18,200, 
  2. 19% from $18,200 to $37,000 and then 
  3. 32.50% for each dollar over $37,000.
Stay tuned for more bite size chunks of knowledge in the coming weeks as we evolve our MYOB Payroll training course. Make sure you subscribe to receive these posts via email.
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We help you in the “Do More Make Less” Australia

Australian employment share by activity - bookkeeping services using MYOBWe were spilling through the recent federal budget information (as you would) and found some interesting facts that we wanted to share. We were actually looking for the new tax tables to explain more about how they work for our recently updated MYOB Payroll Course, but thought the information was enlightening. It’s also another reason to learn how to use MYOB so you can perform bookkeeping tasks!

We found it relevant because our online MYOB and Excel training courses provide education and new skills for individuals to participate in the provision of services in Australia’s knowledge based economy. Is all that jargon too much? It just means that more and more workers are being paid for using their brains and skills to perform tasks (like bookkeeping) and less on making or growing stuff.

You might also be reassured by our relatively low and constant unemployment rate.

And, just in case you weren’t aware, our online MYOB training courses include

  1. Training Videos
  2. Training workbooks with exercises and
  3. Knowledge review to test your skills

PLUS they come with LIFETIME student access so you can have access to new content as it is created for no extra cost.

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Get a WordPress mobile site because Google says 75% need it

Google Smartphone mobile usage stats - get a WordPress websiteWe recently wrote about WordPress plugins that are available for websites built using the WordPress CMS (Content Management System) that enables the website to be viewed better on a mobile phone and statistics provided by Google (which you can check out and dive into yourself) show that we are one of the world leaders in mobile phone adoption.

Interestingly just under 25% of Australian smartphone owners used the website browsing capabilities of their phone to perform job searches!

We made the decision to use WordPress for our website several years ago (and build a WordPress Training Course) because it is:

  1. An open source solution
  2. Used by millions of website owners around the world
  3. Supported by plugin and themes developers

With the importance of Google searches to bring inquiries to your business and the adoption of Smartphones every business needs to have a website that:

  1. Looks Professional (using inexpensive WordPress themes)
  2. Can be viewed easily on a smartphone
  3. You can update yourself!

Check out the Google OurMobilePlanet website and get all sorts of interesting stats for yourself.

 

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MYOB Payroll (Processing Pays) Workbook now available

Payroll is one of the most significant costs involved in operating a business and also represents the main form of income for Australian workers. Our MYOB course development for the coming months is focused on increasing the depth of skills taught about how to handle Payroll using MYOB accounting software.

TFN Declaration Form - MYOB (processing pays) Payroll training course and workbookThe beta version of our latest training guide for Payroll is now available as part of the 17 new MYOB training tutorial videos we have produced for the MYOB Payroll course. The videos provide the visual demonstrations for the tasks that are covered in the workbook and the workbooks provides you with step by step instructions about how to load tax tables, create employees, process pays and perform reconciliation and end of year tasks regarding payroll.

Our MYOB Payroll case study for the course involves a hair styling salon that employs staff to operate their salon. Follow their journey as new employees come on board.

There will be more to come so make sure you subscribe so you can receive these blog posts via your email. We’ll also be producing some Excel spreadsheet files for students to use regarding payroll and we’ll have some free demonstration videos as well.

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Most budding bookkeepers want to start learning MYOB at 12.30pm!

Excel Online Training Course 308 - pivot table value field settingsHow do we know that most students want to start their MYOB training course at 12.30pm? We put all our course enrolment information into an Excel spreadsheet, inserted a pivot table and then filtered the data. Does that sound simple? Well it will be if you enrol into our online Microsoft Excel course.

The good news is that the video tutorial below will show you exactly what we did. If you are reading this blog as an email subscriber click on the heading to get to our blog site to watch the training video tutorial. If you want to receive these blogs posts via email, make sure you subscribe to our Employment and Productivity Training Blog.

The other good news is that when you enrol into our online Microsoft Excel Training Course you actually receive the data file that we used in this exercise so you can replicate it yourself! These figures are for enrolments into our MYOB course, Beginners, and Microsoft Office courses at our Dee Why training centre when we operated class-based training centres in Sydney.

Like all our online training courses, the Microsoft Excel training courses come with LIFETIME student access. The current course not only includes training videos, but nine training workbooks and over 40 exercise files that you can use to practice your Excel spreadsheeting skills.

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New employees, TFN declarations and ATO requirements

TFN Declaration Form for online MYOB training courses and support including PayrollIt is now READY! The 17 new training video tutorials for our MYOB Payroll Online Training Course are now ready and on the learning site. If you are an existing EzyLearn online MYOB training student you will be happy to hear that all this new content is available to you (if you are a LIFETIME student) right now and at no extra cost.

The new videos cover these topics:

  • 505201 – Create a brand new company file using the MYOB trial version software
  • 505202 – Easy Setup Assistant for MYOB Payroll and Tax tables
  • 505203 – Creating new employee cards and setting up categories
  • 505204 – Extra Payroll settings for employee cards
  • 505205 – Superannuation information for employees
  • 505206 – Processing Payroll – Performing a pay run
  • 505207 – Processing Payroll – Editing and Deleting incorrect pay slips
  • 505208 – Processing Payroll – Editing and Deleting incorrect pays using transaction journal
  • 505209 – Processing Payroll – Understanding Payroll and the Account List
  • 505210 – Processing Payroll – Processing Payment of Payroll Liabilities
  • 505211 – Processing Payroll – Processing Payment of Salary Sacrifice
  • 505212 – Processing Payroll – Setting up a deduction for employees social club
  • 505213 – Processing Payroll – Including deductions for employees social club
  • 505214 – Payroll Reporting – Payroll Summary and Employee Register
  • 505215 – Payroll Reporting – Reconciling your Super, Wages and PAYG Taxes
  • 505216 – Payroll Reporting – Printing of EOY Payment Summaries
  • 505217 – Backing up your MYOB Data file before Closing off the Payroll year

For more information about our online MYOB training courses and student support services feel free to visit our information page. You can also enrol online for the current price and receive lifetime student membership to new training material as it is updated! Enrol today and start by 5pm tomorrow afternoon.

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Certificates are coming shortly

Congratulate all the students who successfully completed their MYOB Bookkeeping courses this quarter, your certificates are now been issued via our support site.

If you are contemplating our online MYOB training course you’ll be very happy to know that the EzyLearn MYOB Course certificate includes the logo for the Institute of Certified Bookkeepers (ICB). We are proud to be an Accredited Training Provider of the ICB and also of their their continuing professional development (CPD) program for bookkeepers. You may also recall that you can join the ICB as an EzyLearn student for free.

Make sure you subscribe to this blog for the pending announcement of our CPD training program for bookkeepers.

In the mean time you might also want to stay tuned for the pending release of our upgraded MYOB Payroll course, Advanced Microsoft Excel courses and updates to our Microsoft Word online training course. We’ll be releasing some free training videos shortly to show you what we’ve done.

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Need help with Payroll and MYOB?

help with MYOB Payroll and Superannuation SG online training course and supportWe use the EzyLearn blog to inform new and existing students about new course content, tips and tricks and free training that we make available from time to time. Today we are announcing the completion of the workbook and training videos for our online MYOB training courses.

Our MYOB Payroll course has been created and you’ll soon be able to learn how to create employee cards, setup the payroll tax tables, choose wage categories, pay benefits, superannuation information, perform a payroll run, send pay slips, generate payroll advice reports, pay your SG liabilities, reconcile your super and wages payments and print out payment summaries.

Although the course has been created we are finalising the knowledge review questions that are used as part of our assessments for students who want a certificate after they complete their MYOB training course.

Did you know that our LIFETIME student membership entitles you to review the training material (including videos and workbooks) for the rest of your working life? This includes new content, so enrol now at today’s prices and have access to MYOB training course content for life!

Stay tuned for more updates in the coming week! IF you are not a subscriber, subscribe here.

 

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Every WordPress website can look great on a smart phone

WordPress Plugin WPTouch shows your website on smart phoneIf you have read our blog on your Smart Phone lately you might notice that it is reasonably easy to read on a smart phone. The images in this blog post show the difference between a WordPress website and a WordPress website that uses a free plugin that makes them easy to read on a smart phone, it’s called WP Touch.

We mentioned the great service from Google earlier this week that shows you what your website looks like on a mobile and how it’s also linked to the partnership that Google have with MYOB Atlas in Australia.

We mentioned also that WordPress is a free software program used by Millions of website owners around the world. We installed a simple free plugin to create a much better reading experience (see the image on the left).

Our online WordPress course with LIFETIME access shows you how to install Plugins to get much more functionality out of your WordPress website and blog system.

The best part of WordPress is that it is used by Millions of developers around the world, who are developing Plugins, themes and many other exciting tools to enable you to create great websites, cheaply.

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Signatures make Outlook sexy

Microsoft-Outlook online training course and supportSometimes we release training videos for free to help our readers and students and also demonstrate the quality of the videos in our online training courses for Microsoft Office, MYOB accounting software and WordPress Content Management Systems.

Today we release a training video that demonstrations via video how to create your own signature in Microsoft Outlook. I personally prefer to use Google Apps for my email because of its SPAM capabilities as well as the fact that I can log in from any web-enabled computer and send/receive emails.

In this video Allison demonstrates an easy way to create a signature, format the text, insert an image (our logo) and save it. She then looks at associating that signature with new email messages as well as replies and forwards. You might be aware that Outlook enables you to setup many different email addresses and this great tool can be used for each of them.

If you are reading this blog post via email, click the heading to see the video at our blog site. If you want to start receiving these via your email inbox feel free to subscribe. Want to see our range of online training courses?

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We’re real people, really!

mums returning to work looking for online MYOB and Excel training course to upskill to find workThere are many questions that we get asked each day and one of them is “Can I start the course tonight?” I’m writing this blog to let you know that we are all people at EzyLearn and if you have an urgent need we’ll try to help you.

Rowena called and asked this question today because another company that was advertising an MYOB online training course was experiencing difficulties with the person that manages their online system, they couldn’t even get her enrolled and started!

The good news is that there are several EzyLearn team members that can get you started and using our online training system and we manage the whole process ourselves.

Why is this important? and why do I blog about it? Because we promote “Enrol today and start by 5pm tomorrow”. We actually perform enrolments EVERY DAY and we only make the “5pm next business day” promise as a safety net if we get excessively busy.

We also say that “our online training courses are the best online training offer in Australia” and what this means is that we offer EzyLearn ANSWERS and the Student Community and Tutor Support because we are constantly adding content to our MYOB, Excel and WordPress courses. If you are one of our students and there is a topic you are experiencing that is not covered in our course content, we will commission the relevant expert to create a training guide and make it available to you!

Oh, and have a great Easter long weekend. Remember you can enrol today and start after Easter if you want.

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How do you look to others?

There are some pretty interesting stats that should convince you that having a website that displays nicely on a smart phone is worthwhile.

  • 2/3 smart phone owners use their phones back-light as a torch
  • 2/5 people use their phone to avoid a social encounter
  • 56% of smart phone owners use their phone to browse the web in bed at night

These are actually important facts to consider when you get your website designer to make modifications to your website and Google have created a fantastic online tool that helps you understand what we’re talking about. This tool also helps to answer some rudimentary questions that you should be able to answer about your website design strategy.

These are some interesting questions:

  • Can you read text without zooming or scrolling
  • Can you search the site
  • Is your address and phone number easily visible
  • Can you click to call?

See What your website looks like.

Oh, by the way, if you opt to get the full report about your website you will get re-directed to MYOB’s Atlas website and hosting solution (we were not actually presented with a report) 🙁

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MYOB Training Course and Support – bank reconciliation

MYOB Training Course - Undo Bank Reconciliations using MYOB version 2011In January 2012 we introduced the Student Community and Tutor Support service and we’re announcing some new training guides that have been placed in the Student Support area.

Bank Reconciliation can be a tricky task to master, and that is before you master the motivation to get started! We have a project in our MYOB Bank Reconciliation course where you have to create a new company file, import accounts and transactions and perform a bank reconciliation. It’s a lot like a real world scenario and it causes some grief for existing students so we added an extra guide to help.

Student Support for online MYOB, Excel and WordPress coursesWe’ve also receive requests in our EzyLearn ANSWER service from students who want help and instructions on how to email invoices using the latest version of MYOB (version 2011) so we have created a guide about how to do it.

Stay tuned for more Student Support Guides over the coming weeks. Enrol to start now and learn at your own pace. Take advantage of LIFETIME student course access and great student support features like EzyLearn ANSWERS and our Student Community and Tutor Support.

 

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Your domain, your email

Domain names and email addresses from Domain Name BeginnersWe are constantly amazed at the number of businesses that are enrolling their staff into our online MYOB training course that use a Yahoo or Hotmail email address.

From my experience in the last 15 years domain names have come down from $135 per annum when I used to buy them from Melbourne IT to  just $25 per year from companies like NetRegistry. Hosting can also be very inexpensive for micro and small businesses.

When you enrol into the WordPress online training course you can:

  • Choose the micro business hosting option (through 123ezy) for only $100 pa and that enables you to setup your own email addresses as well as a WordPress website. Plus,
  • They’ll install the WordPress software and
  • We’ll provide you with a premium WordPress theme for no extra price!

Oh, and when you use WordPress you can have a mobile phone ready website in less time than you think by using a free plugin. This means that your website will look professional even on the small screens of iPhone, Android and other Smart Phones.

All you have to do is add the words and pictures and you can have your own professional website (and blogging system) and professional email address.

If you are interested in enrolling into our online WordPress training course with LIFETIME student access feel free to enrol here.

PS: You might be interested to know that the blog post you are reading is created using WordPress and distributed using Google’s Feedburner and we demonstrate how to do all of that in the course.

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Send debt collection letters using Microsoft Word from within MYOB

LIFETIME online training course access for MYOB, Excel and WordPressAre you using the Microsoft Word templates that come with MYOB? They are a great way to combine the data in your MYOB accounting software with the layout power of Microsoft Word. It’s also a great way of avoiding the emotions involved in chasing money, particularly if it is long overdue. Using Word Templates with MYOB enable you to maintain a professional, well planned approach to your finances.

This blog post contains a new video that will form part of our MYOB online training course. This course delves into the deeper parts of MYOB using some fancy and very handy features of the software. If you are receiving this blog post via email, make sure to click on the heading to get to our blog site to access the free video.

We won’t go into too much description here as the video speaks for itself, but we want to let you know that this new suite of videos will be available for existing students for no extra charge as part of our LIFETIME online training course access feature we announced in January 2011. If you want to receive our blog posts via email, just subscribe at our blog site.

Enjoy..