The Bookkeeping Academy course packages are now on sale for 60% less!
Ever since Xero started to take market share away from MYOB they caused an increased need for students to learn both of these software programs.
We often get asked “should I learn MYOB or Xero” to which we reply, “have you looked for bookkeeping and accounting jobs online at Seek?“.
With our current bookkeeping course promotion you can learn both programs at your own time and at your own pace for less than enrolling into each course separately.
Are you finding work quiet this time of year? We’ve just been handed down our budget and emails are starting to fly around showing what it means to us.
Its the time of year where we find out how well we’ve done financially. It’s the time of year where workers will see how much they can borrow to buy property in the 2025 financial year and where they need to cut back.
Most of this financial information will be worked out using Microsoft Excel.
Most people like to watch some videos about how to use Xero or Excel and then try to replicated it.
This works well when exercise files are provided to help you practice. This is particularly important when you get into the Intermediate Excel training where you learn skills like formatting and formulas.
Things are moving fast in the software industry as Intuit (QuickBooks), MYOB and Xero compete with each other with regular software updates. It has become so fierce that many students are enrolling into our Bookkeeping Academy Combination courses.
The key frontiers are still
automated data entry from bank feeds,
capturing receipts and extracting data,
faster reconciliation and
automatic calculations of taxes owed.
These are some of the features promoted by NAB Bookkeeper for NAB Business banking customers but what is MYOB’s huge announcement?
I want to thank the following students for choosing EzyLearn and graduating from their Office Admin and Bookkeeping short courses.
At this point we don’t speak with some students again because they have the new skills they want and they use them to find work or do better in their jobs. That is a sad part of the training business for me.
Some students take advantage of our Career Academy services and stay around to get exposure to employers and other students.
There are many finance professionals — who does your business need?
Does your business need a bookkeeper, accountant or perhaps just a BAS agent – or a little bit of everyone?
WE’VE MENTIONED PREVIOUSLY THAT finding a bookkeeper, when you may not know much about bookkeeping, can be a difficult task.
In fact, a lot of new business owners assume their accountant will take care of everything for them, which may be costly if their accountant has to perform a year’s worth of bookkeeping in order to file the business’s tax return. But bookkeepers and accountants can work harmoniously in your business.
As a general rule, every business needs at least two finance professionals working on their business accounts, but which two professionals you’ll need to hire depends on your business needs. If you’re not sure who you need to hire for your business, here’s a cheat sheet to help you out.
Bookkeepers (not registered with the TPB)
An independent bookkeeper not employed by an accountant and not registered with the Tax Practitioner’s Board (TPB) may only perform basic bookkeeping services, such as the
entering of receipts,
coding financial transactions,
generating invoices and purchase orders
accounts receivable and accounts payable
If you hire this type of bookkeeper, you’ll still need an accountant.
BAS agents
BAS agents must, by law, register with the Tax Practitioner’s Board (TPB), which certifies that they are qualified and have completed the necessary continuing education requirements to perform the tasks of a BAS agent, which involves carrying out most of the bookkeeping tasks mentioned above, in addition to preparing and lodging business activity statements on a business’s behalf.
If your business is registered for GST, you will need to file regular activity statements. If you hire a BAS agent, you’ll also need an accountant. In some instances, you may find a BAS agent who’s also a registered tax agent and vice versa, who may be able to take care of all your taxation needs.
Tax agents
Although tax agents, like BAS agents, must also register with the Tax Practitioner’s Board (TPB), a tax agent is focused on income tax — how much income you have to declare, how much you can claim back, etc.
This is distinct from a BAS agent who is concerned with the day-to-day financial tasks of your business (bookkeeping and BAS lodgements). That said, some tax agents will also perform some the basic bookkeeping tasks on a regular basis, though they primarily specialise in lodging tax returns.
If you’re not registered for GST, and your tax agent will also perform regular bookkeeping tasks (or you can do it yourself), you may not need to hire an accountant. In some instances, you may find a tax agent who’s also a registered BAS agent and vice versa, who may be able to take care of all your taxation needs.
Accountants
An accountant is mostly concerned with planning and strategy. Unlike bookkeepers and BAS or tax agents, an accountant will assess and advise you on what actions you should take to maximise your income. Great accountants will get involved with planning the direction of your business and ensure it’s been structured properly and that you’re meeting any additional tax obligations.
They’ll also help you to make strategic purchases for equipment and machinery, and work with your BAS agent or bookkeeper to ensure these decisions are reflected in your daily financial records. An accountant is also able to prepare and lodge tax returns on your behalf.
How much should I pay a bookkeeper?
Check out the National Bookkeeping Directory, which features the details of bookkeepers, capable of doing data entry and clerical tasks, through to high-level accounting work as undertaken by BAS agents, accountants and CFOs.
You can also see the National Bookkeeping rates page to find out what level bookkeeper your business needs.
Employers like small business owners are looking for staff online using Google. From office admin and business administration tasks to bookkeeping and customer service and sales, employers need staff to keep their businesses running.
The only way you are going to get discovered is if you have an online profile that CAN GET DISCOVERED and that is what membership to the Bookkeeping Academy does for you.
The biggest difference between applying for jobs and having employers contact you is that rather than go through the job application elimination process you’ll need to know what to say to employers when they call.
Questions to ask employers and clients
You can’t just say “I need more money, can I have the job”. You need to be able to identify:
what work they need you to do,
how they want you to work
the working hours and pay
One of the hardest things you’ll need to learn is how to say, “Sorry I don’t think I can help you!”
In bookkeeping work alone there are so many different types of work that you need to clarify what clients want.
The easiest way for you to get into bookkeeping if you are new to it is through data entry of invoices and purchase orders.
Are you earning $50 per hour at the moment? If you aren’t it can seem almost impossible to believe that you could, particularly when you look at your boss and imagine yourself asking them for a pay rise.
I searched online to see who earns $50 per hour and most of the search results in Seek and Indeed showed up saying you have to be a doctor, pharmacist or HR Manager but bookkeepers earning this much regularly.
The constant need for some companies to continue to grow revenue or subscriber numbers can make the employees do things too aggressively.
Xero has always done a great marketing job against MYOB because it was easy – all they had to do was have good software that was easier to use and in the cloud – now they’re ALL in the Cloud!
Xero focused on a cloud only model and the integrations between it and other online software programs. This was a marketing strategy that may have stretched the truth a little!
MYOB’s problem was that is WAS a Windows based software program. This made using the software harder because you had the constraints of running only on a Windows computer and had to upgrade that software regularly. It also caused issues with their Mac version and they ended up having to discontinue that software and push their Mac users straight to their Cloud version, MYOB Essentials.
I recently wrote about the Internship opportunities for selected business and office administration training courses – this work can all be done online, remotely working from home.
One of the best things about running an online training business is that we can deliver our courses to the thousands of students who live in remote parts of New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland and the rest of Australia!
Read on to discover how you can up-skill and learn how to become a remote working virtual assistant performing business and office administration work from your own home
If you are looking for and applying for junior bookkeeping jobs you can learn how to use Xero and MYOB in just a few hours with a short Bookkeeping course.
Learning how to use Xero and MYOB is not hard when you work through a well designed, step-by-step series of exercises where you do the bookkeeping work.
Many students who work in industries like childcare, aged care and home services are attracted to bookkeeping work because it can fit into their daily routine (if they have children) and because it can be performed remotely from home.
Some people find it easier to learn the software through video tutorials, and replicate what they see on the tutorial using the software.
This is a good way for experienced bookkeepers to up skill quickly on a feature that they haven’t used before. It is also a good way for beginners to lose their fear of accounting software.
Watching videos and replicating what you see is very easy to do but once you get past the 4-5th video you realise it’s not the same as performing bookkeeping tasks in an office.
Others might prefer to work through a printed manual with step by step instructions and sample data. Watching training course video tutorials is not usually enough for someone who needs to learn more about bookkeeping tasks.
Sales is an interesting thing. It involves skills which don’t seem to be well defined enough to create a qualification for – You don’t see a Diploma in Sales or a Cert IV in Sales do you?
Sales is also a topic that scares some people who feel it involves pushing things upon people who don’t want them but that is not the case.
The most important step in the sales process is called Qualifying and it helps a sales person understand if the person they are talking to really needs what they have available for sale.
I have to admit that I do like reading Xero’s annual reports. They are just like their software, graphical and full of simple graphs and images.
Their share price took a hit recently even though their revenue and subscriptions grew and it’s because they recorded a larger loss than they have in the past. When you read through the report though you realise that they are using a new metric to measure their success.
Could be this be a way of reporting on the profitability of your own business or where you work?
In the United States most colleges have a Career Academy attached to their education services with the goal to provide extra services that help their students.
The Career Academy Addons that are available after completing an Office Admin or Bookkeeping Course with EzyLearn can be viewed here and the most popular option is to extend course access and support.
Many Xero beginners think that they only have 30 days to use the trial version of Xero but that isn’t actually correct. Xero, just like MYOB Business and QuickBooks online need you to create a “user” account and authenticate yourself using SMS or an authenticator app.
Once you’ve got your user account you are able to access dozens of different “company” files when you need to. This is how bookkeepers manage the company files for dozens of their own clients.
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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.
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