Posted on March 29, 2016March 29, 2016 by Steve Slisar — 1 Comment

Bookkeepers need help with Xero ANSWERS

EzyLearn Answers for student support in online training courses in MYOB, Xero, Quickbooks online, Microsoft Excel, Word, Powerpoint and WordPress

Xero enrolments for bookkeeping businesses

Despite the fierce competition from MYOB to own the cloud-based accounting market, Xero cloud accounting software is powering along and many of our course enrolments have come from existing bookkeepers who are being directed towards Xero by their clients. We’ve priced our Xero course to be comparable with our MYOB course so it’s currently cheaper but we’re listening to our bookkeeping students to add course content that is relevant to their needs.

What xero bookkeepers want to know

Xero enables you to login from any computer via the internet so trades people, professional services providers and even retail and food outlets can access their accounting software from a tablet, Mac, Windows PC or even their smart phone so it’s little wonder that small business are moving to Xero in the cloud. It’s also proving popular because bank reconciliations can be performed from anywhere by Xero bookkeepers using bank feeds as opposed to printed bank statements.

Payroll is live and constantly updated AND the payroll function can be performed by experienced payroll bookkeepers no matter where they are located in Australia or around the world.

Xero Answers for Xero Bookkeepers

Not long after we began offering LIFETIME course access for our online MYOB courses back in 2011 we introduced a service called EzyLearn ANSWERS and we’re now extending that service to our Xero training courses. We’ve included our Xero course in the EzyLearn ANSWERS service because of the large number of bookkeepers asking questions about how to use the more advanced functionality, because we want to add more new content to the course and we want to add new content that is relevant to bookkeeping working with their small business clients.

The best news is that every Xero course student has access to this service and our bookkeeping course creator, Jacci, who is an assistant accountant and registered BAS agent is keen to see how she can help.

Posted on March 7, 2016November 22, 2018 by Steve Slisar — 1 Comment

Microsoft Excel 2016 & Gantt Charts for Your New Website/Business/Project

Project plans and gantt chart templates in Microsoft Excel 2016 training courses online

GANTT CHARTS ARE just one of the many wonderful features Microsoft Excel and help enormously in the workplace.

Many project managers oversee the project management and implementation of, say, a staff induction system, a new computer system or procedural changes.

Our Online Excel Training Course includes training on how to create your own project plan using Gantt charts. Continue reading Microsoft Excel 2016 & Gantt Charts for Your New Website/Business/Project

Posted on February 2, 2016November 22, 2018 by Steve Slisar — 2 Comments

Real Estate Agent, Derek, Has Made it to Page 1 in Google

6 Weeks from Zero to Hero in Google Organic Search

I HAD A GOOD, long think before writing this blog post. However, I’ve decided it’s OK to write this blog — because the blog should be about helping business people reach Page One in Google’s organic search results (that’s the FREE ones!)

You should see the number of emails I get each week from overseas companies in Asia, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and even the US and UK.

All of these emails are telling me the same thing: How they will get my company onto Page 1 in Google!

You might be thinking, “Yeah, so what? I already know how to do that!” or let me see your list of companies. Point is, there are lots of these self-professed experts around — and I’m probably no exception!

SEO Aspects

I last wrote about real estate agent, Derek Farmer, before Christmas when we had already created his new website. The aim of this was to help property owners find him when they’re ready to explore selling their property.

We’d already begun the process of creating relevant content but ramped it up in the last 6 weeks and the results were amazing as you can see from the chart!

The work we did to help Derek get onto Page 1 of Google WITHOUT spending a cent on advertising, involved all the tools we use at EzyLearn just to run our business. The thing with this is that we practise what we preach.

That’s the beauty of running an online business: You get pretty good at all the technical and content stuff, particularly when you have to compete with the marketing muscle of billion dollar organisations like MYOB and Sydney University!

Of course, Derek was a good real estate to begin with. He had a great existing reputation in Sydney’s Lower North Shore and over 170 property sales under his belt. Quality speaks volumes.

Give something away

Derek had also spent a lot of time, considerable money and brainpower coming up with an educational series of videos. These helped his vendors (people selling their homes) and prospective customers better understand the various stages of the sales process.

This reflects the need for businesses to generate great quality content that people will find valuable — it’s something everyone needs do in the “Google information era” we all now live in.

See what Derek has done and learn more about Automated Response Marketing

virion: A brand I am proud to work with

Virion is the arm of the business that helped Derek achieve such tremendous online success.

If you want to see more of what we do with online and content marketing, along with case studies and success stories, subscribe to our Virion blog.

Check out the Blog and Subscribe

Whereas the EzyLearn blog is chiefly about what we teach, the virion blog covers more of what we do. I’d love to share the work we do with you. Who knows if you see something you like, you can even join us and get involved!

[button link=”http://virion.com.au/subscribe/” color=”green” newwindow=”yes”] Subscribe Now[/button]

Posted on January 19, 2016November 11, 2022 by Steve Slisar

Learn MYOB and Microsoft Excel, get help finding work with Career Academy

Learn MYOB and Microsoft Excel and get Microsoft Word Course for free

One more rest for Australia Day before the year REALLY gets under way and it’s a great time to set your priorities straight for 2016.

Our two most popular online training courses are our MYOB Course and our Microsoft Excel course. They’re complicated programs and most businesses need them for their financial management, reporting and forecasting so they’re great skills to learn if you are looking for a new job.

MYOB AccountRight Sign In Screen for MYOB Training Course

If you’ve followed this blog you’d also be aware that despite significant growth in the number of enrolments for our Xero Cloud Accounting courses the dominant player in the Australian market is still MYOB and MYOB accounting software also has cloud-based capabilities that make it more and more powerful.

Posted on January 11, 2016 by Steve Slisar

Start Now and you’ll have until 2017 for MYOB, Xero, Excel, Word and WordPress

Corporate Training for Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word, Accounting and WordPress Courses

With these software programs you can run most aspects of a business and we’re including them all in our new Corporate Training Business Software Training Licences for businesses with a team of people who all want to improve their software skills.

Our Business Software Training Licence enables up to 5 staff members have unlimited access to all training resources for all of our software training courses for 12 months for a low fixed cost. We also have discount prices for larger numbers of staff.

If you look at the total retail price for all of this it is well over $6,000 of value in online corporate training courses and at the current price you’ll only pay less than 25% of the price. That is a saving of over 75%!

In 2015 we experienced a significant increase in the number of corporate enrolments for our Microsoft Office courses and have created this package to make life easier for corporate who want to enrol their staff easier, while also taking advantage of the discounted prices.

Bookkeeping Course Combos and Enrolment Vouchers are also available

If you are looking to up-skill in a number of accounting software or office application programs you’ll also discover some discounted course combination offers for popular courses.

[button link=”http://ezylearnonline.com.au/how-it-works/special-offers/” newwindow=”yes”] See our Special Offers[/button]

Posted on December 29, 2015 by Steve Slisar

Do you have tender writing and advanced Microsoft Word skills?

Tenders help building and contractor companies win new clients

Mat from Ultraflow talking about tendering for work for small business sales and marketing courses The sales stages for wining new business in the building and construction industry can be a lengthy process that starts with specification and design. An architect will create a design from meetings with clients and gradually this design will turn into a multi-million dollar building that functions perfectly but how does the builder find the right team and resources? By tendering out the work.

Is tendering a sales, marketing or procurement process?

sales training - tendering process to win new clients and business I was speaking with Mat, the Managing Director of UltraFlow Siphonics for our Small Business Marketing and Small Business Sales Courses and he mentioned to me that they could literally be doing tenders every hour of every day. He mentioned that there are many different tendering portals where small (or larger) businesses can register and tender for the work that is available and that the key to a successful tender strategy is to narrow down the tenders you go for to one where your business is suited.

When a retailer sells a widget in a shop, that widget is clearly defined and the buying process is often quick and even impulsive but larger works use the tender process to clearly define what they are looking for and try to flush out as many bidders as possible. When the bidders are identified the goal for the organisation offering the tender is to get the best possible result at the cheapest possible price – weighing every aspect of the tender of course.

Go for tenders that meet the sweet spot criteria for your companies capabilities so you can perform them efficiently and profitably

Strong Microsoft Word skills are important

It is important to have excellent Microsoft Word skills if you are a tender writer because tender documents are long and often very detailed. Sometimes the tender documents are provided by the offerer and it’s important to be able to move around the tender document swiftly. Our Microsoft Word course includes every skill level from Beginners to Advanced so unlike some training companies which make you choose between one course or another we include everything.

Common Microsoft Word tools used in long and detailed documents are

Styles (covered in our Microsoft Word Advanced Course) – enable you to format areas of text quickly and keep that formatting consistent through the document. Much like the headings on our website pages and in our workbooks.
Table of Contents (Advanced Word Course) – enables you to quickly insert a table of contents based on heading styles that can automatically update the pages.
Document Map – enables you to quickly navigate long documents using heading styles
Sections and Breaks – ensure that main headings are on new pages and enable you to have selected pages print in landscape rather than portrait.

Australian Government resources for tendering

Here are some sites that have information about the tendering process to win government work:

Federal Government

Tenders Website

Commonwealth Contracting Suite

State Governments

New South Wales: Small to Medium Business Suppliers

Victoria: supplying to Victorian Government

Queensland: Tips for writing successful tender bids for Qld Government

South Australia: Standard Tender and Contract Documents for SA

Are you an experienced tender writer?

If you have experience writing tender documents for companies to win business we’d like to hear from you to get your perspective. I’m currently working on interviews with successful business owners for our small business courses and if you are Sydney-based there is an opportunity to contribute to our course and build your online profile at the same time. If you fit the description send an email to support@ezylearn.com.au (you MUST be Australian based and ideally from Sydney).

Posted on December 22, 2015 by Steve Slisar

How hackers can destroy your Google content marketing efforts tonight

Content Marketing points to your website

Having your own website enables you to build a credible online profile (that lasts a long time) and the power to clearly understand visitor traffic analytics. This is important because your goal with a content marketing strategy is to provide useful information that your website visitors are looking for and just like real property there are risks that strangers want to get inside and cause damage.

Just like real property these risks are mitigated by good site management services and you can learn about some of the hacker risks below.

Anyone can attempt to hack your site

Hackers are found all over the world from developed countries to countries where their people earn less than a dollar per hour so in some circumstances the time it takes to hack a site is irrelevant and the rewards are significant. Those rewards can be for:

financial gain,
the challenge of it,
recognition, or even
out of boredom

This means that every business, regardless of size or industry, is susceptible to a hacker attack.

Hacker attack types

Remember that hackers can sometimes spend a lot of time planning an attack, but all you see are the end results over night so it is important to be vigilant at all times. Hackers can affect your business is different ways and there has been a lot of publicity about these attacks this year. These are some of the goals for hackers:

Stealing your customers’ data
Stealing your private business data (like internal communications)
Serving malicious software
Deleting or disabling your site
Gaining control of your website or computer
Directing traffic away from your website

How your website is vulnerable

Most websites of small businesses are managed using a content management system like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal etc and these systems have the capabilities of creating user accounts (including the administrator) and enabling users to create content like comments on blog posts. They also include the capability of using themes, plugins and other programs that connect to the main content marketing system and give it more functionality. It’s when these aspects of a small business website are not kept up to date, managed for hacker activity and originally configured to minimalise the chance of attack, that you can get unstuck.

Why to choose 123ezy for content marketing for real estate agent websites

We’re combining with content marketing writers and our team of experts to make content marketing available to individual real estate agents to help them build a profile and credibility online. I’ve been working with online services even before EzyLearn started teaching people about “how to send and receive an email” and “how to navigate around a website and use a search engine” at our Dee Why training centre since 1999 and I’m looking forward to helping other sales and marketing focussed people do the same.

We operate an online training business that relies on our websites being up and running ALL of the time – if there are issues we need to be able to redirect website visitors to an alternative site for continuity and we are constantly monitoring our website visitors, vulnerabilities and remedies.

Even with the latest themes and plugins and fancy graphics and animations, just having a website is not enough these days. Real estate agents (and most other professionals) need a system that collects prospect information AND sends automated marketing messages to them, while allowing them to opt out at any time and that is just the start of the content marketing we’re offering to real estate agents. Want to see our ARMS working? Register Here.

Posted on December 15, 2015January 13, 2016 by Steve Slisar — 2 Comments

Content Marketing for Real Estate Agents

Real Estate Agents Want to Get Discovered Online By Property Vendors Ready to Sell Their Property

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you’ll notice the slant towards accounting, bookkeeping and the frenzied competition between the software companies that provide software for this purpose. However, we also teach students how to use WordPress so they can take advantage of the massive benefits of content marketing.

We’ve also changed the layout of this blog using a responsive theme in WordPress. This enables the blog to be read easily no matter what device you are using (computer, tablet or phone), or at what orientation (portrait or landscape). I am also involved in an exciting new project that enables real estate agents to build credibility online using the tools we use at EzyLearn.

Real Estate Agent Websites

Real estate agents can build a credible online profile by creating a website and use content marketing to help people who are interested in selling their property and it might be a good time to do that in the heated Sydney and Melbourne property markets!

Derek Farmer is a successful real estate agent in Cammeray (in Sydney’s Lower North Shore) and he has created a series of educational videos that demystify the process of selling a property. His video topics include:

Tips for Buyers on Auction Day
Tips for Sellers on Auction Day
Nothing is Happening After Months on the Market
How to Handle an Offer
How to Handle Feedback
Commission – How Much Should You Pay
Preparation – How Much Should You Do
Marketing – How Much Should You Pay

What I love about this project is Derek is part of a new breed of real estate agent who is open and transparent with information and he has gone to the trouble of creating these videos because it also give him an opportunity to reveal himself to potential sellers. He’s effectively pitching himself to thousands of potential property sellers with information they’re looking for and he’s taking the opportunity to enable them to get to know him – electronically.

Content marketing involves video, images and text

Content marketing involves the use of relevant content that people find useful and if you do a good job at it potential customers will connect with you to learn more and stay connected until they are ready to use your services. If you’d like to learn more about the importance of having a website and keeping it updated regularly watch the video interview I had with Michael Griffiths, the referral marketing guru.

Good content marketing keeps people at your website longer and even takes them to other parts of your website and all of this visitor information is tracked by search engines like Google, who then improve your rankings in organic search results. It means that when you spend time and money on good content marketing you gradually build a credible online brand with a reputation that lasts a long time. It’s a long term strategy taken by committed people who want to be in business for the long term.

[button link=”http://derekfarmer.com.au/property-training-tips/derek-farmer-newsletter/training-video-gallery/” newwindow=”yes”] Take a Look at the Videos Now[/button]

Receive “Content Marketing for Real Estate Agents” Information Pack

If you want to learn more about our 123ezy service or share it with a real estate agent you know visit our Real Estate Agent Website page and learn more about the Automated Response Marketing System. There’s also an opportunity to work with us as a writer which you can learn about at the StartUp Academy.

Posted on November 25, 2015November 26, 2015 by Steve Slisar

Free Microsoft Word Beginners Training Workbook

Get Your Free Microsoft Word Training Workbook Now

We’ve been hard at work on our Microsoft Word courses in readiness for the launch of our 2016 Microsoft Word courses and I’m happy to let you know that we are offering the first of our Microsoft Word Course Workbooks to you for free. It’s the 201 Course workbook and it includes exercise files that explain all of the different types of tools available in Microsoft Word.

Interested? Register Now for the Microosft Word Beginners Workbook and Exercise Files

Microsoft Word Exercise Files

The image in this blog is of one of the exercise files we’ve created that has loads of different Word formatting, including:

Font formatting (colour, size)
Paragraph Formatting (alignment, spacing)
Heading Styles
Headers and Footers
Images and Graphics
Tabs
Background shading formatting
Inserting hyperlinks
much more..

Sales Letters, Proposals and more

The “Content Marketing for Real Estate Agents” exercise file included with the free Microsoft Word workbook is one of dozens of files we include in our MS Word Courses and as a Microsoft Word student you’ll also get access to new training content we’re including Sales Letters and Proposals.

The exercises in all of our courses and the object for every course is to use software for practical purposes in every business. The Sales Letters and Proposals exercise files we’re working on combine software skills with marketing strategies we go through in our Small Business Marketing Course. Not only will you learn strategies to grow your business by increase your customer base and enhancing your product service offering, you get to create your own marketing materials using Microsoft Word.

Posted on November 20, 2015 by Steve Slisar

Intermediate skills in Microsoft Word can help you create great sales letters

Microsoft Word Training Course is Being Nurtured With New Content

I recently wrote about the content in our Microsoft Word Training Courses and because its a couple years old we’ve been offering the Microsoft Word Courses as a FREE BONUS to anyone who enrolled in our Excel or MYOB courses (with certificate options). If you’re a regular reader (subscribe here) or an EzyLearn student you’d also know that we offer either 12 month or lifetime access to courses and that includes access to brand new content.

[highlight]We’re in the process of create brand new content for Microsoft Word, including training on the creation of great sales letters, resumes and tender proposals.[/highlight]

I’m happy to share with you that we’ve been working on our Word course feverishly for the last 3 months (and there is still a couple months of work to go) to make sure that we have training on the most recent version – Microsoft Word 365 (the clould-based Microsoft Word program that you can purchase on an annual subscription that costs less than the previous versions). The new Word course content is now also aimed at helping you create documents to make sales (for businesses) or find work (for job seekers).

If you’ve always wanted to improve your skills using this popular program and write documents faster, make them look more professional or take advantage of tools like Mail Merge then you’ll get some great value out of this course. We’ll be going through some exercises to help you create

A great sales letter to highlight the call-to-action for your direct marketing campaigns as well as
A resume for the job you’re looking for (and a focussed cover letter).
Proposals and tender documents to win new business for your company

Sales Letters, Resume’s, Cover Letters and Proposals

[highlight]Can you see what they all have in common? They are all marketing focussed.[/highlight]

Each of these documents are used by people EVERY day to show how professional, smart, committed and capable they are. Most companies need to write sales letters and proposals to try to win new business and maintain or increase their annual revenue. Job seekers create resumes and cover letters to convince employers that they are the best person to choose for a job vacancy.

In creating this updated Microsoft Word Course content we’ll also be working on some real life examples of creating marketing materials as part of the Small Business Marketing Courses AND our Career Academy that aims to prepare students to confidently search and apply for job vacancies.

Sales Letters for Bookkeepers and Website Designers

Bookkeepers and website designers need new clients all the time, sometimes because they just don’t have enough work but sometimes because the nature of their work is project driven so it’s [highlight]important to always be spending some time in the sales department[/highlight] (even if you are a one person band). Some people do this with content marketing, or Pay-per-click advertising on Google or Facebook, while others actively seek to meet new people and give them a reason to engage their services.

[dropcap]W[/dropcap]e’ll be working on sales letters as part of a direct marketing effort to reach potential clients and give them a [highlight]reason to act on the sales letter using a special offer and a call to action[/highlight].

You can create sales letters for your marketing campaigns using beginners skills in Microsoft Word, but when you develop the Intermediate or advanced skills you’ll find a dramatic difference in the quality of your documents.

Special Prices & BONUS Courses are for a LIMITED TIME ONLY

Are you planning on doing a Microsoft Word Course in the new year? Why not enrol now and save at least $50?

After we’ve completed all the new course content and support exercise files we’ll be bringing the Microsoft Word Course prices inline with our other course prices, so when you enrol now you can get the Word course free if you enrol into Excel or MYOB (Certification option) or you can enrol directly into Microsoft Word and get the current discounted price. Enrol now and you’ll get the benefit of the new Word course material when it’s published but you’ll get it at today’s price.

Posted on November 9, 2015 by Steve Slisar

Will you always be a MYOB Bookkeeper?

Now that you are more Internet savvy will you change careers from bookkeeping?

A report by the Department of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary (thank you to whoever shortened it subsequently) in 2012 attempted to identify the links between education and jobs. The report created for the NATIONAL VOCATIONAL EDUCATION AND TRAINING RESEARCH PROGRAM (NCVER) had 4 key findings and this was the first one:

[quote]Some fields of education have tight links to the workplace (for example, nursing), while others have a much weaker relationship with specific jobs, such as in finance and agriculture.[/quote]

I was reviewing the courses we offer and the most popular are our:

MYOB Courses (has been our biggest seller since 2008),
Xero Courses (which have had a MASSIVE uptick in enrolments this year) and
Microsoft Excel (doing very well now that we tell people about it).

As you can see our most popular courses are financially based ones and most of the students are aiming to either change careers or start their own bookkeeping business so they can work more flexible hours. If we look at the research paper and understand that our students (and most bookkeepers) are working in a variety of different business sectors it makes sense that they’ll be exposed to many different and new skills, particularly as businesses adopt the use of more software and in particular Internet based software – ie. the Cloud.

Is marketing a better career choice than bookkeeping?

If I look at what I spend most of my time doing it’s marketing, and I have to admit I prefer that work to bookkeeping, but you might also find that it’s not unusual for financial types to broaden the type of work they do.

Page 22 of this report, under the heading Trajectories and motivations, the report uncovered:

[quote]Students’ reasons for wanting to undertake further study are related to the reasons why they embarked on study in the first place. While getting a job was at the centre, this was interwoven with their priorities, values and circumstances more broadly. One nursing student reflected the views of other students saying, ‘This is my area. In five years time I will be a nurse. In ten years time a nurse. I will be a nurse until I retire’. Students undertaking accounting and finance programs saw their field in broad terms which included management and other aspects of the finance industry, but also included related areas such as marketing.[/quote]

I recently wrote about bookkeepers offering marketing advice to their clients and my discovery of this report re-confirmed that this is possible on a professional level!

Is Content Marketing the best type of marketing for small businesses like real estate agents?

I have to admit something at this point. My team and I are working on a project offering content marketing solutions for real estate agents and our showcase real estate agent sells homes in Sydney’s Lower North Shore. If you search for him you’ll get to the website that we’ve just assembled and you’ll experience the significant changes it will go through over the coming weeks as he finishes his round of educational videos for people who are looking to buy or sell a property. Go on, give it a quick search – his name is Derek Farmer.

With the importance of content marketing / online marketing / digital marketing it’s no wonder that this profession has great growth potential and just like bookkeeping it is work that can be completed on a contract basis and better still from your own home!

Here are some posts I recently wrote about WordPress and Content Marketing:

What is inbound marketing?

Can a bookkeeper give marketing advice?

How do you manage your online content marketing?

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

Blogging for Business Training Course

Content Marketing vs Google Adwords

Want to try Content Marketing for your business?

I’ve teamed up with a some writers and editors and other marketing types to create our Content Marketing services (and course – which is currently in development) and if you are interested in being kept in the loop you can register at our content marketing course page for free – follow the links.

[quote]Work with me to put your content marketing strategy together[/quote]

Better still I’m one of the mentors for the Marketing training course at the Australian Small Business Centre (whose small business management courses are delivered via our LMS – Learning Management System) so if you enrol into that course (and choose the mentor option) you’ll be able to work with me to put your content marketing strategy together.

[button link=”http://ezylearnonline.com.au/courses/sales-and-marketing-courses/content-marketing-training-courses/landing-pages/”]Content Marketing free Registration[/button]

Posted on October 30, 2015May 12, 2023 by Steve Slisar — 1 Comment

Becoming a National Bookkeeping Bookkeeper

Starting a Business as a Bookkeeper is about Business Knowledge, Skills and Support

start a bookkeeping business — It can be daunting knowing where to get your first clients when you start your own business.

It’s not easy starting out as a bookkeeper running your own business. We think our partnership with National Bookkeeping is going to help you get underway.

If you’ve subscribed to our blog and followed our recent posts, then you probably know that EzyLearn has partnered with National Bookkeeping.

National Bookkeeping can now administer training courses to their new licensees, along with a range of other perks and benefits to help you launch your own bookkeeping business.

Posted on October 19, 2015March 25, 2020 by Angela — 2 Comments

New You, New Business Startup?

Now is the time to explore new startup opportunities

Dreaming about setting up a new business startup — 365_The_Daydreamer_(6517625965)

As the end any year approaches, it’s easy to get caught up in the fun and frivolity of summer, by enjoying the few weeks of the holidays in the sun with friends and family. But it’s also a really great time to think about your career plans for the new year.

If you follow this blog regularly, then you may already be aware that EzyLearn has launched a new service called the StartUp Academy.

The goal of the StartUp Academy is to help people launch and operate their own home-based businesses, supported by our network of successful business owners and entrepreneurs. Continue reading New You, New Business Startup?

Posted on October 5, 2015May 12, 2023 by Steve Slisar — 2 Comments

What Type of Education Does The TPB Accept For Its New CPE Requirement

Type of Education for CPE Requirements of the TPB

Earlier this year, the TPB changed the requirements of the tax and BAS agent registration renewal process, now making it essential for all BAS and tax agents to participate in some form of education under its new continuing professional education (CPE) requirement.

According to the TPB, tax agents must participate in a minimum of 90 hours of CPE over the standard three year registration period, while BAS agents must participate in a minimum of 45 hours over the standard three year registration period. The Institute of Certified Bookkeepers have enabled completion of our Microsoft Excel Training Courses be accepted for CPD points.

Types of study approved by the TPB

As you’ve probably guessed, for your study to be recognised by the TPB and go towards your CPE registration requirement, the study has to relate to your area of work as a BAS or tax agent. While a short course on DIY home maintenance wouldn’t be covered, a seminar conducted by a qualified accountant who specialises in the building industry would be recognised by the TPB, even if it’s being led by a colleague at the firm where the BAS agent works.

The TPB has specified a number of activities that they consider relevant to tax advice, BAS and tax agent service you may provide:

Seminars, workshops, webinars, courses and lectures
structured conferences and discussion groups (including by phone or video conference)
tertiary courses provided by universities, registered training organisations (RTOs), other registered higher education institutions or other approved course providers
other education activities, provided by an appropriate organisation
research, writing and presentation by a registered tax (financial) adviser, tax or BAS agent of technical publications or structured training
peer review of research and writing submitted for publication or presentation in structured training
computer/internet-assisted courses, audiotape or videotape packages
attendance at structured in-house training on tax related subjects by persons or organisations with suitable qualifications and/or practical experience in the subject area covered
attendance at appropriate Australian Taxation Office (ATO) seminars and presentations
relevant CPE activities provided to members and non-members by a recognised professional association
a unit of study or other CPE activity on the Tax Agent Services Act 2009 (TASA) including the Code of Professional Conduct (Code).

If you’re a member of a recognised professional association

The second-to-last activity included in that list, you may have noticed, accepts any relevant activity provided by a recognised professional organisation. There are quite a few professional organisations recognised by the TPB, as you can see on their website, but the one probably most relevant to bookkeepers is the Institute of Certified Bookkeepers (ICB), with which EzyLearn is also a training partner.

The ICB is an association established to support bookkeepers and BAS agents by regularly holding seminars and training workshops, giving members access to marketing materials – such as customisable e-newsletter templates and unique email addresses – listings on the ICB directory and IT support, among many other things. Because they’re also accredited with the TPB and recognised by the ATO, they also possess a fair bit of influence with both organisations, making the lives of its members much easier.

In this case, being a member of the ICB, gives you access to a number of TPB-certified continuing professional education courses, seminars, lectures and workshops that can be counted as part of your CPE quota; members can also access a CPE register within the ICB dashboard to record their CPE activities.

Courses you can study as an ICB member

As a member of the ICB, you’re able to take any of the courses that they consider relevant to your profession as a bookkeeper and BAS agent, and which they consider to be continuing your professional education. This would include any of our MYOB or Xero training courses, but would also include our Excel and Word training courses as they’re both used to assist you in doing your job as a bookkeeper and BAS agent.

If you’re a BAS agent and your registration with the TPB will come due on or after July 1, 2016, you will be required to have participated in CPE to be eligible for renewal.

Joining the ICB and taking advantage of the many free and discounted seminars, workshops and courses, like one of our online training courses in MYOB, Xero, MS Excel or Word, is a good way to ensure you remain compliant with the TPB’s tax and BAS agent registration terms.

To find out more about joining the ICB, visit their website. Alternatively, if you’d like to learn more about starting your own bookkeeping business or working as a home-based bookkeeper, subscribe to our blog for all the latest news and updates delivered straight to your inbox.

Posted on October 2, 2015 by Steve Slisar

Why Continuing Professional Education is Important for Bookkeepers

CPD for Bookkeepers is Becoming More Important

Education is obviously something we think is very important, whether you’re changing careers, starting a new business, or looking to upskill for a promotion. But what about education to keep your current job? The Australian Government thinks that’s equally important, especially for BAS and tax agents.

In March this year, the Tax Practitioners Board (TPB) changed their renewal process to now include continuing professional education (CPE) as a mandatory for all registrations after July 1, 2016. Between now and June 30, 2016, it’s sufficient for BAS and tax agents to merely show they have read and understood the new CPE policy to renew their registration, but this arrangement can only be used once; moving forward those BAS and tax agents will still need to complete further education to register again as a BAS or tax agent the in the future.

Are You a Currently a BAS or Tax agent?

Over the last few years, the Government has introduced a lot of new measures that BAS and tax agents have had to comply with in order to continue to offer their services to clients, namely the changes in 2010 that made it mandatory for all BAS and tax agents to hold a minimum qualification of a Cert IV in bookkeeping.

The new CPE requirement could seem like just another measure that BAS and tax agents need to comply with just to be able to keep their jobs. It’s not. CPE has been introduced to ensure that BAS and tax agents continue to understand, not just their own industry – that of tax and finance – but also how other industries are changing too.

There are more people leaving their jobs as employees and starting to work for themselves as consultants and freelancers and contract workers, across a wide array of industries. Marketing professionals, for example, no longer simply come up with marketing hooks for companies; they also have to understand how to create websites and how SEO works and social media. In some cases, they even become unofficial spokespeople and sales reps for the companies they’re consulting with, leveraging their contacts on their clients’ behalf.

CPE makes BAS and tax agents more valuable, not less

This vastly complicates a marketing professional’s tax if that marketing professional’s job now encompasses the roles of several other professions within it. Similar changes have been observed in bookkeeping, with registered BAS and tax agents now providing more operational and administrative-type services, in addition to just bookkeeping.

The point, then, of CPE is not to make it more difficult for tax and BAS agents to renew their registration with the TPB, but to help tax and BAS agents to remain as highly skilled as they’ve ever been, in an ever-changing labour market. And the better skilled you are as a BAS and tax agent, particularly those self-employed BAS and tax agents, the more value you’ll be able to provide your clients, and the more work you’ll get from them in return.

To learn more about continuing professional education for bookkeepers, visit the TPB website. Otherwise, to read more about bookkeeping, particularly starting your own bookkeeping business, continue reading our blog.

Are you a Writer and Want to Work from Home Blogging for Businesses?

I write about marketing professionals because they are increasingly important in small businesses as businesses grapple with getting discovered online. I recently wrote about Blogging for Business and our new training course to help businesses with their content marketing strategy and tasks because it’s something that my team are spending more and more time on. It’s also an area that is evolving every month and requires writers to learn about and adapt to new technology.

Enrol into the Blogging for Business Course now and take advantage of it’s current cheap price. We’ll soon be adding real life exercises where blogging students will be asked to create content and have it edited and published so they can participate in a real world business blogging project!

Posted on September 29, 2015July 17, 2019 by Steve Slisar — 1 Comment

Blogging for Business Training Course

Create a Business Blog to Start Your Content Marketing Strategy

I started Business Blogging when we took our training courses online because there is a lot of information to share about MYOB, Xero, Microsoft Excel and the other software programs that help small business owners streamline their business, manage their accounts and finances and perform sales and marketing to bring in new sales.

Another reason was my realisation that keywords are king in the age of discovery where getting discovered by Google results in over 70% of the traffic to many websites!

Keywords Are King

A lot of small business owners throw thousands of dollars at Pay Per Click advertising in the hope of getting more visitors to their website. The most common service to help people spend these advertising dollars is Google’s own Google Adwords. Here’s a blog post about Google Adwords from 2010.

[quote]Have you heard the promise “I can guarantee your website appears on page 1 on Google”? It’s often by using Google Adwords and targeting selected keywords that companies can deliver on this claim, but at what cost?[/quote]

Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC)

Google Adwords is the perfect capitalist advertising tool because every advertiser competes for the keywords they want. The more competitors there are for a keyword or keyphrase the higher the cost per click – How scary is that!?

I understand that “Insurance” is one of the highest cost keywords you can “bid for” and there would be some pretty big players in that business. They keywords in this paragraph is “bid for” because that is exactly what happens, you place a bid for the maximum you are willing to pay for that keyword or keyphrase for EVERY time someone CLICKS on your ad.

There are ways of making sure a competitor doesn’t send you broke by clicking on your ad over and over, but essentially this strategy involves choosing keywords and bidding in the marketplace with all of your competitors.

Would You Rather Have People Come to You?

Bidding for keywords using Google Adwords is a great way to quickly test an idea or a strategy because you can guarantee website visitors, albeit at a high price, but people come across our website from all sorts of different keyword searches and that is where this blog has come in very handy.

I admit when I first started blogging for business the concept seems very NERDY! It’s like keeping an online diary for all to read and share. Then I justified it by affirming that keeping a blog is really just like having a “News” section to your website, demonstrating that your business is active and there’s a lot going on. Now I realise that it’s even more than that! Blogging for Business helps you

build an online reputation,
explain how some customers use your products
encourage readers to become customers
encourage readers to be part of your community
enable customers to be advocates and recommend your business

Having a business blog with useful content, good use of relevant keywords and landing pages that give internet users answers to their questions will help you begin the journey into Inbound Marketing, where potential customers discover YOU and what you have to offer. Do it right and you’ll just need to guide your website visitors to the conclusion you want – usually a sale.

Your Blog Becomes More Valuable Every Week

The other great thing about Blogging for Business is that your blogging site and the landing pages you refer to become more and more valuable over time as they remain in Google’s cache. They also become tools that can be used by your staff as they refer the blogs to customers who have specific questions that are answered in your blog posts.

Google is the current flavour for search engines and they seem to be doing a great job to stay in front, but Bing (owned by Microsoft) and others in China and Russia are always looking for ways to do better and get more people using them and having an active and useful blog will ensure success no matter how the search engine market changes.

Choose EzyLearn for Your Blogging for Business Training Course

We’ve been blogging about our online training courses since 2008 and we are a training company that designs courses in a logical fashion from basic to more advanced skills to ensure you experience the epiphanies most students are looking for when they do a course.

We include all of our content for one low price and we add updates that we create during the year to our existing courses, creating more content and better value for money every month.

Best of all our Blogging For Business Training Courses includes real life blog site membership, exercises where you get to create your own blog posts and link to landing pages, participate in social media and in a community of like minded beginner bloggers.

Learn more about the Blogging for Business Training Course.