Services provided by EzyLearn
Are you toying with the idea of starting a virtual or home-based business? Well EzyLearn is your one-stop training-shop for everything you need to start a business — all via our Small Business Management training course, MYOB training courses, WordPress training courses and MS Office training courses.
But what are the real benefits of working from home? Continue reading Be Happy: Start a Business and Work From Home
When the national minimum wage increased this month, it got us thinking about the role the payroll professional plays in a business. Payroll is an important and often complex aspect of every business — and a topic we cover in our MYOB training course — but it’s often the most underestimated. So we decided to take a deeper look at the role of the payroll professional.
Payroll: There’s Quite a Lot to It
Even though payroll sounds easy enough — you just pay people their wages, right? — it’s actually not as simple as it sounds. As a payroll professional, you’re entirely responsible for understanding and interpreting the ever-changing regulations and legislation relating to payroll; as well as managing the demands of both the employer and employee.
And as such, payroll is not a simple task for the uninitiated; it requires a person with solid knowledge of PAYG and superannuation, as well as an understanding of Australian tax.
For instance, how do you ensure you’re making the correct contributions to an employee’s HECS or HELP debt? Or make sure super contributions are made correctly (and to the correct fund)? Are you certain your employees are being paid according to the correct modern award? Getting these things wrong is not just time-consuming to rectify, but can also incur fines to your company!
In a recent new book by Tracey Angwin called The Payroll Revolution (which has gone on to become an Australian best seller) Angwin discusses the responsibility of the payroll professional and offers practical and guided tips on Australian payroll.
Just some of the skills that Angwin suggests the payroll professional should possess are:
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We cover the technical side of payroll in our MYOB training course; the Australian Payroll Association website can also give you more information on payroll practices. We also highly recommend The Payroll Revolution.
Whether you are a bookkeeper who uses Xero or MYOB or one of the other accounting software packages that we offer training on, you are probably aware that Australian tax legislation has changed recently. As a result, providing BAS services to clients is not as simple as it once was.
All bookkeepers who wish to provide a BAS service for a fee, must now hold a Certificate IV in Financial Services (Bookkeeping or Accounting) or higher to be eligible for registration.
The BAS services page on the ATO website can provide you with information about the qualification requirements and the education requirements for BAS agents to become certified with the Tax Practitioners Board (TPB) so you can offer tax and BAS services to clients.
Becoming certified with the TPB is a lot like getting your drivers license: you need to be able to demonstrate the relevant experience of at least 1400 hours, or 1000 hours if you’re already a member of a professional organisation — like the Institute of Certified Bookkeepers — which you can become a member of for free when you complete an applicable EzyLearn Training Course.
If you’re working under the supervision of another registered Tax or BAS agent, you cannot provide any Tax or BAS services to any clients you may pick up of your own. In other words, you must only provide tax or BAS services to clients known to your supervising Tax/BAS agent.
For some newcomers to the industry, this may seem daunting. But that’s just because conventional wisdom suggests that you must take on some form of permanent employment, working for a bookkeeper or accountant who is registered with the TPB and can supervise you while you gain the necessary skills to go out on your own.
But that’s not actually the case. While this is an option — and a good one if you’ve never worked as a bookkeeper before — it’s not the only one. You can still work with another registered Tax/BAS agent as a contractor, providing these services to the registered Tax/BAS agent’s clients until you’re eligible to go out on your own.
This is a great way to get a start on your own business — perhaps just offering non BAS services to start with — while you gain the skills to become registered to offer GST and BAS services. Contract bookkeeping jobs of this nature are actually easier to find that it may seem — often by striking up a working relationship with an accountant or another certified bookkeeper.
Find out more information on how to register with the TPB so you can provide tax and BAS services. And remember: you can become a member of the Institute of Certified Bookkeepers for free when you complete an applicable EzyLearn Training Course.
Although we are best known around Australia for our Online MYOB Training Courses with lifetime access and all versions of MYOB AccountRight Plus many students enrol into our WordPress training course so that they can create and change their own website.
We received a call from a prospective student this week and he asked about whether we offer training on WordPress.com or WordPress.org so I thought we should take some time to explain the difference and why we offer the training we do.
WordPress is a system for creating and maintaining your online presence. Some people consider a Facebook page or a Linkedin profile to be an online presence and it is, but if you are a business owner you can create an online presence that you own and it’s based around your domain name. When you register a domain name you then point it to a website hosting account (they call this DNS Management) and this is where the difference between WordPress.COM and WordPress.ORG comes in. When you have your own domain name and website hosting you install the WordPress.ORG software on your own website and everything you put online is at your own domain. It helps to give your domain name more value.
[quote]WordPress.COM is a service were you can create an online profile at their website and it eliminates the need to buy a domain name and organise your own hosting, but it means you forego the goodwill value of owning your own domain name.[/quote]
Having said that, WordPress.COM functionality can now be built into the WordPress.ORG software you have on your own website using a service that WordPress call Jetpack. Jetpack enables dozens of extra features, including statistics about your website visitors, and connects your own website with the WordPress.COM service.
If there is one suggestion we have for small business owners who are looking for a website, go with a WordPress driven website because:
We’ve chatted with Paul from BYO Web and he will have some exciting information about WordPress website owners and the ability to easily add an e-commerce shopping cart to your website. Make sure you subscribe to receive future issues of our blog, and watch out for Paul’s exciting WordPress news.
By the way, if you want to get a free training video lesson about how WordPress websites are structured please check out this free WordPress Training video.
You might recall the blog post that I put out earlier this week advertising for an Admin Assistant for our Chatswood office. We had some fantastic responses and it confirmed my thoughts about promoting work opportunities to our own network as opposed to complete strangers on a website like SEEK.
You might be interested to read about our bad SEEK experiences at the Australian Small Business Blog! There’s also some interesting information about competition and business valuation that you might find interesting if you are planning to start your own business and want to understand the concept of value.
One of the most interesting experiences in my team building exercise so far is discovering people’s attitude to work. The best example I can think of is the story about one lady who completed our MYOB course so that she could help run her father’s business. In the short time she had to get up to speed, she was able to use her skills to not only help manage the finances of the business but she was able to improvise and adapt to each new situation that arose, including building a professional website for that business using WordPress and perform many other tasks outside of her area of expertise.
[quote]This is one of the key skills you need to run your own startup business. Improvisation.[/quote]
We are working on a Certification Program for the Australian Small Business Centre to credential contractors who make themselves available to help businesses manage their business from Day-to-Day. This program is designed to build a team of competent professionals who understand the principles of providing a good and competent service for a reasonable return. We are looking for contractors who want to work with local businesses and offer a win-win service.
If you want to start your own business or want help getting your existing business off the ground make sure you complete the Business Service Provider form and begin your journey on becoming a Certified Contractor.
If you are like me, or pretty much any other living, breathing person on the planet with access to the Internet, then you’ve probably Googled someone in the last 24 hours.
Actually, I Googled someone while writing this post; had a gander at their LinkedIn profile and then went about the rest of my business.
I’ve mentioned previously how a LinkedIn profile works in shaping a person’s opinion of you, but how do you ensure it’s shaping a person’s opinion of you in the right way?
Getting Mileage Out of Your LinkedIn Profile
If you’re a jobseeker and you need to overhaul your LinkedIn profile, then some things to avoid:
Lying: Lie on your resume à la ex-Yahoo CEO, Scott Thomson, and you’re running the gamut of being found out at some point; lie on your LinkedIn profile and you will definitely get found out (either by a colleague or former employer), but lie on your CV and not your LinkedIn profile: now you’re not only a liar, you’re also a stupid one!
It’s simple: don’t lie. Ever.
Too many recommendations: if a prospective employer is scoping you out — perhaps to verify some of the claims in your CV or interview — and you don’t have any recommendations it’s likely they’ll consider you a dud networker, or worse: a dud employee.
To remedy this, send out a few recommendation requests. But don’t overdo it (when you’re job hunting, for example) — a slew of recommendations all at once makes it obvious you’re job hunting, which your current employer may not think too highly of.
Your job description is vague: maybe you think it’s mysterious, but vague or ambiguous statements in your job description is just plain elusive, and it makes you seem as though you’ve something to hide. Like maybe you’re not as fabulous as you let on you are.
The statement “assisted with the grand opening of a new store” could mean anything. For all we know, you could have put out the plastic cups people were drinking their complementary bubbles from. Instead, write what you actually did. No matter how small the task was.
No photo: this isn’t a beauty contest, nor is it the correct medium to post a picture of yourself drinking from a seven-foot beer bong. But the option to upload a picture is there for a reason.
A picture tells a thousand words and like it or not, visuals are important. If they weren’t, we’d never have to go for an actual job interview.
Ambiguous keywords: choose your keywords wisely; avoid overused buzzwords like “proven track record” or “team-player”. They may sound impressive (to you) but they really aren’t.
Instead of saying you have a proven track record in sales, show people what that proven track record was — if you pitched and won a multi-million dollar account for your company, say that. This turns an empty statement into a quantifiable accomplishment.
We work with professional partners that help combine our online training courses with services that help you to improve your chances of employability, or hone their talents and skills for running a small business. If you’re new to LinkedIn, we’ve discussed in a previous post how you can use your LinkedIn profile as your resume to find work. If you are looking for opportunities to become an independent contractor and operate your own business from home see the business opportunities at Workface.
We are constantly refreshing the content of our MYOB training course so that you are privy to all the latest information you need for becoming a bookkeeper, running your own bookkeeping business, or doing the books for the businesses of others.
Certainly, technology has reshaped the way most of us work, learn and interact with each other. Whether working from home or from an office, many of us spend the bulk of our time online, and for many, it’s not uncommon to feel increasingly disconnected from others, lonely, even. However, in this ever-increasing virtual world in which we live and work, there are ways to combat loneliness — things we’ve probably learned from our mother’s and grandmother’s: to mind our P’s and Q’s.
Everybody Emails
If you are thinking about working from home and running a bookkeeping business in 2013 (or you already do this), it goes without saying that things are substantially different to the way they were 20 years ago; different, even to just 10 years ago. Instead of seeing your clients often and chatting regularly on the phone, you email. On a daily basis, your Inbox fills with emails from clients — emails you rarely read in full, scanning instead for keywords or instructions that you mentally note down for later; the email is then closed. Rarely a response longer than “No problem”, “Done” or “Sure, will do” is sent back (something I’m guilty of myself!).
However, there was a time when a client would have phoned through their request or query, you’d have chatted, built a relationship, and some of the loneliness of working from home would have been assuaged. Today, we rarely indulge in such pleasantries — and we complain we’re lonely.
Building Relationships
But loneliness is so easily rectified, particularly in business. Instead of emailing a one-word email back, engage with your customers. Get to know them; ask them how they are, how business is travelling and, above all, thank them for continuing to do business with you. People like to feel appreciated; they like to feel that they’re not alone in the world.
At EzyLearn, we’re in the business of helping people build profitable businesses working from home. With all of our online training courses, we strive to ensure our online students don’t feel detached or lonely. We know that studying online can sometimes feel like you’re missing out on the student-teacher, student-student interaction, making your road to graduation a long and lonely one. It’s why we implemented the ZenDesk customer support system — to handle and respond to your queries quickly and efficiently — and why we’re also active on social media so you can connect with us quickly and easily, every time.
Next time you feel lonely when working or studying online or from home, perhaps consider whether technology has effectively placed a barricade between you and those around you. Are you likely to be regarded as a real person by your clients, or more a faceless, voiceless email that happens to bear your name? Use technology, instead, to connect (or reconnect) with people — and what better place to start than by saying, “Thank You”!
We made the decision to use WordPress for our website because it’s easy to use, inexpensive yet looks professional. It’s great for blogging and bringing visitors to your website and is also really flexible — with an abundance of features, layout options and plug-ins.
Yet, when it comes to websites, there are still thousands — yes, thousands — of business owners who don’t have one. These are people who still believe in phone books.
Phone Book Uses
Phone books are pretty handy things. They’re handy for fashioning into a makeshift monitor stand to prop up your laptop. They’re handy for wrapping glassware and crockery when you’re moving house. They’re pretty darn handy for killing really big spiders. And if you’ve got a stack of them collecting dust in your garage since, say, 1982, then why not build a fort? Surely that’s pretty handy for someone, somewhere — the kids, maybe?
Phone books are not particularly handy, however, for finding a telephone number or business listing in 2013. Why flick through some-seemingly million pages searching for something you could easily find with a click of your keyboard, a glide over your tablet device, or a quick chat with Siri?
Get a Website
If you’re a business owner and you don’t have a website, our strong advice is: get one! Today, when people are searching for a business, product or service they invariably Google it, so for anyone in business, a website is an essential online marketing tool.
Again, we highly recommend WordPress. Business owners can manage their own content, which gives you enormous flexibility and it comes with a host of attractive themes and options. We offer an online WordPress training course, designed to help you understand things like SEO, working with plugins (including mobile sites and RSS feeds) and much more.
The 7 Website Must Have’s
If you’re a business owner and you already have a website but it looks like a 90’s relic with loads of Clipart, an endless-scroll of 10-point, Times New Roman copy, punctuated periodically by headings that are underlined, in bold and capped off with 73 exclamation points, then it’s time for a makeover.
There are 7 things you must do when building or renovating your website:
1. Establish Goals: Like anything in business, you need to establish some goals for your website. Things like: Why will people visit my website? What information do I want to provide? What do I want people to do next? You need to answer these questions before you begin.
2. Don’t Forget to be Mobile: The Internet is literally in the palm of your hands; so don’t forget to consider a mobile strategy during the planning stage. You’ll need to consider the main reason people will be visiting your site — for information about your products and services, to purchase your products and services, or something else — and build that into your mobile site, make it the most prominent feature.
3. First Impressions: Your website is your brand, your personality, and your reputation all rolled into one. If your website resembles the shambolic mess we described above, that’s how people are likely to view you and your business: as a shambolic mess. Photos from online photo libraries, like iStockPhoto will give your website a professional finish, but don’t forget to add a bit of you into your website. Too many stock-standard images and you run the risk of seeming generic, uninspired, bland. And bland is boring.
4. Keep it Simple: Don’t overwhelm your visitors with too many links, too many choices. This isn’t a Pick Your Own Adventure novel, it’s a website. Ensure your menu and links are intuitive and consistent. If you want to point people to the “contact us” page in your copy, use the same language that’s in your navigation menu — this will eliminate confusion.
5. Use a ‘Call-to-Action’: Your visitors are here for a reason; capitalise on that. Make sure it’s easy for them to find what they’re looking for — display contact details, proceed to checkout links, or your mailing list prominently — and encourage them to take the next step.
6. Less is More: The endless scroll of copy has got to go. It doesn’t matter how multifaceted or interesting your business is, people won’t read it. They don’t care. If you can’t whittle your business and services down to two or three (short) sentences, get someone else to — we recommend you use a professional copywriter.
7. The Need for Speed: Load times are critical. If people can’t open your page within ten seconds — that includes mobile devices — they’ll try a website where they can. If you’re taking your own photos to include on your website, remember that huge files require huge download times. Make sure to reduce the image sizes to a few kilobytes rather than a few megabytes.
You can master the skills to build a fabulous website a lot sooner than you think! Check out the details of our WordPress Course Outline
In a recent post I discussed the differences between studying at TAFE, university or a private institution, the various methods of delivery and why you might choose one over the other. But does one particular method of delivery translate into better employment prospects?
Online Study: For Self Starters?
Online study (or correspondence or distance learning, as it was once known) has long divided people into two camps: those who see online or distance students as being self-motivated and dedicated, and those traditionalists or purists who see face-to-face learning as being, in some way, superior.
Truthfully, both sides are probably right. Face-to-face learning does force interaction between students — a precursor to real-life interaction and networking in business.
Business Means Dealing with People
We have often said that one of the fundamental requirements when starting a business is being able to plan. Another, however, is being able to interact and communicate with people from many walks-of-life. And from time-to-time, this means respecting the ideas and opinions of your colleagues whether you agree or not.
Managing or running a business often has less to do with balance sheets and more to do with managing people, or rather, managing different personalities. To a large extent, these are skills you learn in the playground; the university campus.
But they’re also frequently skills a person either inherently has or hasn’t. University doesn’t teach these skills as much as it brings them out in people already possessing them.
Take Mark Zuckerberg — an ambitious Internet visionary — but someone ill-equipped to deal with people and personalities (it’s Sheryl Sandberg who does that), even though he studied face-to-face at university, where Facebook was born. It’s true that face-to-face learning can sometimes conceal a great deal of unmotivated people — people that require constant direction, attention and supervision.
Online Study: If YOU Like Being in Charge
Online study doesn’t allow you to be unmotivated and in constant need of direction; it’s wholly autonomous and requires students to have a great deal of self-motivation, drive and ambition. These are traits that, for a person completing a course in bookkeeping with the intention to work as a sole-trader, will go a long way in determining your success a business owner.
Online students also show a great deal of technological savvy — the ability to work with new systems without a person at the ready to prompt you or answer your questions is an invaluable trait for business owners that often only have themselves to rely on for guidance.
In many ways, online students are problem-solvers; where it’s human nature to put our hand up for help, online students are forced to really look at the problem-at-hand logically, and thoroughly exhaust their options before sending off an email or picking up the phone.
But like universities don’t teach social interaction — they merely foster it — online study doesn’t teach autonomy. I would say that online students are attracted to online study because they already possess those traits likely to make them successful in business.
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When you enrol in one of our MYOB training courses, you should be happy to know that you’re among a group of self-motivated, ambitious individuals with the drive and determination to succeed.
Together with EzyLearn, you’re on track to become the next small-business entrepreneur.
The average employer or HR department spends approximately 35 seconds on each resume or CV before deciding to toss it in the “NO” pile or read on. Some employers are not even doing this, opting for technology to search your CV for them.
Resume Mistake #1: No Goal
The most important part of your CV or resume is your goal or objective. People often dwell on spelling and punctuation errors being the most important thing, and while it’s an important consideration, if you’re really serious about a position, then checking for these should be instinctive.
Most people leave writing their objective until the rest of their CV or resume is done. Then they often write a one-size-fits-all, generic summary of the kind of position they’re looking for that’s then regurgitated for each job they apply for. Big mistake! This is the only part of your CV that tells a prospective employer what you’re looking for — use this space wisely.
Resume Mistake #2: Leaving the Reader To Guess What You’ve Done
Don’t wax lyrical about “challenging work environments” and “putting your creativity to good use” — these aren’t quantifiable objectives; save them for your interview.
For example, if you’re applying for a position as a computer engineer, tell them why you want that position and why you’re suited to it, referring to your previous work history. This will get the reader far more interested in your CV.
Also people are often too ambiguous with the actual wording they use. Don’t use vague statements like “assisted with” or “handled” — these leave the reader wondering what you actually did.
Your CV should tell employers exactly what your role was — if you wrote and distributed press releases to national media outlets, tell employers that.
But don’t fall into the “my responsibilities involved” or “my duties included” trap — these outline your job description, not how capable you were at your job.
The sentence:
My duties included writing and distributing press releases to national media outlets to publicise the national launch of Revlon’s midnight red lipstick.
would have more impact if it was written as:
To publicise the national launch of Midnight Red lipstick, I wrote and distributed press releases to various media outlets, resulting in national coverage in The Weekend Australian and the Nine National News.
Here, people can see that you’re actually (very) competent at your job.
Resume Mistake #3: Not Using Bullet Points
If you’ve worked somewhere for several years, chances are you did a lot more than write one press release.
This is where writing a three-sentence description for each of your accomplishments becomes impractical — and if you do, your resume is more likely to resemble War and Peace than a CV — a massive turn-off for recruiters.
Bullet points are not only easier to read, they’re also space savers, great for breaking up dense blocks of text.
Resume Mistake #4: Getting the Length All Wrong
Then there’s the subject of much conjecture: resume length. Some people believe a resume shouldn’t be longer than one page. And in adhering to this rule, there are many resumes out here with an overwhelming amount of 9-point text crammed into one page.
As a general rule of thumb, if you have to choose between crammed-in text and another resume page, go with the latter.
White space is your friend! Use it liberally. There’s nothing more daunting than having to sit and read a page-full of dense text that leaves no safe place to rest the eye.
See more resume writing tips here, or perhaps you need to brush up your Microsoft Word skills for resume writing? Or if you need broader assistance generally with writing a CV or resume, see the services offered by our professional partners for resume writing services.
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Would you rather work from home? We help many students operate their own home based business by giving them the software skills to do it. Here are some home based business opportunities from our professional partners.
The job market is tough; that much is true. But if you’ve been sending out your CV with very little response, the job market is only one part of the problem. It’s more than likely that your resume isn’t doing you any favours.
Resume writing is about showing prospective employers why you are the best fit for a position and their organisation. It’s not about listing all the jobs you’ve ever had in the past — a café owner looking for a new barista is probably not interested in the three years you spent working in a corporate law firm.
When it comes to pointing out your experience, there are some basic do’s and don’t’s to resume writing. A resume shouldn’t be like a laboured novel; nor should it be so subtle in pointing out your experience that the reader is left to work out exactly how your experience applies to the position they need to fill — recruiters don’t have time for that.
And remember, the majority of companies today outsource the recruitment process to recruitment agencies that receive thousands of CVs and resumes on a daily basis for their large portfolio of clients. Even those companies that still handle recruitment themselves will have extremely busy HR departments; even in large companies, often there’s only one person reviewing the abundant CVs they receive.
When it comes to resume writing, you have to get them in quick! Being time poor and exceedingly busy, most recruiters only spend about 35 seconds on each CV or resume.
This means you have 35 seconds to convince a recruiter that it’s worth reading your CV further or, better still, getting you in for an interview.
You’ll achieve this if you:
But don’t see the minimalist approach as an opportunity to get fancy with the design of your CV.
Unless you actually are a designer of some sort, just use a clean template that clearly highlights why you’re the right person for the job. I once received a CV formatted like a crossword puzzle to list the person’s experience and education; clever perhaps, but the CV after that was easy to read and it was that person I called in for the interview.
To avoid the daunting task of resume writing from scratch each time you decide to change employment, you should get into the habit of updating your CV on a regular basis.
EzyLearn is in a great position to help you with your resume writing because we understand the employment market and the needs of employers. We also have team members with top quality resume writing skills and experience in creating quality resumes for administration and bookkeeping positions in particular. Other related blog posts: Finding a Job Using LinkedIn
If you’d like to share your job hunting experiences with us and others, please visit us our Facebook page — you can also let us know here if you need help with resume writing. We can also help you brush up your Microsoft Word skills for resume writing.
Are you in business as a bookkeeper, tradesperson, retailer, trainer or real estate agent and want to stand out from the crowd? We can teach you the online marketing techniques to help you do just this! Check out what’s included in our comprehensive Social Media and Digital Marketing online training courses.
THERE MAY BE SOME debate over whether having a LinkedIn profile actually helps professionals make valuable connections with other professionals, but the same could also be said of traditional networking.
As a writer, I probably should network more, but personally, I don’t find much value in it. In the past I have either fallen prey to someone wanting publicity for their pyramid-scheme-type business or I’ve turned into a borderline stalker myself; harassing someone who perhaps only gave me their business card out of a feeling of social obligation.
Besides, a business card tells you nothing about how competent or capable that person is at their job. For writers and journalists, I’ve always found it pretty easy to validate their claims on Google; for other professionals: not so much. Until LinkedIn, that is.
LinkedIn may not connect you with the recruiter of your dream job, but Twitter doesn’t guarantee you’ll become BFFs with Mariah Carey, either. What LinkedIn does, however, is give you an online professional profile.
And it’s the rather perverse nature of today’s digital society that makes an online professional presence invaluable; LinkedIn itself can act as your calling card, demonstrating how others endorse you and your work; it can act as your resume; and it can help you to actively find the right job.
Any time you meet someone, you can pretty much guarantee they’ll Google you. Whether they’re prospective employers you’ve interviewed with, people you’ve met in a professional setting (clients, industry alums) or even colleagues, you can bet at some point or another they have Googled you.
What that Google search turns up can totally change the way they interact with you.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve LinkedIn-stalked a fellow writer only to discover their LinkedIn profile is not so impressive, after all. From this point on the entire dynamic of our relationship has changed immediately; suddenly I feel I’ve got the power.
On the other end of the scale, discovering the meek-mannered, unassuming but otherwise seemingly-unimpressive editor I chatted to with extreme ease is actually a former Vanity Fair staffer or contributor to The New Yorker adds another dimension to our relationship — usually, I’m putty in their hands.
And it’s in this context that, yes, a LinkedIn profile does work. Whether you’re using LinkedIn as a job-hunter or a networker, your LinkedIn profile tells people everything they think they need to know about you.
The old phrase — first impressions are lasting impressions — is out. It’s online impressions that are the lasting impressions.
If you haven’t already, we welcome you to connect with EzyLearn at LinkedIn.
Our Xero online training courses include EVERYTHING for ONE LOW PRICE. Furthermore, if you select our Lifetime Membership option, you’ll have LIFETIME access to our ongoing course updates. All EzyLearn courses are accredited by the Institute of Certified Bookkeepers (ICB) and can be counted towards Continuing Professional Development (CPD) points. Find out more about our Xero online training courses.
We regularly receive tips from the academic board of our small business management course and they’ve recently shared something about marketing.
[quote]One of the biggest mistakes a small-business owner can make is to think that advertising budgets and marketing strategies are the playthings of big business.[/quote]
By borrowing some of the strategies some of the biggest businesses do well, there are many marketing opportunities small business owners can utilise to generate some organic business leads—and many of them are low-cost!
Online Advertising – The thing about the internet, particularly search engines like Google, is that they’re terrific if you know what you’re looking for. If you don’t, however, it’s like running into a crowded Allianz Stadium on grand final night and calling out, “where can I find my car keys?”Don’t forget—Apple Inc, once a little start-up in Steve Jobs’ garage—never launches a new product quietly, so why should you launch your business quietly?
If you create a good marketing plan and stick to it, you’re guaranteed to see results. If you’re unsure what goes into creating a marketing plan, we cover marketing strategies in our Small Business Management course.
As a journalist, I choose to act in accordance with the Code of Ethics set out by the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA), of which honesty, fairness, independence, and respect for the rights of others underpins the code.
This means I strive to ensure that every story I research and write about is honest, fair, independent, and respectful to the rights of others—even this blog post! And over the years, most of the organisations I have worked for, have too, upheld the ethos of the MEAA Code of Ethics.
Of course, just because a particular industry or trade union prescribes a set of guidelines, doesn’t necessarily mean each organisation or practitioner within that industry will uphold them—case in point: News International’s involvement in the phone hacking scandal in the UK.
And usually, until there is a breach of ethics like that of News International’s, it’s rather easy to forget why a code of ethics is necessary, particularly since compliance to the code is often voluntary, or at least, highly malleable.
But by submitting to a code of ethics, conduct or practice, you’re establishing yourself as an authority in your field; you’re telling your customers, clients and employees that you have integrity.
If you’re a bookkeeper or operate your own bookkeeping business, your clients are entrusting you with one of their most prized possessions—their livelihoods, and a code of ethics illustrates to them how you and your business operate.
But there are other reasons to adopt a code of ethics, aside from professional status. Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream, for instance, instituted a “values-led business” code by donating 7.5 percent of profits to charity, while other organisations value a work culture grounded in a strong ethical framework that promotes high staff retention, greater customer loyalty, and increased productivity.
For all the different reasons an organisation or business would have to adopt a code of ethics, the outcome never deviates—a code of ethics ensures accountability.
If you choose to submit to the Australian Association of Professional Bookkeepers’ Code of Professional Conduct, you’re communicating to your clients what they can expect from you, and, in turn, what you can expect from them—conduct that is ethical and lawful, confidential, objective and independent, and competent.
The first step in the process of starting a business is making the decision, but what happens next? It’s the idea. The great thing about being human is that we are always full of ideas. It doesn’t matter what level of education or even your age we all have ideas and we all have desires so the first step of starting a business is pretty simple.
The most important step however is action, how you develop your idea into a product or service that others are interested in or need. We provide online training for Australia’s most popular accounting software, MYOB so it’s clear there is a demand for bookkeeping skills in small businesses. If you have accounting or bookkeeping skills and qualifications and are interested in starting a business you might want to explore a Small Business Course that has now been loaded on our Learning Management System (LMS).
The Small Business Management course covers all the aspects you need when starting a business and the first subject covers “Originate and Develop Concepts“. The rest of the course goes through all the skills you need to create a business plan for your new business so it is a great course to do if you are thinking about starting a business. It’s also a good course if you want to elevate your skills in your current work too.
Our small business course is designed by Maggie Richardson from the Australian Small Business Centre and the good news is that she’s helped over 1,000 people build business plans to turn their ideas into reality. You’ll also be happy to learn that businesses are more successful when they operate to a business plan. If this is your year to start a business come and join us online with the Small Business Management Course.
If a bookkeeping business is something you’re interested in then you’ll be excited to learn that our Registered BAS Agent and Course Creator, Jacci has completed Maggie’s Small Business Management Course and created a business plan for a bookkeeping business that you can use as the basis for your own plan – most of the hard work has been done.
Just change the details for your own circumstances and you’ll have a plan that will help you get clients and stay on track to make a profit and enjoy the benefits of choosing your own hours and working close to home.
As part of our commitment to be the number one choice for online MYOB Bookkeeping training courses we are always keeping an eye and ear out for changes and improvements in the bookkeeping industry. If you do your own banking reconciliation, you might agree that sifting through printed statements and checking each entry off in your accounting software is maybe the most tedious part of bookkeeping.
But it need not be. With accounting bank feeds – a new feature in the world of cloud accounting – your bank transactions are automatically synched with your cloud accounting software.
This means that as long as you’ve entered your purchases into your accounting software, when your statement comes in from your bank, it will automatically marry up your purchases for you to approve with just the click of a button.
Automatic bank feeds removes the single most tedious step from the banking reconciliation process, which, depending on the size of your company, can take anywhere fifteen minutes to two hours (sometimes even more).
For a little more detail on how MYOB and bank feeds works, watch this video:
Or, for more information on how Xero and bank feeds work, watch this video:
But it’s important to know how your accounting software will access your sensitive banking information as currently there are two main methods for doing so.
First there is the method used by the likes of MYOB where your accounting software provider integrates a direct feed of your bank transactions from each of your banks into your software without needing your bank username and password.
The second method, called screen scraping, requires your accounting software to use a third party to access your bank transactions, thus necessitating your bank usernames and passwords, which can become a grey area with regards to protecting yourself from banking fraud.
While the companies that use the screen scraping method take security very seriously, should a breach occur, you could find yourself in violation of your bank’s terms and conditions because you gave out your usernames and passwords.
It’s up to you to choose what method you feel comfortable with but always check your bank’s terms and conditions before you give out your login in details.
Whatever option you choose, by eliminating the hours of data entry, your saving not only time, but also money.
And for the layperson doing their banking reconciliation themselves, services like Shoeboxed only eliminate the data entry even further.
PS: We’re also almost ready to announce our new Cert IV in Small Business Management with the Australian Small Business Centre so if you are looking to start a business or learn the skills to manage one stay tuned…
