Posted on August 28, 2012August 25, 2012 by Steve Slisar — 2 Comments

Finding a job using Linkedin as your resume

How to use linkedin to find a job or new customers

LinkedIn + your resume

I recently wrote about the death of the resume and how Linkedin is replacing the written resume, now I have located a great ebook to help you master the art of using Linked in as a tool to help you find a job or get new customers.

The most interesting change in the employment market that I have noticed is the slow evolution from job seekers looking at job ads to employers searching for the best employees. Social media tools like Linkedin make this all possible.

Attracting the right people

If you are a business owner you have a website to attract customers. You combine great writing and interesting pictures to attract potential customers to your website and then contact details and an offer to ensure they make contact with you. LinkedIn is the same concept for individuals, you combine the right keywords and headings to attract people to your LinkedIn profile. Once people are attracted to your profile you can let them know that you are interested in a job, contracting work or other opportunities.

Find Bookkeeping work or customers

If you are completing our MYOB Training Courses you might want to consider joining LinkedIn if you are not already a member. If you are a member and want to get better results this concise ebook about LinkedIn has some excellent information that will help you get more results from your current LinkedIn profile.

Posted on August 27, 2012April 17, 2013 by Steve Slisar — 2 Comments

MYOB Payment Terms and Getting Paid on Time

MYOB Payment Terms

I wrote a blog post about getting paid on time back in late June 2012 and thought I would share some information that might help if your customers are not paying according to your MYOB Payment Terms.

If you are not already aware, MYOB enables you to set payment terms at three levels:

System wide default
Customer (or supplier) card level
Transaction (ie. Invoice) level

Debtor Control and Credit Risk

Setting up MYOB Payment Terms enables you to maintain tight control of your credit risk. When the MYOB Payment terms are set-up correctly you can run reports that show exactly how much money is owed to you and how old it is. The age of the debt is referred to as the Aging Period and it’s commonly 30, 60 or 90 days. We teach these MYOB skills in our MYOB Day-to-Day Transactions course.

Direct Debit Facilities

If you work in or own a business that provides ongoing services and charges a monthly fee then a direct debit facility is something you should definitely look into. Direct Debit services are traditionally offered by the major banks like St George Bank, but there are also some small and nimble companies that help you get paid on time and here are a couple of them:

When you decide to use these services you would create another “bank account” in your chart of accounts and keep track of the money that goes into these accounts, the fees they charge and then the money that comes out and into your main bank account. It’s very similar to setting up a Paypal account for your company, the Paypal account becomes another bank account in your MYOB file that needs to be reconciled.

I hope these tips help to reduce your debt collection woes and make for happier, healthier bookkeeping.

Posted on August 26, 2012August 26, 2012 by Steve Slisar

VIDEO: WordPress training – Install a Backup plugin

WordPress Training

I wrote last week about the importance of securing your website in-case you get hacked (it has happened to us several times so we have learnt from the mistakes!). I wrote about a free WordPress Plugin called BackWPup and now I have some WordPress training about how to update WordPress and install the backup plugin at the bottom of this blog post.

If you subscribe to this blog post and are reading this on email, click the heading to get to the online WordPress training video.

About WordPress

WordPress is an open source Content Management System (CMS) that enables you to make changes to your website and keep a blog. Both of these tasks make your website more relevant to Google and helps to increase your PageRank with the Google search algorithm.

Just like Windows, WordPress is regularly updated and kept current by the developers and there are thousands of plugins that can be installed to make your website more functional. The WordPress training video in this blog teaches you how to upgrade your WordPress website and install and activate a plugin.

WordPress Training and Free Templates

Our WordPress training course gives you all the tools to create and maintain your own website and it comes with lifetime student access so you can use it as a resource when you want to get more complicated with your online marketing strategy. With enough WordPress training and practice you can not only create and update your own website, but perform this work for other small businesses who need to get online.

Watch the training video below and checkout the 1,500 plus free professional WordPress themes that you can use to create your own website.

Posted on August 25, 2012May 12, 2023 by Steve Slisar — 2 Comments

Business plan for your startup bookkeeping business

Free Business Plan Templates

I recently wrote about the importance of writing a business plan if you want to start a bookkeeping business. I included a great business plan template that is made available by the Australian Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research. You can find free Microsoft Word templates from within Microsoft Word or by doing a simple Google search. Today I’ve included a link to some free templates from Microsoft.

This website provides a template for a “business plan for a startup business” but you might notice there is also a business plan template for existing businesses.

Who Starts a Home Based Bookkeeping Business?

Many of our students are mums who are returning to work after many years of looking after young children. They may have had a professional careers, but their circumstances change and they now want to operate a business that allows them to drop children off and collect them from day care and school. If you are one of those people you’ll be thrilled to hear that there are several work-at-home-mums (or virtual assistants) as part of our EzyLearn Online Training Team 🙂

You may also be interested to know that our Small Business Management course includes training on topics that enable you to work from home via the Internet. Cloud based services like Google, WordPress, Dropbox and even the new MYOB software now make it possible and we show you how to do it.

Best of all, the Australian Government provide a website full of resources for those people who want to start a home-based business and a bookkeeping business is one of the best (according to us) because:

It allows you to work your own hours
If you are smart you can earn good money
Every business needs to do bookkeeping
Very few business owners WANT to do bookkeeping

When you enrol in an EzyLearn online MYOB Training Course you receive access to the courses for LIFE so they are always available to you as a resource, with case studies of various different business scenarios used in our training workbooks.

Bookkeeping Business Plan Built By a Registered BAS Agent

Do you want to start a bookkeeping business? Want to work to a plan that was built by an experienced bookkeeper? Does it all seem a bit daunting?

[quote]Jacci, our Registered BAS Agent has worked through the Small Business Management Course to create a Bookkeeping Business Plan for those who want to start their own bookkeeping business.[/quote]

This course not only gives you a well rounded education of the requirements to start and build a small business, but you will receive a business plan that you can tweak to suit your own circumstances as part of the course! Read more..

NEW! Start a Bookkeeping Business Without Buying Into a Franchise

Maggie Richardson’s Small Business Management Course is now online at EzyLearn BUT better than that we’ve combined it with a bookkeeping business plan (written by Jacci) as well as some legal templates, agreements and other training to help you get started with a bookkeeping business you can operate from your own home quickly.

When most people think of startups they think of technical wiz kids who create mobile phone apps, but our startup academy helps ordinary people start their own business as independent virtual assistants working from home in industries that are growing and with companies that can provide the support to help them get up to speed quickly and get great clients.

Want to learn more about starting a bookkeeping business?

Posted on August 24, 2012October 12, 2017 by Steve Slisar — 6 Comments

Starting a new MYOB bookkeeping business? Got a plan?

Without a plan, could you be planning to fail?

I AM REGULARLY SURPRISED at the number of our students who are learning how to use MYOB because they want to start their own bookkeeping business.

Many of them already have accounting or bookkeeping qualifications, but these are usually in larger accounting systems and so they learn to use MYOB to apply their accounting skills to help small business owners.

Start a MYOB Bookkeeping Business

I recently wrote about the Australian small business startup scene and have been working with like-minded, successful business owners to put together a series of bookkeeper business building webinars. Indeed, one of the critical parts of starting a new business is the business plan.

To some business owners this is the “art” part of starting a business, particularly if you are starting something from scratch! I’ve often heard people ask:

How can I possibly predict my future income?

How do I work out how much to spend on advertising?

What price should I charge?

What if I don’t get that many customers?

Business plan for your bookkeeping business

The best answer I can give is that a business plan is really just some solid information that you have collected from your research about the industry you want to work in.

It’s the best estimate that you can make at the time. But the best part of it is this:

You can always modify your business plan
Your next business plan will be more precise

[quote]The most commonly asked questions I hear about business plans is: Where do get one? Can I see yours?[/quote]

Where can I get a business plan?

The EzyLearn StartUp Course comes with a business plan template that will help you determine, not only the viability of your business, but also how to achieve your business aims. It will enable you to justify to your clients — and yourself — why you charge the fees you do. It is a dynamic blueprint that you can look back on and go over as you need to, in order to remind you of your goals, your business mission statement and keep you on the right path.

Oh, and please don’t underestimate the importance of a business plan. There is a famous quote from Benjamin Franklin:

[quote]“If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail!”[/quote]

The Australian Government’s www.business.gov.au website also has a free business plan template you can modify. Watch their video below:

Posted on August 23, 2012August 28, 2012 by Steve Slisar — 1 Comment

New look MYOB Certificate

More and more students turn to us to learn how to use MYOB bookkeeping software to find a new job, start a bookkeeping business or be more effective in their current job. To reflect our focussed committment to help you get that job we have re-designed our MYOB training course certificate.

MYOB Certificate designed to find you work

If you complete an MYOB Training Course with us, and you successfully complete all the knowledge reviews in each course you will received the revamped MYOB Certificate that looks like the image in this blog post.

Our courses are delivered 100% online and in keeping with that our certificates are supplied via our support site to students as a pdf file that you can print yourself. By keeping everything online we are able to combine 5 courses into one, from Setup to BAS and Reporting, for a very low price and provide you with lifetime access to the training resources.

We provided a free training video about Xero online accounting software and this is another part of our commitment to students studying to be MYOB Bookkeepers. Our Bookkeeping Academy is available to all students completing an MYOB training course and it’s our way of helping to keep you up-to-date with the latest in bookkeeping software and services (like cloud based bookkeeping systems).

To see the price for our courses with MYOB Certificate as well as Microsoft Excel and WordPress, visit our enrolment page. Remember that you get all courses for one price and lifetime access. This means that if you enrol now into our MYOB Training Courses you receive

Five (5) courses from Setup, Day-to-Day, Bank Reconciliation, GST, BAS, Reporting and Payroll for
One low price, and
Lifetime Access to the course and updates

Our MYOB Certificate course is currently being updated to version 12 and as an EzyLearn student you have access to this new material for no extra charge! Make sure you subscribe to receive our updates via email.

It’s the same with Microsoft Excel Courses, you receive access to all levels (9 short courses in total) from Excel beginners to advanced users for one price and lifetime access and we have training material for 2000-2003 versions as well as training material for 2007-2010 versions.

Enrol now, or see what is included in the MYOB Courses, Microsoft Excel Courses or WordPress Website Design and Blogging Courses.

Posted on August 22, 2012August 22, 2012 by Steve Slisar — 2 Comments

Do you have website insurance? What!

Does that seem like a silly question? If you have a website that you have spent thousands of dollars creating and promoting, it would be quite a logical question.

WordPress is your new shop front

In my work running our online training courses I work with several different websites and different content creators each week. We create and modify existing written content, enrolment forms and training videos that demonstrate our popular MYOB training. I couldn’t even begin to count the total value in human hour terms.

The modern website for many businesses is like their shop front, it provides critical contact information plus information and examples of the services you provide or the products you sell. Have you thought about insuring it?

Hacking your WordPress website

I was speaking with a business owner in the construction industry last week to learn about his website woes. His website is built using WordPress, one of the most popular website design and blogging platforms in the world and like many popular things, WordPress site are prone to malicious attack. Their website was attacked by a hacker and hundreds of hours of design, writing, structure and marketing are now in jeopardy because of the attack.

Free WordPress Backup Plugin

Our online WordPress training course includes a section on a free WordPress backup plugin and this recent event highlights the importance of a backup strategy. The website plugin is called BackWPup (Back WordPress Up) and you can read all about it at the WordPress script site. 344,317 people have downloaded this plugin and it even allows you to create a backup to Dropbox.

While you are there, check out the thousands of other scripts that are also available for almost any conceivable tasks you would want to do at your website. You might start to feel empowered about even creating (even only with the words and pictures) your own website!

While we are on the topic of security, risk and insurance, you might want to check your website hosting service and learn exactly how and when they back your site up. It might not be as often as you think and it might be only the previous day.

Posted on August 20, 2012 by Steve Slisar

Congratulations to our new MYOB Bookkeeper graduates

Our most recent MYOB Bookkeeper Training and Microsoft Excel Course graduates have just received their certificates and going through the records it was fantastic to see how many people we are able to help from all over Australia.

When we operated our Sydney training centres in Dee Why (near Brookvale), Gordon (near Chatswood), Parramatta and Burwood we noticed that students would travel a long way to come to our training centres. I won’t even get started about how they would have to try to find somewhere to park, with parking time limits etc etc.

In looking at our recent graduates it gives me a great feeling to know that we are teaching people all over Australia and New Zealand to use MYOB to help them find bookkeeping/accounting jobs or starting their own bookkeeping businesses. Here’s where some of our recent students live and what they said about the course:

Samantha from Agaston, South Australia

Agaston is near Nurioopta, Williamstown and Gawler

The fact that I could start and continue the course when I had the time. It was easy to understand and use.

Wendy from Surry Hills (Sydney), New South Wales

Surry Hills is near Paddington, Alexandria and Haymarket

I can study at my own time

Beverly from Butler, Western Australia

Butler is very North Perth, near Joondalup

Being able to learn at my own pace online.

Geoff from Epping, Victoria

Epping is surrounded by Bundoora, Campbellfield and Craigieburn

Learning more about short cuts and the really powerful nature and depth available in Excel, particularly in Course 303, was most enlightening and beneficial.
Really appreciate the learning at your own pace aspect and the lifetime course and excellent material content. Thank you so much for such an excellent course presented at an affordable price.

Anne-Maree from Sippy Downs, Queensland

Sippy Downs is near Buderim, Mooloolaba, Maroochydore and Caloundra, north of Brisbane

Nice short videos so you could take breaks and it wasn’t hard to find a certain video if you had to look back over something

Rebecca from Wodonga, Victoria

Wodonga is near Albury on the NSW and Victoria border

Easy to navigate around the site. I liked the short video presentations. If I was interuppted for whatever reason, you never missed too much and it was easy enough to replay.

Carmen from Ruse, New South Wales

Ruse is south west of Sydney, past Prestons and near Campbelltown and Narellan

The sort videos, easy to process and understand the information when presented this way.

Posted on August 20, 2012August 20, 2012 by Steve Slisar — 2 Comments

Want to take a peek at XERO, part owned by MYOB founder?

I recently wrote about my discoveries of the preferred accounting software for local startup businesses in Sydney and wanted to share something that our resident BAS agent, certified bookkeeper and MYOB trainer has created for you. A training video about how to enter a payment for an invoice you create using Xero online accounting software.

If you are looking at starting your own bookkeeping business it is useful to learn more than just MYOB accounting software to widen your potential client base. It is also good to learn about an online accounting program that is growing very fast in user adoption, such as Xero. Why is Xero growing so fast? There are several reasons, but one simple reason is that you can access your accounting file from anywhere.

As you can see in the free Xero training video at the bottom of this blog, using online accounting software is just like using many other online services, you login and click, type, tab etc. One of the other great features that we have discovered from speaking with accountants and some IT professionals is that your accountant or your bookkeeper can use your accounting system at the same time as you do, without having to worry about sending a data file and wondering who has the most recent version of that data file.

One of the new great features of doing your MYOB training courses with EzyLearn is that you have 12 months free access to the Bookkeeping Academy, through which we will be releasing hundreds of bookkeeping training videos to help budding bookkeepers learn a wider range of software as well as develop new skills to help them find work or build their own business.

Feel free to let us know if you are a XERO user and share your experiences at our facebook page.

Posted on August 18, 2012August 16, 2012 by Steve Slisar — 1 Comment

Are business startups not using MYOB??

I wrote a recent blog about Daniel from Parking Made Easy and his new startup venture and when I dug a little deeper and asked some more questions I discovered that many of the new technological startup companies that he connects with on a day-to-day basis don’t use MYOB and are not considering it.

Daniel is a member of the Fishburners group, a co-working, entrepreneurial non-profit organisation that business startups can join to share ideas, get support and learn new things. Daniel did a survey of some of his fellow startup businesses at Fishburners and discovered some surprising information – not one of them was considering using MYOB bookkeeping software to manage their business financials! We had to ask why?

Several reasons where given, including:

Many of the businesses are still very small so they use Microsoft Excel to manage and keep track of their finances (75%)
Some of them were considering a cloud-based bookkeeping system because they could access it from anywhere (25%), including
- Taking advantage of 12 months free use of SAASU, a cloud-based accounting program that is made available to members of the group
- Another cloud-based bookkeeping system called XERO.

I wrote a blog post about these cloud-based (basically a website that you signup and log in to) online bookkeeping systems in early 2010 and it’s interesting to see how they have progressed over that time.

If you are completing our MYOB training courses don’t fear, the company is still by far the largest provider of bookkeeping and accounting software for small business in Australia so there are lots of jobs being advertised.

Posted on August 16, 2012August 20, 2012 by Steve Slisar — 3 Comments

What is a start up? Is your business in this category?

18% of MYOB course students want to start bookkeeping business — 18% of MYOB course students want to start their own bookkeeping business

We use this blog to explore what is happening in the world of small business, including the technology they use and what they plan to use in the future. I’ve recently been speaking with a start up entrepreneur who has built a website that helps people like you and I find a place to park our car in our congested cities, by linking car space owners with car owners.

In the time we’ve known each other Daniel started with an idea and a passion to build his website and now has a live website for the world to use. Now that’s a start up business isn’t it? But what about your business?

A survey of students who have recently graduated from our Bookkeeping Academy after completing their MYOB training courses revealed that 18% of them want to start their own bookkeeping business. Is that a startup business? It is in my mind. It’s about having an idea and determination and the drive to start a brand new business and we are committed to helping startup bookkeepers build and grow their business.

The career and business building professionals at our Training Partners, Workface, write a blog about things that you can do to get that dream job or build that bookkeeping business you have thought about for years.

We are also in the production phase of some more great training videos about bookkeeping software that will come out shortly as part of our bookkeeping academy CPD program.

Posted on August 11, 2012August 12, 2012 by Steve Slisar

Discount Coupon for MYOB Training Courses

If you are aware of internet marketing coupon and discount voucher sites then you have probably heard about Groupon and Living Social. These are massive companies in the United States that make an offer available to their subscribers from local companies that are willing to heavily discount to find new customers.

EzyLearn has a Professional Partner network of companies that provide specialist services around our online training courses (including rehabilitation companies, bookkeepers, accountants, recruitment companies and more) and we have decided not to use group buying sites because of the conditions they impose. If we offer a discount coupon we prefer to offer it directly to you or through our partner network.

Today you can use the Discount voucher code in this post to receive an instant discount for enrolment into the MYOB Training Courses. Remember, that we already offer 5 courses for the usual price of one course and LIFETIME student access as well as student community support and career support so you can find work using your new skills.

This discount voucher is available for a limited time and can end at any moment, but the great news is that you have access to the course for the rest of your working life once you enrol. It also comes with a 7-day money back guarantee if you are not completely satisfied.

Enrol using the Discount Voucher Coupon Code at this website: http://ezylearnonline.com.au/enrol/

Posted on August 8, 2012August 7, 2012 by Steve Slisar

Are Aussie accounting software firms now competing in a global space? Threats to MYOB?

I was speaking with a business owner this morning and he mentioned that he was going to try a new accounting software SERVICE after a recommendation from his web guy? It made me ask the question: “Is your web or IT guy the source of recommendation about your bookkeeping software or is it your bookkeeper or accountant?”

In my previous blog post where we included a free training video about performing a bank reconciliation using MYOB, I mentioned some other bookkeeping software programs that compete with MYOB but the program that my business owner friend talked about was from a Canadian company called Kashoo…It then dawned on me that of all the bookkeeping programs only one of them is Australian owned anyway, SAASU. MYOB is now owned by US Private Equity, Xero is a New Zealand public company, Freshbooks is US based and Kashoo is a Canadian company.

This adds to the impetus behind local Australian bookkeepers having to compete with international remote workers for bookkeeping work… but more about that another time.

The good news right now is the MYOB is a clear market leader for use in most small businesses and if you are looking to earn a living as an accounting employee or independent contractor the chances are you will need to know how to use MYOB Accounting software. We try to make it easier by providing LIFETIME student access and all five MYOB Training Courses for one low price!

We will be reviewing the online accounting software mentioned in this blog post so make sure you subscribe to receive the reviews as they arrive.

Posted on August 7, 2012August 5, 2012 by Steve Slisar — 1 Comment

Video: Reconcile your bank account to your MYOB datafile

We use this blog to provide some free samples of our training materials as well as inform readers about the features of our online MYOB and Microsoft Excel Training Courses. Today I am going to demonstrate the key features about performing a bank reconciliation using MYOB and how our EzyLearn ANSWER student support service helps bookkeeping students.

A bank reconciliation in MYOB is what brings your MYOB datafile back to reality. Your bank statement shows the truth about what money has gone into and out of your bank account and provides you with the blueprint you need to reconcile your MYOB accounting system. The video below demonstrates that once you have performed all your Day-to-Day Transactions a bank reconciliation makes sure that you have entered all the information you need to. At the end of a bank reconciliation your MYOB data is correct and you can start to run reports and get some great up-to-date information about your business.

MYOB releases new versions of their software most years and usually at the beginning of each new tax year to coincide with new PAYG tax tables and they are currently going through a race to the cloud to compete with many new startups like Xero, SAASU, Reach Accounting and FreshBooks. Some times these upgrades haven’t gone smoothly and students ask us how to perform actions in our training workbooks using MYOB. To help students in these scenarios we launch EzyLearn ANSWERS in May 2011 and this is one of the results we release via our blog. There are many other support blogs we’ve written so feel free to search our blog for answers.

If you have subscribed to our blog and are reading this via email, click on the heading to get to our website to see the free training video.

Posted on August 2, 2012July 31, 2012 by Steve Slisar

Exporting Employee information from MYOB

We use this blog post to introduce new content for our online MYOB training courses as well as our Excel, Word and WordPress courses. This new content has been created after a MYOB Course Q&A Support request from Andrea in New Zealand.

We wrote a blog post in September 2011 about data file formats that are used in our MYOB Bank Reconciliation Training Course. In that blog post we wrote about exporting the accounts list that MYOB uses as the foundation for the company file and that all transactions are then based on. This accounts list is known in the accounting world as your Chart of Accounts.

Today we announce some new training videos for our MYOB Reporting and GST Course (code 504). It covers the exporting of Payroll information from MYOB of employee card files and Payroll information using both the Report Centre in MYOB AccountRight version 12 as well as the Import/Export wizard.

As an EzyLearn student you receive LIFETIME access to the MYOB Training Courses so feel free to login to the training site and go to the GST and Reporting Course to view videos 504301 and 504302. If you are not a student learn about what’s included in our training courses and see why hundreds of students enrol with us every year.

Posted on August 1, 2012July 31, 2012 by Steve Slisar

Did you know that you can use Google to search within a site?

This is a tool that I use all the time when I am surfing and searching the Internet and I thought you’d be interested to learn about it.

My last post was about the new WordPress search field we implemented on our WordPress Employment Training Blog site but it occurred to me that you might like to use a great search tool you are already using – Google.

If you want to search for PAYG and Microsoft Excel information in our blog site, you simply need to type the following information into the Google search box:

payg excel site:ezylearn.com.au/wordpress

You will end up seeing results very similar to the image in this blog post. Notice that you:

Type the word site: before the domain name of the website you want to search
Don’t need to type www
Can search within sections of a website (ie. the /wordpress)

Have fun with this great new feature.