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Thinking of Starting a Second Business? Introducing Jerry

Case Study: Costs for starting up a second, related business

microsoft excel starting a second business
Contemplating starting a second business, related in some way to your first? Excel can help you forecast start up costs.

A LOT OF BUSINESS OWNERS branch out into related fields when their flagship business becomes successful enough (just look at Jim’s Mowing). However, this can be a bit dicey if the business owner doesn’t properly forecast all the start up costs. Not doing so can not only have an adverse impact on the new venture, but also on the existing business.

In this case study, we’re going to look at the start up costs associated with starting a real estate sales business. With real estate licencing laws changing and digital marketing available to everyone the ability to start your own business and work at home is now very realistic. Continue reading Thinking of Starting a Second Business? Introducing Jerry

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Present Your Sales Process on Your Website

Use PPT to “teach” your clients how you do business

show sales process with powerpoint
Powerpoint slides are a great way of presenting sometimes complex information very simply.

PowerPoint has many different uses, chief among them being a sales presentation for prospects. Another excellent use for PowerPoint is to illustrate your sales process, and then add it to your website.

If you’re a bookkeeper or real estate agent or someone else who sells professional services, rather than products, providing valuable information about your business or explaining the way it operates can help convert more visitors into customers.

People scan for valuable information

Most of the time, when someone comes to your website for the first time, they’re scanning it to see if you meet a certain criteria they have for a potential supplier.

This could be based on price, services, turnaround times, or something else. If they can’t find this information quickly and easily, they’ll generally move on somewhere else.

Use PowerPoint to convert visitors

Creating a PowerPoint presentation that contains this information, which you can upload slide-at-a-time, or altogether as a video, is an excellent way to present this information to visitors of your website.

How you determine what to include in your presentation depends on how well you’ve identified your ideal customer.

Explain how your business operates

This is very useful for bookkeepers and other businesses that have a particular way of working with their clients. Take prospects step-by-step through your process, so they know exactly how your operate and what to expect before they even contact you.

This helps demystify the process, which makes people feel more at ease with the practice of hiring you, and also shows you’re transparent about process, and that makes you trustworthy.

The fewer questions prospects have about you and your business, the more comfortable they will feel about contact and hiring you.

You can use PowerPoint to explain any of your business’s processes that involve the customer, whether it’s your returns or refund policy, setup procedures, or technical support.


learn PowerPoint online training course

Our PowerPoint training courses will teach you how to create persuasive PowerPoint presentations that will convert visitors. Alternatively, our sales training courses will show you how to identify and target your business’s ideal customer. 


 

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How Bank Feeds Save Time and Money

Making Light Work out of Bank Reconciliations

Xero bank feeds
Incorporating Xero bank feeds will save you time, money and stress.

Cloud accounting software’s greatest innovation was not putting the software in the cloud; it was introducing bank feeds. You’ll learn how to set up bank feeds in the latest version of Xero in our Xero Bank Reconciliations and Journal Entries course. For now however, we’re going to explain why you should — whether you’re a business owner doing your own bookkeeping or whether you’re a bookkeeper employed to do it for your clients — be using bank feeds.

Bank feeds in brief

A bank feed is an automatically created list of the transactions (spent and received) in your bank account that is imported into your Xero accounting software. For this to occur, you have to give Xero permission to access your account. Some people feel funny about this, but bank feeds have been around for so long now that, just like online shopping, there’s really nothing to worry about. I won’t go into how the technology works, but I will say that no one looks at your account data; you’re just allowing the free flow of information between your bank and Xero.

Direct bank feeds save time (and indirectly, money)

There was a time when you or your bookkeeper had to wait until your bank statement arrived before any transactions could be reconciled in your accounting software, usually at the end of the month. For businesses with a lot of transactions, either in the form of receivables or payables or both, reconciling a month’s worth is a finicky job that’s prone to errors.

With bank feeds, transactions will show up in your accounting software as soon as the payment leaves your account or credit card. If you (or your bookkeeper) get in the habit of reconciling your account on a daily, twice weekly or weekly basis, it makes it easier to accurately code each transaction because you’re only dealing with a few at a time. This results in fewer errors and fewer hours spent fixing them, and that saves money (read: time = money).

The Xero online courses we offer

Xero online training course bank feedsBank feeds are an important aspect of reconciling your (or your client’s) accounts. Our Xero Bank Reconciliations and Journal Entries Course covers setting up bank feeds, plus much much more. Alternatively, to take it back a step, you can learn about invoicing, credits and reporting in our Xero Day-to-Day Transactions Course.

Using an old version of Xero?

You might like to read this prior post we wrote explaining how you can add bank links on an older version of Xero or enrol for our Xero courses here.

 

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Working Out Job Costs and How to Charge Your Clients

Why You’re Underselling Yourself with Fixed Price Quotes

bookkeepers fixed price quotes
There are many reasons why you may lose out when fixed price quoting.

I’ve written a number of blogs on how bookkeepers can work out their fees and what good local bookkeepers generally charge. However, now we examine the nitty gritty of determining your on-the-job costs so you can clearly see what your hourly rate should be.

When it comes to working out fees, most business owners go: “Well, the average market rate for my profession is X per hour and this job should take around Y hours” and off they go and give their client a quote that, in today’s small business parlance, is frequently referred to as being a fixed-price quote or the project fee.

This would be fine except that you’re essentially working on an hourly rate, without the benefit of being able to charge the client if you run over your allocated timeframe. Continue reading Working Out Job Costs and How to Charge Your Clients

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What Bookkeepers Can Learn From Real Estate Agents: Facebook Advertising

Facebook – Great for Local Marketing

using facebook for bookkeeping marketing
Facebook can be extremely useful for marketing to a local audience.

In its decade of existence, Facebook has built up a wealth of data about its users, data that it likes to sell back to those who need it, in the form of targeted advertising. Facebook advertising, though similar in its approach, is very different to Google Ads in what it delivers.

Real estate agents discovered the value of Facebook advertising early, and have used a combination of images and videos to successfully deliver their marketing messages and sale pitches directly to their target market and in order to set their prices. Continue reading What Bookkeepers Can Learn From Real Estate Agents: Facebook Advertising

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What Bookkeepers Can Learn From Real Estate Agents: Using Video and Images

Focusing on Education Rather than Sales

how bookkeepers can use videoTHE INTERNET HAS CHANGED the way businesses market their services to prospects, from a simple sales message to an educational one.

Real estate agents caught onto this shift in buyer trends early and started creating online content to cater to these buyers.

Visit the website of any real estate agent and you’ll find lots of images and videos educating potential buyers about their services, previous sales and the local area they represent.

Continue reading What Bookkeepers Can Learn From Real Estate Agents: Using Video and Images

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What Bookkeepers Can Learn From Real Estate Agents: Setting Prices

Don’t Reinvent the Wheel: Glean Relevant Info from the Property Industry

how much to charge as a bookkeeper
As a bookkeeper you can learn much from the humble, or not so humble, real estate agent!

As a bookkeeper, or someone thinking about becoming a bookkeeper, you may be surprised how much you can learn from real estate agents. For an example, take the way a real estate agent has to price a property for sale.

The key to selling a property quickly and efficiently, is setting the right price. A real estate agent who sets a price that’s too high for the market, isn’t doing her or his job properly. In such cases, the property will sit around for many weeks, or possibly even months, until the price is eventually reduced to one the market will bear, sometimes to well below market value.

Continue reading What Bookkeepers Can Learn From Real Estate Agents: Setting Prices

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Reckon One or MYOB?

Just What Do We Reckon?

find-a-good-bookkeeper
Reckon One was the original distributor of QuickBooks.

Not so long ago, we looked at the major differences between MYOB and QuickBooks. We also explored some of the other benefits of Quickbook more generally over MYOB, but Reckon One, which used to distribute QuickBooks in Australia before striking out on their own with their cloud accounting software, is also becoming a major player in the cloud accounting space for small businesses.

We thought we would take a look at how Reckon One stacks up compared with MYOB, which is still the market leader in Australia and the mostly widely used account software application among accountants.   

Reports

The reporting functions in Reckon One are extremely powerful. This is true of MYOB, as well, but with one major difference: Reckon One has the ability to customise and save the reports you’d like to run. This is a big time-saver, as it renders all your reports just one click away, rather than several. If you’re using a bookkeeper, they’ll be able to run your reports for you the first time, and then you’ll be able to go in and generate them as often as you like afterwards.

Payroll

Both products offer a very good payroll system for businesses that need it (Reckon One, at the time of writing, charges an additional $3/month to turn this feature on), while unlimited payroll comes standard with the MYOB Essentials Unlimited Payroll plan. Both products are also SuperStream Compliant, so if you’re looking for a stable, yet flexible, payroll system, either products are a good choice. Of course, depending on your business’s other needs, you may lean more toward the cheaper Reckon One option.

User Experience

MYOB AccountRight, even to this day, looks dated. The MYOB Essentials platform, however, has a much cleaner interface, as does Reckon One. The product you choose will depend on the size and needs of your business, the features you require, and who will, primarily, be using the software. MYOB is famously more difficult to use compared with Xero, QuickBooks or virtually any other accounting software. Indeed, everything you can do in Reckon One takes about three or four more clicks to perform in MYOB, so, again, it’s a matter of personal choice. There are many Apple users who can’t understand why people still use IBM computers, just as there are many IBM users who can’t understand why people use Apple products.

In selecting a cloud accounting package for your business, remember not to choose solely based on price. Make a list of the needs of your business and the functions you’ll require, and then select the accounting package that suits your needs the most. It’s also a good idea to speak with your bookkeeper before making a choice. 

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Right now, for a limited time, we’re offering over $300 off a number of our online courses — we also have new great courses in QuickBooks online daily transactions and, if you’ve ever struggled with filling in a timeline of posts on social media, or you want to start promoting yourself or your business in social media, try our Digital Business and Social Media Marketing Courses.

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Is QuickBooks Better than MYOB for a Small Business?

How Does QuickBooks Really Stack Up Against MYOB?

compare QuickBooks and MYOB
QuickBooks is a much simpler accounting package to use than its rival, MYOB.

WE RECENTLY INTRODUCED our QuickBooks Online Daily Transactions Course because we can see that QuickBooks is fast becoming a serious and respected rival to the more established accounting software packages.

We recently wrote about how QuickBooks uses the SuperStream-compliant service KeyPay to deliver payroll services because QuickBooks itself isn’t actually SuperStream compliant. Currently, the payroll feature in QuickBooks is free for all Small Business plans, as the company further positions itself as the low-cost accounting software option for Aussie small businesses.

Continue reading Is QuickBooks Better than MYOB for a Small Business?

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Are You a Bookkeeper Who Needs More Clients? Want My Advice?

If you are a bookkeeper, selling online MYOB and Xero training courses could be a perfect complement to your bookkeeping business!

FINDING PROSPECTS AND converting them into clients involves selling and most of us hate doing it, but wait…

For those of us in small business, be it as a bookkeeper, real estate agent, sales rep, virtual assistant or the like, most of us are selling every day of our lives.

This means we get pretty good at it. We develop techniques that we can replicate and that become part of our daily lives.

The process of selling is really no longer about selling per se; it becomes about a systemised process of:

Continue reading Are You a Bookkeeper Who Needs More Clients? Want My Advice?
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Why Partnerships Can Be Risky Business

An Understanding of Business Partnerships is Essential

business-partnerships-training-course-online
Structuring your business as a partnership doesn’t have to be risky business if you arm yourself with the right information first.

As we mentioned in our previous post about doing the necessary actions to start your new business now, rather than in January, there are lots of tasks to carry out before your business will be ready to commence trading. The first, most important thing you should do, is register for an ABN.

There are lots of services available that, for a fee, will register your business name, company structure, domain name, email hosting, and even register your business for GST and PAYG. But do you really need to use these services? Well, it depends. 

You might if: Continue reading Why Partnerships Can Be Risky Business

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FREE Digital Business Course

Learn How to Run a Business Online

starting-a-new-cafe-or-retail-business
It doesn’t matter whether you have a specifically online business, or a gift shop, clothing store, cafe or other bricks and mortar business, as a business owner, we can help you understand the digital economy.

In a post I published about starting your own business, I said that all small business owners should have an understanding of traditional and digital marketing. You’ll be surprised how many don’t!

All businesses have a digital aspect to them these days so it’s vital that business owners and managers know how to manage the digital aspects of their business.

This starts by understanding some of the terms used and how websites, domain names, hosting and the Google search engine works. Continue reading FREE Digital Business Course

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Start Your Business NOW!

The Christmas Holidays is a Terrific Time to Start a New Business

start-your-own-small-business-this-christmasIF YOU’VE DECIDED THAT this will be the year you start your new business, don’t wait until January to begin your journey to becoming the head honcho.

Right now is the best time of the year to begin — because while everyone else (businesses included) has gone on on holidays, you’ll be ready to take on your first client or customer by the time January 2017 rolls around. Continue reading Start Your Business NOW!

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Bad Payers Cost 12 Working Days to Collect $13,200

flowchart of the cash conversion cycle

Credit Management is an Extra Job

credit-management-training-assessment-management-and-enforcement

I’ve always believed that as soon as you offer credit you’ve got yourself another business – a credit management business.

When we first created our MYOB Daily Transactions course we designed it to take students through the cashflow process of where money goes when it first leaves your bank account and these are the main steps:

  1. Money in the bank (cash asset)
  2. Buy stock (inventory asset)
  3. Products sold on account (accounts receivable asset – Trade Debtors)
  4. Customer pays their account (cash asset)

The interesting part of this business process to me is the marketing (choosing the products, pricing, marketing message and advertising) and the credit management to get the money back.

Continue reading Bad Payers Cost 12 Working Days to Collect $13,200
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How Much Should You Pay for Bookkeeping Business Marketing

Bookkeeping business marketing includes price, packaging and the marketing message

michael-locke-talks-about-marketing-and-it-applies-to-bookkeeping-businesses-tooI had an opportunity to interview the man who managed the entire marketing program for Dyson when they came to Australia from the UK and helped Dyson become a phenomenal success and a leading brand in Australia. Michael Locke pointed out very clearly in that interview that product (and service) design, including packaging and pricing, is one of the pillars of good marketing – one of the Four P’s and Bookkeeping Business marketing is the same. Watch the video to learn more.

Many bookkeepers, particularly those starting a new bookkeeping business after coming from the corporate accounting world, think in terms of earning dollars per hour and days per week whether they work short term or several days a week so a big part of our bookkeeper induction into National Bookkeeping is to help manage their calendar for multiple clients and clients of different sizes.

Business plans, spreadsheets and other templates for bookkeepers

bookkeeping-basics-free-education-guideIt’s not hard to find a template for a business plan and if you are good at spreadsheets or have used Microsoft Excel in the past you’ve probably already got some good “templates” to work with. Things like business cards, flyers and prospect questionnaires are included in the National Bookkeeping licence but again I’ve met many bookkeepers who spend money on graphic design, websites and flyers before they even “advertise” their message to potential clients and I often ask how important that really is considering most clients make a decision based on the person they communicate with for bookkeeping work.

We include our Microsoft Excel Course – all 9 in the licence. We also include the MYOB and Xero courses and if you let us know you’d like to be promoted as a local face to face trainer for MYOB we’ll work to connect you to businesses who want to learn how to use these programs for their business.

While I’m at it I should mention that our Beefed Up Bookkeeping Basics – Level 2 workbook is included in the licence as well as a number of new workbooks, guides and other content that we are currently working on!

Less work for you and a team to help you succeed

deb-crompton-bookkeeper-from-mandurah-wa-local-myob-and-xero-portrait-smlI’m writing this post because I’ve had several conversations with Deb, our Mandurah Bookkeeper licensee, and we’ve managed to focus most of our time on constructive marketing content for blogs, flyers and other material that we’re working on together to get her discovered in her local area. There’s work that Deb needs to do but its focused on customer service and helping local businesses rather than on marketing.

The other aspect of starting a bookkeeping business as a National Bookkeeping licensee is that the

  1. Cost is very low
  2. Mark and I are able to provide mentoring support to our licensee to help them during the various stages of their bookkeeping business
  3. Our content marketing team can focus on building a great story around you, and
  4. We can leverage the national marketing reach of our existing websites

Something small business clients like is that National Bookkeeping licensee are vetted during the Pre Qualification process so they feel confident that they are working with high calibre bookkeepers (and even qualified accountants with corporate experience).

Looking for experienced bookkeepers in Brisbane/Gold Coast and Melbourne

We’ve received interest from small businesses in Melbourne and are also looking at expanding our marketing in Brisbane Gold Coast so if you are looking for more clients and want to be part of something bigger Pre Qualify now.

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Bookkeeping Basics: Cash vs. Accrual Systems

Bookkeeping Basics apply to every cloud accounting platform: MYOB, Xero or Quickbooks (QBO)

lifelong learning platform woman online learning for life

BOOKKEEPING IS THE PROCESS of keeping accurate records of the financial affairs of a business, and every business operating in Australia, whether it employs staff or whether it’s owned and operated by a single sole trader, must keep their bookkeeping up to date.

Bookkeeping plays a key role in the lodgement of your tax returns and business activity statements. It can also provide valuable information on the financial health and performance of your business.

The bookkeeping process for a business starts the very moment you begin trading, so it’s extremely important that you set up a system for managing your bookkeeping early in the life of your business — ideally, at the same time that you’re setting up your other operational systems (email accounts, websites, invoicing, etc). We’ve included bookkeeping basics videos in our MYOB training course for several years already but now these basics are part of a separate guide!

ezylearn-bookkeeping-basics-training-course-workbook-logo

If you’ve never been self-employed before, just the idea of setting up a bookkeeping system is probably enough to strike fear in your heart, which is why we put together a free guide to setting up your own bookkeeping system, called Bookkeeping Basics, which you can download, for free, from the EzyLearn website.

The Bookkeeping Basics guide is an instruction manual on basic features and terminology used in every bookkeeping system, and will provide you with some good foundation knowledge of how your accounting software works, which you can use before you enrol in one of our cloud accounting training courses or find a good bookkeeper to take care of your bookkeeping for you.

Bookkeeping Basics Topic: Understanding cash vs. accrual accounting

The main difference between cash and accrual accounting is the timing of when when revenue and expenses are recognised. Although, the two methods are distinctly different from each other, there are many businesses that use a combination of both.

Cash-based accounting

A cash-based accounting system records transactions at the time the cash was paid or received, regardless of when the transaction occurred. With this method, if you get an invoice from a supplier, for instance, you won’t record the cost in your books until you’ve paid the invoice. By the same token, you won’t record a sale in your books until you receive the money from your customer.

Cash accounting is common among small businesses, especially contractors who work on small projects or are on weekly retainers with their clients, as it’s the simplest way to manage cash flow.

Accrual-based accounting

An accrual accounting system, on the other hand, recognises both income and expenses when the sale takes place, rather than when cash changes hands. When a web designer, for example, raises an invoice for a website they’ve completed, the sale would be recorded in their books, even though they haven’t received payment yet.

With accrual accounting, debtors and creditors are created in your accounting software, which shows what is owing to you and when, as well as what you owe others and when. This helps to give you a truer picture of your financial situation, in particular it helps you keep track of money you do and don’t have in real-time, rather than after the fact as is the case with cash-based accounting.

Which system should you use?

Before cloud accounting software, like MYOB, Xero and QuickBooks came along, a lot of small businesses used a cash-based accounting system simply because the alternative required a lot of grunt work, a lot of the time. Cloud accounting has made it significantly easier to set up and maintain an accrual-based accounting system — in fact, many small businesses that use a cloud accounting system often use this method by default, without even realising.

That being said, there are some things to consider when selecting a system for your business, such as:

  • The size of your business — i.e., will you be employing staff or using lots of contractors?
  • How complicated your business transactions will be
  • Whether you will have the resources to manage an accrual system.

Accrual accounting and GST

There is one last thing to consider, and it relates to GST. For small businesses whose annual turnover is less than $2 million, but greater than $75,000 per annum, they must register for GST and they may choose whether or not to register on a cash or accrual basis. (Businesses with an annual turnover of less than $75,000 are not required to register for GST, but may do so if they wish to.)

How you choose to register for GST will greatly affect your business’s cash flow. If you choose to register for GST on an accrual basis, GST will be payable on sales for which payment hasn’t been received yet, and could leave you out of pocket until your client pays you. That being said, GST can be claimed on unpaid expenses if you hold a tax invoice. If your business has a lot of expenses, this may balance out in the wash. If you run a leaner operation, however, it most probably will not, so this is something you should give careful consideration to.

This blog post is part of our Bookkeeping Basics series, which are being published to complement our new educational guide, also titled Bookkeeping Basics, which you can download for free from the EzyLearn website.

[box type=”info”] This blog post is part of our Bookkeeping Basics series, which are being published to complement our new educational guide, also titled Bookkeeping Basics, which you can download for free from the EzyLearn website.[/box]

Featured Mandurah (WA) Bookkeeper

deb-crompton-bookkeeper-from-mandurah-wa-local-myob-and-xero-portrait-smlIf you’re looking for a reliable bookkeeper to manage your daily or weekly bookkeeping and accounts, either remotely or in-person, Deb from Mandurah WA is a qualified bookkeeper with tertiary qualifications and the practical experience of having operated her own business in the past. Deb has a lot of experience in the day-to-day accounting functions of a small business and you can contact her directly as a fully licensed member from her profile page.

Our National Bookkeeping website has recently gone through a significant upgrade so watch out for more stories about featured bookkeepers in forthcoming blogs! Join and we can feature YOU in our articles too.

Start a bookkeeping business in your local area

Start a bookkeeping business not a franchiseMany bookkeepers starting a bookkeeping business for the first time also find it quite daunting; after all, they have moved from the corporate world where various and multifaceted aspects of running the business are managed by other people.

We put these bookkeepers through our EzyStartUp Course to help them define their goals, pricing strategies, marketing message and professional profile. They also get support from a business mentor and brand building from our digital marketing team.