Stop tearing your hair out chasing money and investigate a cloud-based system like ezyCollect.
Too many small businesses suffer from cash flow problems, which is why our Small Business Management Course covers financial planning and how to monitor and manage your cash flow through debtor management.
However, few small businesses suffer from poor cash flow because they’re unaware of how to manage their debtors properly.
Rather they suffer poor cash flow because they lack the resources to chase late payers or, as in most cases, they don’t have the time to stay on top of their accounts receivables to ensure their clients don’t become late payers in the first place.
Aussie company, ezyCollect, aims to solve this problem for medium sized companies – here’s how.
We wrote a post last year about a service called Bank Link, which we discovered is being used by a large number of accountants to reduce the amount of data entry involved in bookkeeping. Being that one of our most popular training courses is our MYOB training course and that many of our students are bookkeepers, we wondered what the bank link service would mean for the future of bookkeepers.
Bookkeepers Still Vital!
As it happens, we don’t believe that the BankLink service will make the role of the bookkeeper redundant, given that there is so much more to be being a bookkeeper than just data entry. In fact, we found that because BankLink eliminates much of the time-consuming data entry process, BankLink should be used by more bookkeepers.
Since the post on BankLink was published, however, we heard from one of our readers who told us that the Bank of Queensland does not provide credit card transactions data through BankLink. We thought this was unusual, so we decided to look into it a little further.
After doing a little digging, we discovered that BankLink is not available to be used with all banking institutions, and Bank of Queensland happens to be one of those institutions. We tried to contact the Bank of Queensland to find out if the BankLink service would be extended to their customers, however, we were unable to reach anyone able to give us any information as to if, and when, this service would be adopted.
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For bookkeepers, or small business owners, even, who are customers of the Bank of Queensland this means that you will still need to enter your credit card transactions into MYOB manually. If you are aware of any other banking institutions that do not provide credit card data though BankLink, we’d love to hear from you — let us know in the comment section below.
This post has been created to demonstrate simple accounting principles for our MYOB Training Course students. It demonstrates, visually, a very simple fact that is often sensationalised.
I’ve been to many presentations, seminars and watched hundreds of webinars run by people who describe themselves as gurus yet the secrets they reveal are actually just plain old good accounting principles.
Want a share of $237 billion? If you’re in online business it’s up for grabs!
If you spent money on Christmas pressies recently, you’re a small part in the continual climb of online trading in this country. Did you know that in 2012, the value of online trading in Australia reached $237 billion dollars? This represents a 25 percent increase year-on-year, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. This increase in online revenue reflects the growing number of small businesses moving their operations online, either in part or entirely — and it’s largely thanks to new technologies facilitating e-commerce for small business.
The Growth of Online Businesses
Prior to 2006 the online marketplace was all but monopolised by the eBays and Amazons, organisations that had the resources to create the necessary infrastructure needed to allow customers to shop entirely online. After 2006, when we first moved our MYOB training courses online, offering a completely online shopping experience was just starting to gain popularity among the small players like ourselves; in the years since, it’s now pretty much become the norm.
As platforms like WordPress have made it possible to create and maintain a website without any design or HTML knowledge, theme clubs like Woo Themes, which provide web-themes to suit a range of different business types, now even include ecommerce plugins that can be linked with a PayPal account.
By offering you services online, you’re opening yourself up to an entirely global customer base, allowing you to offer new or different services than you did before. Since we moved our business online, we’ve also been able to build on our business — this year we added the highly popular Small Business Management Course to our suite of training courses, for example.
For some businesses, moving online is more of a necessity, a way to stay competitive in a world with ever-evolving technologies. For example, new cloud accounting software like Reach (and we offer a course in Reach Accounting too) makes it easier for small businesses to manage their own books, without needing the services of a bookkeeper.
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For many bookkeepers this could spell doom and gloom, or it could provide them with the opportunity to venture into the business of training people on how to manage their own books. As a bookkeeper looking to extend their services into training as well, by setting up a website with an e-commerce facility, you could partner with us to sell vouchers to our training courses.
With a share of $237 billion up for grabs, now is a good time to consider offering your services online, particularly when it’s become so darn easy! We even offer WordPress training courses, which covers setting up ecommerce, so you’ve no excuse for missing out!
[quote]I’m not stressing too much how bad our Seek experience was am I?[/quote]
Moving on, I want to share with you what we discovered are the reasons that students join a study community and more specifically a Study group for specialised programs like MYOB. The reasons are very similar to why some people prefer to do an trainer-led (or class-based) course at places like TAFE.
It’s important to remember the goal for the course and joining a study group and that is to find an MYOB job.
Here are the reasons:
Tips and Tricks using MYOB
You may be studying the same course content as other students, but you will interpret some things differently to others just based on your life and work experiences.
Help with your MYOB course
Just because you’re studying online and there is not a teacher standing at the front of the classroom, help and support is available.
Request more MYOB training
We understand that it can be hard to stay up-to-date with market demands—and costly, too. Software vendors are always changing their products, technologies are changing, and then there is the advent of new ones. But as an employee the more you know about changes to software and new technologies, the more valuable you are to an employer.
Get Inspiration from other MYOB students and our Tutors
At some point in our careers, we’ve all needed some form of mentorship or guidance to inspire us to keep going, to reach our goals and our dreams.
Get Recognition in front of their peers
An award ceremony—where you’re presented with your MYOB certificate is a significant and important part of the learning experience.
Find a Study Buddy
Don’t go it alone, get a study buddy. It make the learning experience much more social and human.
Compare yourself
We all do it at some point or another: we size each other up to see how we’re fairing by comparison.
Michelle provides support for our MYOB training course students
Did you remember receiving that blog post about us looking for a person to work with us doing office admin in Chatswood? Michelle, one of our MYOB course students, completed her Business Service Provider profile and fit the bill so we brought her in for interviewing.
Michelle is a hard working mother of two teenage children and she has worked hard to learn new skills, while managing her fathers business, building it’s website and lots of other great things.
Michelle is now part of our team and she’s learning a lot of new things about how we operate our business, how we promote ourselves online and also how we use online marketing tools like Google. Most importantly I’m introducing her because she’s available to help current students get through their course as part of our Student Community and Tutor Support program to helps them in their journey to find MYOB jobs.
But more than MYOB, Michelle is currently completing her Cert IV in Small Business Management with the aim of being able to help people start their own business or manage their existing business better.
Welcome aboard Michelle 🙂
We’re revamping our Student Community and Tutor Support service to specifically focus on skills to help students find MYOB jobs and learn small business management skills and Michelle will be available to help students.
MYOB jobs in Chatswood and Gold Coast.
I was so impressed with the result of our search that I’m reaching out again. We are looking for another admin assistant at our Chatswood office and also in the Gold Coast area so if you live in these areas make sure you complete the Business Service Provider and tell us a bit about yourself. We prefer to work with students who have completed our course and understand how we operate our business so you get the first chance!
Lodge your tax return early and you’re bound to get a quick refund.
We’re always updating our course content to ensure our MYOB course reflect the market demands of bookkeepers in an ever-changing industry, and if you’re one of our MYOB lifetime students you have access to this content any time, every time.
And we use this blog to keep you up-to-date with industry news — like this news just in from the ATO:
A total of 1.7 million returns were received by the ATO between 1 July and 23 July 2013, and already refunds have been issued for some 40 percent of those returns—a whopping $1.68 billion refunded in less than 30 days.Continue reading ATO Tax Refunds – Get Your Tax Return in Early
Bookkeepers Who Want to Provide BAS Services Need TPB Certification
Don’t stress: The TPB certification requirements may actually kick-start some people’s bookkeeping businesses.
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.
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.
Kick start your own business
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.
Virtual bookkeepers can dictate their hours and place of work.
WHEN MYOB FINALLY ENTERED the cloud accounting fray in 2012, we were pretty excited and we quickly updated our course material to reflect this new era of MYOB.
Moving MYOB online gave contract and home-based bookkeepers new career opportunities: the ability to go virtual.
A virtual or remote bookkeeping business is much the same as any other home-based or contract bookkeeping business; you still offer the same services — BAS and GST, for instance — except for one notable difference: you work entirely remotely from your home office.
Run Your Bookkeeping Business Anywhere, 24/7
Running your bookkeeping business from any location, any time of any day means you are never required to visit a client’s office to collect documents — or even work from their office. With MYOB in the cloud, all of your clients’ accounts are accessible from any computer, anywhere, any time you choose.
Rather than being confined to a client base in your immediate local area or city, working as a virtual bookkeeper opens you up to the possibility of working with people all over the country.
For bookkeepers operating in small communities where business opportunities may have previously been limited, becoming a remote or virtual bookkeeper will increase your business exponentially.
But virtual bookkeeping businesses have their benefits to city folk, as well. Because you don’t have to spend hours commuting to and from your clients’ offices, you can use that time to either pick up additional clients — or spend it with your family.
A remote or virtual bookkeeping business allows you the flexibility of working when you want, where you want, without having to compromise on your earning potential.
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And it’s why we were so excited when MYOB created MYOB Account Right Live: now the graduates from our online MYOB courses can compete with the big-name bookkeeping firms from their own homes; wherever they might be.
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.
One of the things we cover in our MYOB Training Courses is how to deal with what is, unfortunately, becoming a rather common accounting issue—bad debt.
If you provide your goods or services on credit, it’s likely that at some point, particularly during times of economic volatility, you will encounter a customer that is unable to pay for the goods or services rendered.
Most of the time, many customers just need more time to pay, however, there will also be those customers that never will pay. And in the case of the latter, the debt will need to be written off.
For a debt to be considered bad and written off you need to show that all the necessary steps have been taken to recover the debt, but there is still no likelihood of the debt ever being recovered for one of the following reasons:
The debtor has died leaving no assets or insufficient assets
The debtor cannot be traced and no assets discovered
The debtor is bankrupt or in liquidation and insufficient funds exist
Once you’ve reached this point, however, is when things start to get complicated. Often how you record the income for your business will determine how you account for a bad debt, particularly if you’re using accruals-basis accounting.
While there may still even be instances where, even though you’ve written off a customer’s debt as bad debt, it may later be paid to you—often in another tax year and affecting that year’s income.
This is what makes the accounting treatment of bad debts complicated. While you’ll learn about how to account for bad debt in our MYOB Training Courses, if you’re unsure you should always consult your accountant to help determine the best course of action for your business or the business you’re representing.
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.
Get a bookkeeping business plan created by a registered BAS agent and get started fast
Start a Bookkeeping Business
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:
http://youtu.be/XKBUH5ycGYY
Or, for more information on how Xero and bank feeds work, watch this video:
http://youtu.be/qTsy3lW-UZM
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…
FOR ANYBODY WHO DECIDES to be self-employed and own their own business, or who is doing so already, the question of how to match the hourly rate of someone working on salary while working in your pyjamas is one that frequently goes unanswered.
But ponder no more.
If you’re well versed in the advanced features of MYOB, Xero or Quickbooks, possess an accounting qualification and can operate your business as an independent contractor, you’re well on your way to earning the big bucks as a bookkeeping consultant.
Specialist skills earn you more money
Currently, bookkeepers with a good understanding of things like time billing, job reporting and forecasting, advanced payroll, end-of-period transactions and journal entries, as well as Australian tax, are highly sought after by other businesses to work as consultants.
Of course, you could also carve out a niche specialty for yourself if you happen to be highly skilled in a particular sector or industry.
MYOB Training Online
Our MYOB courses (offered for one low price and include lifetime access) cover 85% of the MYOB skills the majority of MYOB bookkeepers require to perform most bookkeeping tasks. For everything else, however, it’s a good idea to engage the services of a specialist who can provide a solution to your specific needs.
In a nutshell, teleworking is the ability for employees to work remotely, usually from a home office, rather than travelling to the workplace. And it’s something that Australia, and indeed, the rest of the world has been moving towards for some time.
If you think about it, ever since the widespread adoption of email, the wheels have been in motion for an era where people could opt to work from home rather than commuting to the workplace every day.
For a while, though, it has been a bit of a logistical nightmare. If you’ve ever tried to work remotely before, then chances are, at some point you’ve uttered one or all of these complaints: “This file is too large for me to email”, [quote]I don’t have that software installed on my home PC[/quote] or “My Internet’s really slow. I might as well just come into the office”.
But when you throw things like broadband Internet, laptops, tablet devices, smart phones and the latest little life-saver, cloud accounting and storage software (like Dropbox) into the mix, working remotely, or teleworking, slowly but surely got easier.
The benefits of teleworking to employees and employers, plus also to the Australian government are huge, which is why the Australian government spearheaded the move to a National Broadband Network (NBN), which, when rollout is complete, will see high-speed Internet cabled into nearly every Australian home (93%).
The NBN will give you the freedom to things like enrol in distance education or complete one of our MYOB courses, work from home, or even start a home-based business without having to worry about poor or unreliable internet coverage.
Teleworking is the future of all Australian workplaces – you can learn about the benefits of teleworking here.
WE RECENTLY FEATURED AN article by Margaret Carey comparing Xero vs MYOB and as early as 2010 I wrote about Xero’s solid growth in the online accounting area and how it could steal business away from MYOB.
If you read my blog posts or follow the news about accounting software and cloud-based accounting software, you’ll be aware that MYOB is now owned by a large private equity organisation called Bain Capital (which was co-founded by Mitt Romney). I believe it overpaid for MYOB and as a result has to fight hard to justify its price and keep as many customers as possible. However, regardless of that, it’s interesting to see that MYOB is now the US competitor to the New Zealand and Australian owned Xero.
How is MYOB American?
What do I mean? Well, MYOB was once an Australian-owned company that you could buy shares in — it was listed on the Australian Stock Exchange. It was subsequently purchased by Archer Capital and later sold to Bain. During this time, the man who started MYOB, Craig Winkler, sold his shares in MYOB and became a major investor in Xero. Read this article from the Sydney Morning Herald to better understand the “lay of the land” about cloud-based accounting software.
You can buy shares in Xero
Up until last week you could only buy shares in Xero through the New Zealand stock exchange. Last week, things changed and you can now participate in the fresh new competition in the online accounting market by buying shares in Xero! The graphic shows the rise of the share price since listing.
This blog post isn’t financial advice because I don’t know about your personal circumstances, but it could prove to be some safe career advice to get to know the software because they have listed in Australia in order to endear themselves to you and other small businesses in our part of the world.
Want to check out Xero’s ASX ticker and start keeping track of their price? Follow this link.
MYOB Bookkeeper, does this affect you?
If you are looking for work as an MYOB bookkeeper you will come across cloud accounting sooner or later because all the accounting software vendors are developing cloud based products. MYOB has recently launched their cloud accounting program MYOB AccountRight Live because they want to take advantage of the mass movement into the cloud.
More importantly as a bookkeeper these days you need to have bookkeeping qualifications like a Cert IV in Bookkeeping as well as software skills to find work or run your own bookkeeping business. Because of the more competitive landscape in online accounting you’ll also find several different accounting systems are being used and the more you know, the move valuable you become.
Always updating our content
In conjunction with bookkeepers, accountants and other finance industry experts we are always adding training materials covering a number of different cloud accounting applications like Xero, SAASU, Reach Accounting and MYOB AccountRight Live to our online training platform. We are also adding case studies to our courses to make them more true to life and interesting. When you enrol and opt to purchase our Lifetime Access option, you will have access to all updates to our courses forever.
Our online courses can be counted towards your CPD points
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Xero is a great bookkeeping program for tradies who are on the go and using their phones (or a tablet) all the time. From receipts scanning to creating quotes and invoices, receiving payments and keeping track of project costs.
bookkeepercourse.com.au/produ…
