The Career Academy concept began several decades ago in the US as a way of providing practical tools to help students become valuable employees.
A lot of bookkeeping training and education is academic in it’s approach with assignments centred around researching the legal requirements for bookkeepers becoming BAS agents and performing BAS services.
In reality this knowledge is important but almost forgotten as soon as the jobseeker becomes an employee and has to be diligent with their soft skills, which include:
Our training courses use practical examples from step-by-step case studies and the Career Academy Jobseeker training program has tools to help you understand your personal goals and aligns them with employment opportunities.
The end result is you should be confident to seek and apply for jobs after completing our courses.
Learn more about the Career Academy Jobseeker Training Program
I’ve written recently about our Accounting Tutor initiative and the response has been fantastic. EzyLearn Accounting Course students are AMAZING!
Our team has gone through dozens of resumes and been very impressed at the knowledge and experience of most of the applicants, but you’ll need to decide which one you like best.
Continue reading We’re using your resume bio to sell you as an accounting tutor
Don’t you just love something new? Some entrepreneurs I know call it the “shiny object” syndrome because it means you’re always focusing your time and energy on something new, rather than doing the daily drudge work. But this is exciting.
I haven’t had a chance to speak with every registrant but this image shows the EzyLearn students who’ve completed our accounting & bookkeeping courses and would love to be tutors to help other students understand how the software is used in the real world.
Continue reading Accounting Tutors getting ready
If you’re looking for a job it’s a daunting process because you have to sell yourself to an employer and most people don’t have to do this very often. Parents returning from parenting can find it particularly daunting because they’ve found themselves surrounded by nappies, cleaning, cooking and washing and the thought of presenting themselves to other adults can be scary.
I’ve spoken to some EzyLearn students in the last couple weeks about our Accounting Course Tutor Initiative and have been impressed at how capable many of them (you) are!
MICROSOFT BUNDLED ALL THEIR Office Productivity Suite software programs decades ago for many reasons.
The MAIN reason was so that all businesses, big or small, could use these software programs to improve their productivity and make them look more professional.
We’re now bundling them together for students who want it all.
Continue reading ANNOUNCEMENT: NEW Microsoft Office Training Course BUNDLE now availableI’VE WRITTEN MUCH ABOUT accredited training in the past, relating particularly to the use of the term “Diploma”. Just recently, I discovered more murky marketing by a newcomer to the bookkeeping short courses industry.
What’s scary about these training course providers is that they make claims to offer a Diploma, and then after 2 years in business, they apologise for “something beyond their control” like a change in legislation which tells them to stop calling their courses Diplomas, when they are NOT and NEVER WERE IN THE FIRST PLACE!
Continue reading Watch out for FAKE Statements of Attainment for Xero & MYOB Short Courses
ACCOUNTS PAYABLE OFFICERS are responsible for paying invoices owed by a company to its suppliers or vendors.
They typically work in medium to large-sized businesses, where they may also be called an accounts officer and be responsible for investigating the cost of wages, materials, overheads and other operating expenses.
Here are some of the other common tasks you’ll find in an accounts payable officers job description.
GONE ARE THE DAYS when a bookkeeper only needed to know their way around MYOB. Since the internet democratised the accounting software market, abundant MYOB rivals have appeared.
But while there are close to a dozen cloud accounting systems on the market, most bookkeepers — thankfully — will only need to know their way around three: Xero, MYOB and QuickBooks. If you’re looking for a course or training resource on these programs we have a combo offer.
Continue reading Bookkeepers Need to Know All Cloud-Accounting Systems
The Internet has spawned several cloud accounting software program all over the world including:
Continue reading SPECIAL OFFER: MYOB, Xero & QuickBooks Online Courses ALL for One Low Price
I RECENTLY SPOKE WITH the owner of a hairdressing salon who’s been in business for over 18 years (at various different businesses). This woman has ALWAYS used a manual wages timesheet system.
Our team are exploring typical rosters and problems which occur in the payroll processing, and as such, we’re also exploring all the different ways that wages are managed.
Continue reading How Are You Managing Rostering, Timesheet, Wages, PAYG, Super?
WE HAVE TALKED about lifelong learning in a previous post; lifelong learning being the concept of learning as an ongoing exercise that individuals should undertake throughout their lifetimes, in order to remain productive and engaged members of society. In other words, learning never stops.
Lifelong learning is particularly important in the workplace, where the rates of technological advancement threaten to wipe out entire professions and replace them with new ones. We’ve talked about Xero’s newly announced lifelong learning platform, which launched in November 2017, in partnership with Swinburne University (for Australia and New Zealand). A full global roll out is expected in 2018.
We are also thrilled to announce our new Lifelong Learning Hub for all EzyLearn students to access. It is part of our Additions and Updates policy and all students who have signed up for Lifetime Access since 2013, and all students within their 12-month access period, can access the following:
Xero’s Lifelong Learning Platform is clever, but it’s a misnomer since “lifelong learning”, as a concept, doesn’t relate to a single pursuit (accounting or finance), but rather an individual’s entire attitude toward learning and how they learn.
If you haven’t already, I recommend you go back and read our post about lifelong learning, specifically the section on the four pillars of learning, which outlines four key types of learning – another topic we’ve covered at length in the past.
Xero’s lifelong learning platform offers just one pillar (learning to do) of lifelong learning, not a framework to engaging in lifelong learning, the concept.
Have you ever gone to re-watch a movie or TV show on Netflix and discovered that it’s been removed from the Netflix library to make way for other titles? Good thing, you’ve seen it already.
The same happens at educational institutions that have to update or make way for a new course, and so they purge their content and course offerings. (Just try and find a TAFE that teaches shorthand nowadays, even though it remains a sought-after skill in a lot of professions.)
If you’ve already taken a now-deleted course, the good news is that you’ve learned those skills already. The bad news is that you can’t go back and brush up on them. The ever worse news is that you have to start a new course from scratch if you want to build on your existing skills with the update content.
That’s where EzyLearn’s Lifetime Access training courses are different. When you enrol in a training course with lifetime access, you have access to every version of that training course for life. When we update our course content, we continue to provide you with access to previous content (which includes older versions of the software), so you can go back and refresh your skills.
As Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is a requirement for most professions today, but particularly for bookkeepers and BAS agents, the Bookkeeping Academy’s training courses with lifetime access are also recognised by the ICB, so you get your CPD points and access to all of our course content for as long as you need it — for one, low price.
If you join the EzyLearn Beta Club, you get access to our courses that are still in development, giving you the opportunity to learn new skills before other students, and provide feedback on the types of exercises and scenarios you’d like to see in our courses.
Our Beta Club courses are important to us because we get to hone our course content based on feedback from students while the courses are still in development. This saves us lots of time, particularly if the feedback from students means we take the course in a substantially different direction.
It also benefits our students and partners who get the content before it’s officially launched, and can request content that covers areas of business relevant to them and their clients. This helps students and partners stay ahead of industry trends, and become experts before the courses are officially rolled out.
EzyLearn already has a number of training courses currently in beta and available to our Beta Club members. Visit our website for more information on Lifetime Access training courses and our Beta Club.
YOU COULD CALL IT a New Years Resolution that we’ve managed to tick off already! Early January 2018 I promised that EzyLearn would make the MYOB Essentials Courses available with our traditional MYOB AccountRight Courses and that offer is NOW available as a COMBO OFFER — see our Bookkeeping Academy page for the details.
We have 4 MYOB Essentials Courses available (MYOB Essentials Accounting, Daily Transactions, GST/BAS & Reporting AND MYOB Essentials Payroll Course) and it’s a popular course for those wanting a good payroll solution without spending the earth.
Continue reading MYOB Essentials Accounting, Credit Management & Payroll Courses COMBINED
Every EzyLearn student now has a student account FOR LIFE!OK, before I continue let me just clarify: If you’ve only signed up for 12 months’ course access to, say, the Xero Beginners’ Certificate Courses, then you get access to those courses for 12 months. If you sign up for LIFETIME Course Access to the Xero COMPLETE Training Course package you get Lifetime Course Access to all the Xero courses PLUS Updates and Additions.
[box type=”info”] So, what does a student account for LIFE really mean?[/box]
When you enrol into an online training course with EzyLearn, we create a student account with a username and password so you can then log in and proceed to your training courses. A couple years ago we introduced FREE Student Inclusions as a way of giving EzyLearn students more reason to expand their knowledge and learn new things. Today’s announcement is to let you know that you get access to these free courses for LIFE!
Free student inclusions is one reason to enrol with EzyLearn but the new LIFELONG Learning Hub will give you so much more and here’s an example.
We currently have a special offer for any new student enrolling into any of our courses where you get access to the
All of this is accessible from the LIFELONG Learning Hub right now — to everyone who has enrolled into an EzyLearn course since January 2013 — EVERYONE!
RECENTLY I’VE WRITTEN about how your prices should be part of your business strategy and not your marketing strategy. I talked about Mark, the painter, who advertised a really low day rate but wasn’t able to carry out the volume of jobs he needed to make enough money (see Is Your Charge-Out Rate a Marketing or Business Strategy?).
A better strategy for Mark would have been to research the market and find ways to provide customers with savings elsewhere (Researching the Market is a Crucial Part of Every Business Strategy).
The same principle can be applied to contract bookkeepers charging less than the minimum wage. Although this may get you a lot of regular work early on in your business, you will soon learn that it’s unsustainable. And because it’s also really hard to increase your rates substantially, you’ll just find yourself back at square one if you do so anyway.
Check out the National Bookkeeping Rates of Pay to get indicative pricing for contract bookkeeping services.
When you’re setting your prices, don’t forget to factor in your entitlements. As a full time employee of a business, you receive annual leave entitlements equating to four weeks’ salary, sick leave equating to ten days’ salary, public holiday pay, superannuation, and tax withheld on your behalf.
As a contract bookkeeper, you should earn the equivalent of a full year’s salary proportional to how many days or hours you work each week.
As a contractor, your hourly rate will be higher than that of a full time employee, sometimes two times as high. If you have clients who don’t want to pay a higher hourly rate to hire you as an independent contractor, they might be better suited to employing casual staff instead.
If you’d prefer the life of an employee check out our Career Academy Success Program.
If you decide it’s time to increase your rates, you need to show how you provide value to your clients’ businesses, in order to discourage them from seeking the same services from another, cheaper bookkeeper. If there’s some extenuating circumstances, it may also be worthwhile explaining the reason for the increase — if your compliance costs have increased due to government regulatory changes, for example. (Note: Rising electricity, broadband or rent is best kept to yourself.)
You’ll learn ways to increase your rates without losing your clients by enrolling in Research the Market module of our Business StartUp training course as a standalone mini course. Visit our website for more information or to enrol.
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Ever since we started offering our MYOB training courses online, thousands of students have enrolled and learned how to become MYOB bookkeepers. Many of those students are mums, who were looking to become skilled in a job they could do from home.
In 2012, we added the Small Business Management and Start-up course to our online training platform, to help students to learn a new set of skills that would help them start their own businesses as independent contractors, so they can earn more money, work their own hours, work closer to home, and spend more time with the kids.
Continue reading Reinvent Your Career, Become an Independent Contractor
