At EzyLearn we are constantly refreshing the content of all our courses, such as our MYOB training course and our Xero training course — which we have recently added to our suite of online training products. Xero is the cloud-accounting software that is fast becoming one of MYOB’s key competitors. So that you can benefit from all the new information that is always emerging about being a bookkeeper and running your own bookkeeping business (or doing the books for someone else’s business) we want to share with you the following video about how to enter a credit note in Xero:
Where Xero Differs from MYOB
If you’re familiar with MYOB, then you know that when you enter or approve a transaction in MYOB, you can still delete it from the system at a later stage — in the event you need to give a customer a refund, for instance.
In Xero, however, you can’t delete a transaction once it’s been approved. In one sense, this is great for auditing purposes as you can see everything that’s occurred in the account over the past month or quarter or year. But it also means putting through credit notes, which in MYOB is notoriously hard.
The fact that pretty much everything in Xero is easier to do than in MYOB, including entering a credit note, is one key reason why Xero is fast becoming one of MYOB’s biggest rivals. Again, we invite you to check out our new Xero training course. EzyLearn also offers courses in other cloud-based accounting programs, such as Reach.
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!
“As a freelancer, my business is pretty straightforward: I write words for a living and charge people to use them. As a creativity merchant, I’m not paid by the hour; I’m paid for each word that survives the ‘delete’ button, which is fortunate since the left side of my brain is a bit lazy.
Getting new commissions (or business) is a process that involves a bit of back-and-forth with editors over email — outlining story ideas, deadlines and finally agreeing on a price. As such, I never have the need to create estimates and I don’t need to log the time I spend working on my stories.
I’ve been using Zoho Invoice ever since I started freelancing, mainly because I didn’t have a spare five hours to create an invoice template in Excel when I first set up shop. To me, Zoho looked like the easy way out — and to date, it has been.
But how does it compare to the latest bit of accounting software, Reach Accounting? I’ve spent a bit of time using Reach, and for its price point and target market, it’s a pretty handy piece of software for sole traders and small businesses — I can see that it would be particularly valuable for virtual assistants and teleworkers.
As soon as you sign up for your Reach account, you’re asked to enter in your basic, yet important, business information — like your ABN and bank account details — so, without doing anything else, you can send an invoice to one of your customers right away. With Zoho, there was some setting up of invoice templates, adding customers and setting up email gateways, which was a bit tedious.
Then there’s the matter of cost. While Zoho allows you to invoice your customers in Australian dollars, it’s still an American company so your $15 monthly fee is subject to change with the exchange rate; you’re also charged a currency conversion fee from your bank, which is something to be wary of.
Reach, on the other hand, is an Australian company so you don’t need to worry about exchange rates and conversion fees; something I find quite appealing. Plus, included in Reach’s $14.95 monthly fee is the actual accounting software, whereas a full suite of accounting software with Zoho costs a little more.
With Reach, you’re effectively getting more bang for buck and even if I don’t use the accounting side of Reach’s offering, it’s good to know it’s there. I feel the same way about the bread maker I have at home, even though I don’t actually eat bread. Which raises the question: how many businesses would end up using the full accounting side of Reach?
As an accounting novice, I still have an accountant who weaves their magic, presumably in MYOB. I just export and email my earnings for that year, along with my business expenses — which is basically my entire life since I’m a freelancer, so the lack of an ‘export’ function in Reach is a major drawback for me.
I imagine most sole traders and small businesses would do something similar with their accountants and I don’t know how many accountants would be eager to use Reach.
But Reach excels precisely because it isn’t MYOB — or even Xero, for that matter. And it doesn’t need to be. Reach caters to a section of the market that was previously alienated by the likes of MYOB; and now those business owners have a low-cost, easy-to-use solution to their Excel spreadsheet and shoebox-full of receipts. It’s also Australian; and supporting Australian businesses, as an Australian business, myself, just makes sense.
So, at the end of the day, for my money, it’s worth it.”
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If you’re a sole trader or small business owner looking for a low-cost way to manage the accounting side of your business, Reach could be the solution. EzyLearn has partnered with Reach Accounting so that you can access a free student account when you enrol in our Reach training course.
We help you figure out whether Reach is better than MYOB for your small business.
We’re thrilled to announce the addition of our new online training course for cloud-based accounting software — Reach Accounting. It’s a great, low-cost option for small business owners. But there are some businesses that will still be suited to MYOB, so let’s take a closer look at how Reach compares to MYOB to help you select the best accounting software for your business.
Bank Feeds and Payment Gateways
The first thing you’ll probably use in Reach is the invoicing software, which is not entirely different to MYOB — or Zoho or Xero, either. (On that note, we’ve also introduced a new Xero course to our suite of online courses.) In Reach you can enter all of your company details, set up customers, enter your bank account details, create an invoice (or use the pre-defined template), and so on.
Where Reach differs from MYOB, however, is that it doesn’t offer a bank feeds service, which means that you still need to manually record each payment your customer makes. This can be a time-consuming process, particularly if you don’t stay on top of it — which can be embarrassing if you set up the automatic late-payment reminder service, and then forget to record your customers’ payments.
The other points of difference between Reach and MYOB is that Reach does not allow you to set-up payment gateways to connect your PayPal account, nor can you connect your Reach account directly to an online web store; functions that are handy for online businesses.
While those functions aren’t currently available, Reach does have plans to make them available in the future. But if you’re not going to miss those functions, or aren’t likely to use them, anyway, then the Reach Accounting software will work for your business.
What Reach Will Enable You to Do
Reach allows you to create invoices and estimates, manage your payroll, expenses and complete your BAS return, among many of the other traditional accounting functions you find in MYOB.
Compare us with some of the competition and we think you’ll find we stack up pretty well!
After operating face-to-face training centres right across Sydney for many years, in 2006 we realised that the future of short-course learning was in an online delivery method. Since then, we’ve offered all of our training courses online, including our most popular MYOB course.
There are plenty of reasons for taking an MYOB course. We recently highlighted a case study example of a couple who completed our course to better manage their business’ books easily and in real-time (and subsequently saw first hand where they were losing money!) or maybe it’s because you’d like to start a remote bookkeeping business.
Where Might You Do Your Online MYOB Training Course?
Whatever your reasons, you need to learn somewhere. But where is the best place to learn MYOB? We compare three of the leading providers with EzyLearn.
TAFE NSW:
Offers a beginner MYOB course via a face-to-face delivery method at two Sydney campuses: Hornsby or Meadowbank.
Attendance: two evenings a week for three weeks (28 hours)
Cost: $450 (GST exempt)
Trainer: Not specified
Certification: TAFE Plus Statement
Extras: None specified
University of Sydney:
Offers a face-to-face training course at their Newtown campus.
Attendance: one evening a week for two weeks (15 hours)
Cost: $490 (GST exempt)
Trainer: MYOB certified consultant
Certification: Certificate of Completion
Extras: free repeat class
Bizmate:
Offers an online basic MYOB course, online payroll MYOB course and online advanced MYOB course.
Attendance: 6-8 hours of total work, delivered online. Course must be completed within 60 days
Cost: $220 per course ($660 in total)
Trainer: MYOB Certified Consultant
Certification: Certificate of Completion
Extras: None specified
EzyLearn:
Offers five MYOB courses that cover all levels and competencies of MYOB for one price.
Attendance: Delivered online, no timeframe to complete course
Cost: $347 (5 full courses + lifetime access) or
$444 (5 full courses + lifetime access + assessment and certificate)
Trainer: Registered BAS agents and experienced MYOB professionals
Certification: Certificate of Completion with Institute of Certified Bookkeepers accredited training provider logo
Extras:
Join the Institute of Certified Bookkeepers for FREE,
Unlimited repeat courses FREE (go over as many times as you need, when you need),
Lifetime access to course content (Including new material),
Access to new and updated training video and other content.
Several versions included (version 19 and earlier, and version 2011 and later)
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We believe we’re the best provider of MYOB courses in the country, because we offer up-to-date content in a flexible delivery method, with access to industry professionals and lifetime access to our course content. If you’ve read this far then get all the details at our website. You won’t be disappointed – we promise! Enrol in our MYOB course today.
Check out the numerous Zoho apps for small business.
It’s fair to say the MYOB is the undisputed market leader in accounting software. Even despite the number of new cloud-based software packages that have sprung up in recent years, MYOB is still the software of choice for most accounts and it’s why we offer MYOB training courses. But for someone starting a new business, MYOB might not actually be the must-have accounting software; there’s a new player in town, offering turnkey solutions for small businesses: Zoho Office Suite.
Cloud-Based Zoho for Small Business
Gone are the days of needing several different, rather expensive, software packages installed on your PC; with Zoho Office Suite you don’t even need one. Entirely cloud-based, the Zoho offering is broken down into three app packages: Zoho Business Apps, Zoho Collaboration Apps and Zoho Productivity Apps.
The Many Zoho Apps
Zoho Business Apps includes CRM, books, invoicing software and a website builder, along with other more ingenious tools such as, the support app for managing your customer service, a custom app-builder tool and a recruitment app that allows you to collect resumes and schedule interviews with candidates.
Zoho Collaboration Apps includes a project management app, a social network app called, Pulse, along with chat, mail and docs apps.
Zoho Productivity Apps features a number of word processing apps, including Writer, Sheet (like Excel), Show (like PowerPoint), Notebook, and a Calendar app.
Select a package and a plan that suits your business needs, pay a small monthly fee, and your business has access to each of the apps within that package whenever and wherever they’re needed. The downside: there’s no pricing plan for all three packages, bundled together.
Zoho Books
But say you don’t want all that anyway; you just want some decent invoicing or bookkeeping software. No worries — each Zoho app is available separately. Zoho Books, which is the closest thing to MYOB and offers unlimited invoicing, expense tracking, reconciliation, time tracking, multi currency support, and the newly added automatic bank feeds and credit card feeds feature, costs only $USD24 per month and includes access for two users.
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For new businesses, Zoho is certainly an affordable option, whether you only sign up for Zoho books, or whether you take on an entire business, collaboration or productivity apps package. For bookkeepers, however, MYOB is still the preferred accounting package. That means training in MYOB is still as necessary and vital a skill as ever.
Having access to more information about their business helped Cheryl and Jim climb from just breaking even to owning two stores.
We recommend MYOB Account Right Live in all of our MYOB training courses — not because it’s the latest version of the hugely popular MYOB software — but because it gives business owners the kind of data they need to run their business efficiently and securely.
We have previously blogged about how cloud accounting software now makes it so much easier for you to start a bookkeeping business from home; but it can also help existing business owners operate and grow their businesses.
Perhaps the biggest bonus with cloud accounting software is that you have access to information about your profits and expenses in real-time. This is enormously useful for small businesses to constantly track how they’re going and make any necessary changes.
From a Break-Even Bakery — to Owning 2 Successful Stores
We decided to take a look at how one business owner grew a moderately successful business into a totally thriving one by using cloud accounting software to track their expenses.
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Cheryl and her husband, Jim, operated a small neighbourhood bakery in a busy block of local shops. Jim was the baker and pastry chef in residence, while Cheryl, who had previously worked as an account executive at an advertising firm, managed the office side of the business.
“I was used to budgets and targets, so it made sense that I would handle the admin side of the business,” Cheryl tells us. “But, coming from a large-scale ad agency, I had been spoilt for choice in the way of CRM and other software that tracked my sales in real-time,” she says. “I didn’t have any of that with the bakery. Just an outdated version of MYOB!”
Cheryl and Jim estimated that it would take them about a year before they would start to see any real traction with the bakery, but a year had come and gone, and they were still just breaking even.
“Jim would come in and go ‘we had a great day today, heaps of customers’ but at the end of the month we were still struggling with all the expenses, paying our staff and trying to pay ourselves a wage too,” Cheryl says. “Finally I asked my accountant what was going on and he just said ‘update your MYOB,’” she says.
Cheryl says that having access to data they had previously only received once it was too late was a game-changer. “This sounds funny, but I could see we were spending all this money on flour, but our sales didn’t reflect a need for it,” Cheryl laughs.
“Finally I asked my accountant what was going on and he just said ‘update your MYOB,’” Cheryl says.
“I asked Jim if he was over-ordering because that seemed like the logical answer, but he said he only ordered what was needed,” she says. “This led me to do some investigating.”
What the Data Revealed
Jim would bake an average of 75 loaves of bread a day, but sales records in MYOB showed they old sold an average of 40 loaves a day; Jim was baking twice as much bread as he needed and all left-over stock was thrown out at the end of the day.
“We were literally throwing our money away,” Cheryl says. “But it was a learning curve.”
Before long Cheryl and Jim implemented various other systems to track their stock, so they could better manage their expenses. Within a year, Cheryl and Jim had completely turned their business around.
“Now we have two shops,” Cheryl says. “Where before we struggled keeping just the one going. Being able to see what we were spending as we were spending it — that changed everything.”
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Don’t run your business blind; use cloud accounting software, like MYOB Account Right Live, which allows you to see your accounts in real-time, safely and securely. Our MYOB training courses will get you up-to-speed with everything MYOB. Enrol today.
A recent article in the Journal of Accountancy discussed the many benefits of making a bricks-and-mortar business a virtual one. Of course saving money on the monthly rent cheque factored quite high on the ‘pros’ list — but when is the right time to go virtual?
Steps to Becoming Virtual
As human beings we’re creatures of habit, so the decision to turn your business into an entirely virtual one shouldn’t be taken lightly, particularly if you have clients who visit your premises regularly. But even once you get your clients onboard, you’ve still got a way to go before you can close your doors for good.
The first step is determining whether your team can work remotely. Self-starters and highly motivated individuals thrive in the virtual environment, whereas, those who need a lot of supervision, direction and even daily interaction with colleagues, generally aren’t suited to working remotely.
Virtual offices do not have the space to store paper and hardcopy files. While your own business may use online storage software like Dropbox, you also need to consider your clients. If they’re not using cloud accounting software and you’re still required to store their client files, a virtual office may not be the way to go yet.
In order to function effectively and efficiently as a virtual business, you must ensure you have the systems in place first. This means making sure your employees have the devices they need to do their job from home and, in turn, that your business has the necessary infrastructure and software to facilitate that as well.
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So before you pack up your goods and chattels and close your office doors for good, make sure you’re business is truly ready to take the plunge. Be sure to read our next post; we discuss what steps you should take in readying your business to go virtual.
Everyone’s smiling: Your clients will benefit if you opt to go virtual.
In our last post we discussed why we updated our MYOB training material to include MYOB’s cloud accounting software Account Right Live and how you could benefit from operating a completely remote or virtual bookkeeping business, which is great; but how do your clients benefit from your working remotely?
Convincing the Clients
Winning new clients is always difficult, but it can be especially difficult to convince the old school business owner that hiring a virtual bookkeeper is the way to go: “But I like having someone come in and sit down with me” is not an uncommon counter remark; while for many the idea of a remote bookkeeper conjures notions of unqualified cowboys.
If you’re thinking about starting a virtual bookkeeping business or turning your existing business into a virtual one, then you need to get used to overcoming these obstacles if you’re going to have any success.
It’s worth stating upfront to any potential clients, or existing clients you’re trying to convert, the benefits of retaining a remote bookkeeper over your bookkeeper that makes house calls, or office calls, rather.
Just some benefits:
By retaining a virtual bookkeeper, your clients only pay for time worked; that means their hourly rate is not inflated with hidden travel costs, which usually includes the time they spend commuting to your office
Virtual bookkeepers don’t have the costly overheads of renting office space, paying for utilities, equipment, storage space, and so forth — all of which decreases their hourly rate
For those businesses that may usually employ a bookkeeper as a full-time or part-time member of staff, using a remote bookkeeper means they’re no longer paying sick leave, annual leave and other entitlements
All bookkeepers, whether they work remotely or otherwise, have to be accredited by the Tax Practitioners Board to offer BAS services.
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If you’re thinking of starting a virtual bookkeeping business, our online MYOB course covers MYOB Account Right Live — a necessary piece of software to make any virtual bookkeeping business not only successful, but also feasible.
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.
We often talk about the benefits of studying an MYOB course online or how using cloud-based accounting software to telework benefits employees and employers, but we don’t often discuss the benefits of cloud computing to the environment.
A recent study commissioned by internet giant Google and carried out by Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory in the US, found that if the entire US workforce moved into cloud computing — where employees would now work from their home offices — it could save up to 87 percent of the energy used to power IT systems. That’s enough energy to power the entire city of Los Angeles for a year.
Using the Cloud Means Going Green
For Google, this showed just how great the energy saving potential of the internet is — something we’ve often discussed in posts about operating a home-based or virtual bookkeeping business.
In fact, the Green Factor is another reason why we moved all of our training materials and content online in 2007; it meant we would no longer have the costly overheads of powering physical training centres (and adding to our carbon footprint), allowing us to deliver the same high quality training courses at a lower price.
Of course, being an internet company, Google only looked at the IT energy savings to be had if every worker in the US began working from their home offices. They didn’t look at the potential knock-on effect this would have when two or more people in a household were both working from home.
The Communal Office
So while saving some 23 billion kilowatt-hours in energy is a massive feat, we wonder how much of that energy would be reinvested in individuals’ upsizing their homes or renting office spaces once working at home with the whole family became more distracting than it did productive? Perhaps, then, a chain of communal office spaces might become the next McDonalds of the digital world?
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Regardless of whether it’s a saving of 23 billion kilowatt-hours of just 23 kilowatt-hours, increasing our energy efficiency and reducing our carbon footprint is always a good thing; cloud-based software and studying online goes along way to doing just that.
Where do you live? If you live on the east coast of Australia, there’s a good chance the National Broadband Network (NBN) is already available in your area, and if you’re not already connected, you should be. With high-speed internet piped straight into your home, completing one of our online MYOB courses or operating an home-based business that uses cloud accounting software like MYOB Account Right Live is a cinch.
The NBN will make it possible to share and upload files to online storage software like Dropbox and it will become commonplace to video conference with people locally and internationally. Further, slow download and upload times, or choppy video that stalls and jams will become a thing of the past.
The NBN is currently available in these Australian cities.
The Growth of the NBN
However, according to the NBN Co, in December 2012 it was estimated that there was already some 34,500 homes connected to the NBN — out of the 758,000 homes and businesses where the NBN was already available, mind you. This is means there’s a great deal of Australians not connected to the NBN when they could be. The map on the right shows the areas of Australia where the NBN service is currently available. (You can find out more information on whether the NBN is available in your area by click on the map of visiting the NBN website.)
The advances in the education, business and even health industries, created by the NBN will be limitless. In the education space, particularly in the area of e-learning, online videos will become the delivery method of choice — and later, even live conferences between students and teacher. Though online video is being used more regularly than it was just five years ago, it’s not being used to its full capacity. But the NBN will change all of that; so you can say goodbye to reading an endless scroll of text on a webpage or printed learning materials.
Opening up the Use of the Cloud
The NBN also gives small businesses the ability to streamline their processes and procedures — previously reserved for large organisations that could afford the cost to implement them — with cloud-based softwares that make working with people from different sites, sharing data and even storing data, quick, easy and (importantly) viable — which accounting software like MYOB is already doing.
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So if you haven’t done so already, find out if the NBN is available in your area (click on the map above to find out if your home can be connected to the NBN). If it turns out the NBN is available to your home the next step is simple: contact one of the NBN’s preferred service providers (a list is available on their website) who can help you make the switch; from there, it’s all systems go — you’ll be connected to a world of possibilities.
In the dark ages when technology was primitive, the fear of losing data left people in a constant state of printing. Archive-box-after-archive-box was filled with printouts and photocopies so that, in the event of a system crash, records could be easily re-entered — after first wading through archive-box-after-archive-box filled with printouts and photocopies to retrieve the lost data, of course. Now, thanks to cloud accounting software, that’s all changed.
Cloud Accounting Stops the Fear of Crashing
We’ve recently blogged about some of the benefits of cloud accounting software (namely avoiding the commute on cold, winter mornings!) — but two of the other great benefits are no longer having to live your life in fear of a system crash and those dreaded three little words: did you back up? Nor do you have to house a labyrinth of archive boxes filled with enough paper to blanket a small country.
Cloud accounting software backs up all of your data and stores it on an online server, so if you change computers or (heaven forbid) your computer crashes, it won’t require a computer genius to retrieve your important information — just a username and password. Plus, most cloud accounting software — like Reach, Xero, FreshBooks and Zoho — is accessed through a web browser, which means you can access your accounts from any device, anywhere.
MYOB Account Right Live and the Cloud
The only exception is MYOB Account Right Live (which, by the way, we also teach online). With MYOB Account Right Live, before you can access any data stored in the MYOB cloud, the software must first be installed on a main device. However, by having the MYOB software installed on your computer you can safely “check out” a client file to work on offline. By checking out a file, other users are then only able to view a “read only” file, so you don’t have to worry about whether another user will update the same file you’re working on.
It’s worth nothing that this option of working on a file offline is limited only to MYOB Account Right Live and isn’t available on other web-based cloud accounting software — FreshBooks does allow you to download a file to work on, but this doesn’t stop another user from updating the file in the cloud at the same time.
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In short, using cloud accounting software offers you enormous flexibility. By using a cloud-based accounting package, you’ll put an end to the printing and hoarding of hardcopy files, or worrying about hard drives and backing up. Instead, you’ll have piece of mind that all your data and important information is stored safely on an online server, accessible at any time. Sounds good, huh?
As the mornings get colder, darker and less inviting, getting up to go to work is that much harder. But what if you didn’t have to get up at the crack of dawn and commute into the office? What if you operated your own bookkeeping business from your home office? With cloud accounting software like MYOB Account Right Live — you can. (If you’ve never used MYOB Account Right Live before, our MYOB Training Course will help you get up-to-speed.)
The Rise of the Cloud
Although cloud computing has been around since the mid 2000s, its use had largely been limited to those companies with access to high-speed Internet; your average sole trader using cloud-based accounting software was rare, confined mainly to contract IT experts.
But as time went on, access to high-speed Internet connections increased — and will increase even more when the NBN rollout is complete — which made cloud computing more easily accessible for individuals working from home; even bookkeepers.
MYOB entered the cloud accounting space in 2012 with their MYOB Account Right Live software that still looks and feels the same as their hugely popular offline versions, but with the added benefit of using an online storage server.
Benefits for Bookkeepers
Cloud accounting software is making it easier to work from home.
In moving their software online, MYOB’s intention was to make bookkeeping easier for the business owner, but MYOB also made it easier for a bookkeeper to access their client’s accounts. It also made operating a home-based bookkeeping business easier, too.
[quote]You’ll be pleased to hear that our Small Business Management Training Course has a slant towards operating a business from home using the latest internet based services like Google, WordPress and more..[/quote]
For bookkeepers one benefit of having their client’s accounts online is that they don’t have to physically go to their client’s place of work; instead, bookkeepers can login to their client’s accounts from their own home or office.
The ability to work offline (known as “checking out”) also means that if your Internet connection is down, you can still keep working as normal; once you connect to the Internet again, MYOB syncs the data with the version stored in the cloud.
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For bookkeepers, cloud accounting software like MYOB Account Right Live makes operating a home-based bookkeeping business a more convenient career option — in more ways than one. Avoid cold mornings and the long commute; start a bookkeeping business.
In the past, we have talked about debtor management, the ways you can avoid late-payers by keeping an eye on your cash and assets cycle, and now we thought it was time we talked about the ways you can keep on top of those outstanding invoices without even lifting a finger!
Why Getting Paid on Time Matters
Dealing with late-payers is frustrating, time-consuming, and at times, downright awkward. For freelancers, sole-traders and small businesses, getting paid on time is essential to keeping your cash flow under control.
If you’re not in the position to turn down those perpetual late-payers’ business, then you need to put strategies into place to best manage those late-payers.
Gentle Email Reminders for Getting Paid on Time
Sending a polite, yet firm reminder email to clients a few days before their invoice becomes due is a good way to remind people an invoice is due to be paid, particularly if you have terms of 21 days or more. Often you’ll find most people will pay you once they’re given a gentle nudge via an email reminder.
Of course, there are always those who’ll still try and stretch it out as long as possible — it’s likely their cash flow isn’t much chop; in a sense, by paying you late they’re robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Most of the time, these clients are hoping you haven’t noticed. By sending them a follow up email reminder a couple of days after your invoice was due will show them you have noticed, you haven’t forgotten, and they’ll likely concede defeat and pay — if they still don’t respond, it may be time to implement some of the strategies we discussed here.
More Stringent Payment Terms
But if you find emailing you clients each time their invoices come due and then again when they’re late is not only time-consuming, but also awkward, try setting up the parameters in your invoicing software so that automatic reminder emails are sent out before and after your invoices come due.
Most cloud-based accounting programs, like Freshbooks, Zoho, Shoebooks, Saasu and Salestastic now offer this automatic reminder facility, freeing you up to concentrate on the other areas of your business.
For businesses that have a dedicated accounts receivable department, the ability to send automatic reminders could, depending on the size of your business, save hours, even days of manpower. Plus, it eliminates any awkwardness you may feel chasing someone for a $50 invoice — sure, that one $50 isn’t much, but over time they do add up.
So get paid on time without even lifting a finger by using the automated reminders in your accounting software.
Remember:If you have already completed one of our MYOB training courses and need a bit of a refresher on the Accounts Receivable module, which deals with the ways to get paid on time, you can review it again for FREE if you are within your 12 month enrolment access period OR if you selected our additional option of Lifetime Access.
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