MYOB courses for jobseekers and business owners from Setup, Daily Transactions, Bank Recs, GST BAS and Reporting and Payroll. Students from Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney, Adelaide, Perth, Hobart and Darwin do these courses at their own pace. Includes LIFETIME course access.
As Australia’s largest provider of online MYOB training courses, we work with people who are looking to start their own bookkeeping business, find a bookkeeping job and even people who just want to learn how to manage the books for their own business. But did you know we also offer enrolment vouchers?
Who’s A Perfect Candidate for our Enrolment Vouchers?
We sell enrolment vouchers to training organisations and accountants who want to be able to provide their customers and clients with the option of taking an MYOB training course. Our enrolment vouchers are offered at a discounted price when purchased in bulk.
Other Training Organisations
A typical scenario might be a training organisation which buys enrolment vouchers because they don’t offer a MYOB course but think it would be of benefit to some of their students. In this instance, they can purchase vouchers from us, which they can then on-sell to any interested students.
Accountants
For accountants with clients who want to be able to do their own bookkeeping, they can also purchase enrolment vouchers from us and on-sell them to their clients.
Each voucher is valid for 12 months from the date that the training organisation or accountant purchases them, giving you 12 months to sell them to your clients and customers, who also get a further twelve months to use the voucher.
For more information, including pricing, please feel free to contact the EzyLearn team, who’ll be able to answer any of your questions.
When you choose to study an online MYOB training course with EzyLearn, you learn every aspect of the MYOB software and how it applies to real-life business and accounting situations. Then, at the end of each module, you complete a test to prove to yourself (and your future employer, even) your knowledge of each module of MYOB, such as payroll, for instance.
There are many people who will argue that tests aren’t necessary; that they’re just an exercise in testing how well you can store lots of information in your short-term memory, then forget it afterwards. They advocate, instead, that you’re marked on how well you performed on your overall coursework, and do away with exams altogether.
[quote]But the thing about an exam is that the better you know your coursework, the better you’ll perform.[/quote]
An exam is designed to taken be taken under pressure. They’re testing your knowledge of things that you are likely to encounter in your day-to-day, and may require you to act immediately. They’re not testing you on something that should be considered at length.
Even though EzyLearn offers lifetime access to our MYOB and Excel training courses, we still expect—in fact, we require it—that our students will pass each test at the end of each of the course modules.
There are a couple of reasons for this:
The first, and this is probably the main reason, is that if you decide to, you can pay an additional fee to receive a certificate that shows you’ve completed and passed our online training courses. This can then be used to show potential employers that you actually know what you’re doing in MYOB—which for many accountants and bookkeepers is either a deal breaker or a deal maker.
But an exam also forces you to study the coursework, whether it’s arbitrarily just to pass the test or thoroughly to make sure you understand and perform well in the test—and this largely depends on your own personal code of ethics. Even if you haven’t done a scrap of coursework before you go to complete a test, the mere fact that you have to complete and pass a test to progress through the course forces you to review the coursework.
It’s easy to cheat in any course by plagiarising someone else’s work. In the academic world, the ramifications involve being awarded an instant fail; in business, it usually involves legal action. But a person’s inclination to cheat and plagiarise someone else’s work raises other ethical questions that those respective punishments don’t address.
I recently attended a networking event and spoke with someone who had completed a Cert IV in Small Business Management at a local BEC (Business Enterprise Centre)- they had completed a Government funded course and used the excuse of having to do the course as quick as they could so they could start their own business. The problem was that this person “encouraged” many of the students to work together (which is a good thing), but they ended up handing in the same assignment and in some situations forgot to change the name on their assignment!
Working together in a group is a fantastic way to learn because everyone has their own strengths and the really smart students can often be good teachers for the slow learners, but to simply replicate another persons work and not even use your own writing style and interpretation is very sad. It’s particularly sad when the Small Business Management course is designed to help you create an individual business plan for your own specific business.
[quote]Our assessors mark every assignment and provide individual feedback to ensure you properly examine your new startup business.[/quote]
This brings us to whether or not you would feel comfortable employing someone who had willfully cheated in a training course. Personally, we wouldn’t. Aside from that person displaying very little work ethic (they couldn’t be bothered to do the work themselves, so cheated instead), it also makes us wonder whether they would behave unethically in other ways—would they take our client base and start-up a rival business?
This is why we test our students at the end of each module, and only those students who receive a passing grade do, in fact, pass the course. It’s not because we think our students will cheat; it’s because we want our students to really learn and understand the coursework, so they can excel and succeed in business.
A common question we are asked about our MYOB courses is if you need to have the software on your computer to do the course. The good news is that MYOB offer a free version of their software for students and trials, it’s called the MYOB Test Drive.
You could do most of the MYOB courses without using the software because we have over 170 MYOB training videos (covering BOTH MYOB version 19 and earlier AND MYOB version 11 and newer – all for the one price). You can also test your skills using our MYOB course knowledge reviews, but there is no substitute for actually using the software as you learn. The biggest thing it will give you is the confidence to say “I’ve done that using the software”.
Our MYOB training workbooks include step-by-step exercises that enable you to perform most of the tasks that are performed at a business so you’ll definitely need to have the software for that. But many students like to replicate what they see in the training videos.
[quote]You can pause the MYOB videos and have a go at replicating it using the free student MYOB software.[/quote]
If you are looking for bookkeeping or accounting jobs you will almost always be asked about your MYOB skills and nothing gives you more confidence than actually using the software.
[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.
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!
Just as we do with our MYOB training courses, we also offer Lifetime access to our MS Excel and Word training courses, which means each time Microsoft releases a new version of MS Office, we update our course content so you’re always totally up to date with the latest versions of Word and Excel.
Keeping Excel in Your Memory
Let’s be straight up here; once you get the hang of Word you probably won’t need to refer back to our course content all that much. Excel, on the other hand, is a different ball game.
In many ways Excel is a lot like algebra or a foreign language: if you don’t use it often, you’ll forget it. Sure, you’ll remember bits — J’adore Dior! E = mc2! — but you’re likely to struggle through your day-to-day if it’s something you rely on heavily at work.
Because many people use accounting software like MYOB, their use of Excel is fairly infrequent. For instance, suddenly trying to create a PivotTable will probably leave most of us stumped! And let’s not forget that by the time most users have mastered how to create macros in their worksheets, Microsoft will have released a new version of MS Office and we’ll be back to square one again. This, in large part, is a key reason why we offer Lifetime access to our training courses— because we, just like you, also forget stuff.
New Features in New MS Word and Excel (in a Nutshell)
Now that Microsoft has released their highly anticipated MS Office 2013, it’s likely you won’t be able to find the ‘Paste Special’ button again, so we’re updating our course content to reflect the new changes.
Here’s a low-down on some of the new features in the new MS Word and Excel:
Word:
Open and edit PDF files in Word – finally! Gone are the days of having an additional piece of software installed on your PC to enable this.
Threaded review comments
Read mode with page turning
Alignment guides – hallelujah! Why have they never had this before!
Placeholder
Excel:
Quick analysis
Flash fill – we’ve always had this to an extent, but flash fill just got a whole lot more intelligent!
PowerView – for the real Excel pro, but still a welcome addition.
New PivotTable tools
Improved functionality when opening new Excel windows
Recommended PivotTables and charts
New chart controls
Get a link
Publish Excel data to social media – we don’t recommend using this often, because snore. But it’s still great if you want to quickly share your yoy sales results with your Twitter followers or Facebook friends.
So whether you’re using MS Office 2013, 2010 or prior, if you’ve forgotten how to do a VLOOKUP, it’s time you educated yourself in the mystery that is Excel — enrol in one of our Microsoft training courses today!
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.
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
BAS agents can further specialise in the construction industry
WE LIKE TO KEEP our online cloud accounting course graduates up to date with changes to the bookkeeping industry and today is no exception!
If you’re a registered BAS agent working in the building and construction industry, then we’ve got some major news for you: the Tax Practitioners Board (TPB) announced in July that BAS agents can now lodge Taxable Payments Annual Reports (TPAR).
Making more money as a bookkeeper
In an earlier blog, we talked about how you can improve the rate you earn by specialising. Carving out a niche for yourself — for instance, honing your skills in a particular sector, like the building industry, with all its complexities — will also see you able to earn top dollar (this is exactly what the professionals at Buildon Bookkeeping do).
Taxable Payments Annual Reports (TPAR’s)
Before you can register with the TPB as a Tax/BAS agent, you’ll first need to work under the supervision of another Tax/BAS agent. If you are planning to work in the building and construction industry, you might consider working under the supervision of a Tax/BAS agent providing bookkeeping services within the industry already — so you can get a handle on lodging TPARs.
TPARs are an annual report outlining every payment made to suppliers and contractors for that financial year. Every entity or business within the building and construction industry must now prepare one.
When TPARs first came into effect in July last year, only tax agents were able to prepare the report, but on 15 July 2013, the TPB announced that BAS agents could now provide this service, which must be lodged by the 21July every year.
But wait, there’s more! The TPB has also amended the Tax Agents Services Act (2009) to allow BAS agents to provide the following services:
Superannuation Guarantee Contribution and Superannuation Guarantee Charge work
Superannuation Contribution payment and reporting services
As the Institute of Certified Bookkeepers understands it, BAS agents will not have to become registered with the TPB to provide these services, even though they were typically services carried out by a Tax agent.
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If you’re a registered BAS agent, you just become a whole lot more valuable to your clients, particularly if you work within the building and construction industry.
It is unfortunate, but many people aren’t aware of the important function a bookkeeper can play in a business. Bookkeepers are often relegated to being “the accountant’s poor cousin” (not dissimilar to the way nurses are seen in comparison to doctors); while for some people the only bookkeeper they’ve heard of hangs out at the dog track!
Don’t Fear Your Accountant!
But the word ‘accountant’ really doesn’t need to put the fear of God in you. The fact is a bookkeeper provides valuable services that many accountants simply can’t; and nearly all accountants are more than grateful for the work bookkeepers do.
To work as a professional bookkeeper, you must show you are amply qualified in areas of Australian tax, payroll and sometimes, basic accounting. As it happens, there are many qualified accountants that work as bookkeepers — as is the case with bookkeeping firm, Build on Bookkeeping.
Since most business owners will find themselves an accountant first and a bookkeeper second, if you have a good working relationship with all of the accountants you deal with, they will more than likely refer clients on to you.
So if you can work well with your client’s accountants — by getting your EOFY analysis done in time and the relevant reports to them quickly — you may find yourself a personal advocate for your business.
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So don’t live in fear of the accountant — embrace them. Read our tips on keeping the accountant happy come EOFY and you’re well on your way to a prosperous working relationship with the accountants of all of your clients.
When the national minimum wage increased this month, it got us thinking about the role the payroll professional plays in a business. Payroll is an important and often complex aspect of every business — and a topic we cover in our MYOB training course — but it’s often the most underestimated. So we decided to take a deeper look at the role of the payroll professional.
Payroll: There’s Quite a Lot to It
Even though payroll sounds easy enough — you just pay people their wages, right? — it’s actually not as simple as it sounds. As a payroll professional, you’re entirely responsible for understanding and interpreting the ever-changing regulations and legislation relating to payroll; as well as managing the demands of both the employer and employee.
And as such, payroll is not a simple task for the uninitiated; it requires a person with solid knowledge of PAYG and superannuation, as well as an understanding of Australian tax.
For instance, how do you ensure you’re making the correct contributions to an employee’s HECS or HELP debt? Or make sure super contributions are made correctly (and to the correct fund)? Are you certain your employees are being paid according to the correct modern award? Getting these things wrong is not just time-consuming to rectify, but can also incur fines to your company!
In a recent new book by Tracey Angwin called The Payroll Revolution (which has gone on to become an Australian best seller) Angwin discusses the responsibility of the payroll professional and offers practical and guided tips on Australian payroll.
Just some of the skills that Angwin suggests the payroll professional should possess are:
Strong people skills
AIS/payroll software experience (such as MYOB)
General email, word and excel skills
Strong understanding of superannuation and PAYG
Good knowledge of the Fairwork Act
Ability to work under pressure and to tight deadlines
While you were busy with EOFY analysis — see our tips and checklists to ensure you haven’t missed anything important — you may have missed the Fair Work Commission announcing that the minimum living wage has increased by 2.6% from 1 July this year.
The New Minimum Wage
The new minimum wage for every Australian worker is $622.20 per week or $16.37 per hour and this affects all employees; even if they’re not covered by a modern award.
You’ll need to update your payroll records in MYOB to reflect this new change (we cover changes to payroll in our MYOB course if you’re not sure) so that you don’t get caught out paying your staff at the old pay rate.
If your staff are covered by a modern award and you’re not sure what their new rate of pay will be, you can check the Fair Work Award Finder on the Fair Work Commission’s website to ensure you’re paying your employees the correct rate of pay.
Effective from 1 July
As with the increase to the superannuation guarantee, the increases to the minimum wage is effective from 1 July. However, unlike the superannuation guarantee, an employee cannot receive two separate pay rates in one pay period.
This means that for businesses that pay their employees on a fortnightly or monthly basis, where part of their employees’ pay covers a week or few weeks in June and another part of their employees’ pay covers July, the employer needs to pay the old rate for that entire period and apply the new pay rate from the next full pay period commencing after 1 July.
It’s also important to keep in mind that most allowances (such as, leading-hand and industry allowances) are based on a percentage of the base rate and since this has increased, those allowances will increase, too.
If you’re unsure what these allowances will increase to, check the modern award on the Department of Fairwork’s Award Finder or register for email updates from Fairwork about how the changes apply to each particular award.
Bookkeepers Who Want to Provide BAS Services Need TPB Certification
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.
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.
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.
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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…