Posted on November 10, 2016February 15, 2021 by Steve Slisar — 6 Comments

Is Credit Management Just About Getting on the Phone?

comp_credit-management_bookkeeping-business

It’s Good Business to Set Out Your Credit Management Policy at the Outset

CRITICAL TO THE SUCCESS OF ANY BUSINESS is the ability to maintain a healthy cash flow. But doing so requires effective credit management processes.

Unfortunately, too many business owners feel uncomfortable talking about credit and debt management upfront with new clients.

They (falsely) believe it begins if, and when, a customer doesn’t pay a bill. But, in fact, credit management starts much, much earlier than that — long before the two businesses even agree to work with each other, to be precise. Continue reading Is Credit Management Just About Getting on the Phone?

Posted on November 8, 2016November 9, 2016 by Steve Slisar

Is Your Resume Costing You a Bookkeeping Job?

It’s easy to spot bad Microsoft Word skills

We’ve had several hundred bookkeepers Pre-Qualify for our National Bookkeeping, Bookkeeper Directory and most of them upload a resume demonstrating their qualifications, experience and references but I’m baffled at how bad the formatting is in these resumes!

To help our students do the best job presenting themselves on paper we’re including the Microsoft Word Course for free when you enrol into either the MYOB Courses or Microsoft Excel Courses (when you choose the all courses and 12 months access with Certificate option). That’s a saving of $267!

Resume writing tips for bookkeepers

Here are some tips we’ve published in the past:

The problem with making mistakes with your Microsoft Word formatting is that questions could come up in an interview. The Interviewer might throw in a question about software skills, particularly if you’ll be writing some detailed reports or proposals, forecasts etc. in the new job.

Online Training Course special offers for MYOB, Xero, Excel, Word and more — Click the image to see our current special offers!

Here are some extra tips for Bookkeeper resumes

Most of the Microsoft Word skills you need to write a good resume are covered in our Word Intermediate Courses, but we’re including the entire 9 courses so you can become a power Microsoft Word user! Here are a couple other things to think about when writing you resume:

Include an image – it makes you stand out and brings the reader closer (make it a selfie where you’re smiling 🙂
Use tables or “Set tabs” to make columns line up
Headers and Footers demonstrate a sophisticated knowledge of Word
Include your full name and desired role in the filename (we’re all using files these days! use it to your advantage)

The last one about filenames is a big one because if interviewers are like me they’ll put all the resumes for one role into a folder and I find myself renaming most of them!

FREE Microsoft Word Workbook

We spend a lot of time on marketing so I assume that you know we offer free samples of our training material, but I should mention again that the Microsoft Word sample is actually the entire Word Beginners Course 201 Training Workbook, make sure you get it! Get it now.

Quickbooks Course Update

It’s been a while in the making, but we have the final draft of our Quickbooks Course workbook! Unlike some training companies, we write up a detailed course story based on a real business scenario and use that as the basis for recording our screen videos that demonstrate how to use the software. We’ve had a huge number of Course Alert Registrations and they’ll ALL receive a free copy of the workbook, so if you haven’t already registered do it NOW!

EzyLearn Wholesale Partner Update

I made a brief reference to our new Enrolment Voucher system in a recent post about BAS deadlines and we’ve got an update. The new enrolment voucher system is now in beta testing which means we’ll shortly be inviting EzyLearn students who love our courses to receive a massive wholesale discount on selected courses. Make sure you register your interest.

Posted on November 1, 2016January 4, 2022 by Steve Slisar — 1 Comment

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

Credit Management is an Extra Job

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

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

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

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

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

Posted on October 25, 2016 by Steve Slisar — 1 Comment

BAS Service deadline looming – BAS Audits, self assessment and benchmarks

BAS Service, compliance anxiety and cash-flow

MYOB GST, reporting and BAS training courses It’s that crazy time when the end of financial year TAX and quarterly BAS periods combine to cause compliance anxiety for business owners and managers if they don’t have a handle on their bookkeeping processes and accounts. This is often caused by not having the best team available for all the tasks required and I spent some time during the week speaking with Tracey our MYOB, Xero and Quickbooks Trainer from Rockingham in WA about the different levels of bookkeepers and whether they could complete tasks relating to a BAS Service. Here’s some of the information that I thought you’d find useful.

Getting receipts as evidence

The biggest issue that many bookkeepers experience is getting information from business owners, particularly small businesses that are stretched between:

the work they need to do every day
Keeping and filing the financial records like receipts
Getting the financial records to a bookkeeper or accountant

I’ve written in the past about the ways that small businesses file their receipts as well as cloud technology like Shoeboxed (who now seem to prefer selling their services to accountants and bookkeepers and have removed the educational video that demonstrated how the software works!), but Quickbooks Online has a downloadable app that enables business owners to capture a photo of each receipt for each transaction and if business owners utilise this function they can save a lot of money in data entry and evidence of expenses that could be expected as part of a BAS audit by a BAS agent.

BAS Audits, red flags and tricky GST codes

I’ve mentioned in a previous blog that you can hire a cheap bookkeeper to take care of your data entry and only use the services of a more expensive bookkeeper (ie. BAS agent) for purposes of confirmation of expenses and the GST components of these expenses. In this case a simple BAS audit involves witnessing these source documents to confirm that there is no error in calculating the money owed to the ATO. If you’ve had any of the following transactions you’ll probably need to pay close attention to the information in your BAS lodgement and mention them to your bookkeeper:

Purchasing a motor vehicle
Motor vehicle expenses
Real property purchase
Any purchase coded as a GST-Free transaction
Low value purchases (under $82.50) that are coded as GST free
Purchase of second hand trading stock
Hire Purchase contracts
Local fees and handling charges for imp

Learn more about BAS Audits by BAS Agents and the benchmarking and self assessment that ATO use and recommend

TIP!: Bank feeds can cause more work!

I’ve written a lot about bank feeds in the past and included a blog post about how bank feeds work in MYOB and Xero. Bank feeds can be a real time saver because they automatically bring your bank transaction records into your accounting software, but Tracey mentioned that in MYOB you should bring them in BEFORE you do any reconciliation tasks otherwise you may need to undo any reconciliation work you’ve already done so watch out for that!

Need One-to-One training or a QuickFix on MYOB, Xero or Quickbooks?

We did a lot of one-to-one training when we operated our physical training centres in Sydney and the training was often completed at our training centre (because we had it!). Now I’m thrilled to advise that we’re helping local bookkeepers in your area deliver MYOB and Xero training according to our profession course structures! To learn more visit the National Bookkeeping training page. You’ll also discover that our bookkeepers area also available to fix problems or lack of knowledge with the QuickFix service so check that out.

Coming up..

Here is what we are currently working on and what will soon be published or made available at our LMS.

Guide to Credit Management (aspects of a business and your accounting software where you can tighten your credit management processes). We’re creating this guide in conjunction with the local bookkeeper at National Bookkeeping
Xero Course training material update (workbooks and videos are being updated and added as we speak so stay tuned for more announcements soon
Wholesale training course and partner offer – we’ve beefed up our Enrolment Voucher system to help more business buy cheap courses

Posted on October 11, 2016 by Steve Slisar — 1 Comment

Xero now looks like Quickbooks Online and MYOB needs an upgrade

Xero, Quickbooks and the plus button

xero-dashboard-is-starting-to-look-like-the-quickbooks-online-dashboard-xero — The Plus button in Xero

We’re currently completing new, updated content for our Xero courses and one thing stood out more than anything else – the PLUS button in the top right hand corner! If you are familiar with Intuit Quickbooks you’d immediately recognise that their PLUS in the top centre of the screen is how you access most of the software’s features and I’ve always liked how easy it makes navigating the software. If you compare the two of them you may think that the Xero software still has some way to come.

The other thought I had about this change is “how much will Xero change its user interface”? People get used to how to navigate around a software program (User Experience) and don’t want things to change too much and that has been a great feature about MYOB – their navigation has remained fairly consistent for two decades.

Will cloud services be upgraded like their computer software peers of the naughties?

Microsoft might be the inspiration for change for Xero because although most of the formulas and functions in Microsoft Excel remain the same, the way you navigate around the software changes every 3-6 years. This is a boon for the larger software training companies that charge extra for courses in the different versions (we include all versions for the one price of course 😉 but it can be frustrating for staff who have to re-learn how to navigate the software and their spreadsheets when the office software is updated.

xero-dashboard-is-starting-to-look-like-the-quickbooks-online-dashboard-quickbooks — The PLUS menu in Quickbooks has more features

While we are on the topic of upgrades and how annoying they are I received an email from my accountant to upgrade the MYOB version that we share so that she can access the files to work on them! I can say for sure that I once again felt that MYOB are behind the timeline as they fight to stay in control when looking at how they develop their software compared to the other accounting programs like Xero and Quickbooks where the software is updated and live.

Testimonials for Xero, MYOB and Microsoft Excel courses

On a different note, I asked our web guy to get some information about where our students are located around Australia and at the same time get some of their testimonials quotes onto our website. He’s not finished yet, but when I see the different suburbs from all over Australia I reflect on the same picture over 10 years ago when we were operating physical training centres in Sydney’s North Shore, Northern Beaches and Parramatta and our students were located within 20kms of each centre.

It’s a wonderful feeling to see students doing our courses from all over Australia but it’s even better when we see enrolments from UK, Canada, US and Hong Kong because it shows the true power of cloud based services.

When you want to become a Registered BAS Agent

Last week I wrote about starting a bookkeeping business while you are working your day job and I just want to add a note that may be very useful for those who want to become a registered BAS agent. National Bookkeeping offer a BAS lodgement service through our licensees and it is a great way for qualified bookkeepers (who have their Cert IV in Bookkeeping or Accounting) to work with an organisation and build up the hours they need to register as a BAS agent via the Tax Practitioners Board.

Posted on August 15, 2016September 22, 2016 by Steve Slisar

6 Questions You Can Ask to Find the Cheapest Bookkeeper

Questions can ‘weed out’ bookkeepers until you get your perfect fit

I have been reviewing the chat requests we receive via National Bookkeeping and it confirms my own thoughts about bookkeepers and the rates that businesses pay for good bookkeepers. These rates have a lot to do with overheads and qualifications — and often very little to do with experience. Allow me to explain.

Most of the daily transactions (see Daily Transactions Courses for MYOB and Xero) performed by bookkeepers involve data entry and coding. This data entry work is repetitive and once a new bookkeeper or accounts person understands the tasks, (which is often quite quickly) they can be performed over and over again with little variation except for client details and total hours worked (I’m assuming invoicing for services provided).

In the case of invoicing your contract bookkeeper could then provide reports and followup with clients to make sure your debtors management is sorted out.

The hardest thing for some small businesses is understanding how to weed out exactly the bookkeeper they need — and I hope these questions make your job easier. Remember, it’s often the answer that helps you find the right person.

The questions you should be asking a prospective bookkeeper:

How long have you been performing bookkeeping work?
What type of bookkeeping tasks can you perform?
Are you familiar with cloud accounting software and, if so, which ones?
When are you available to do bookkeeping work?
Where are you based?
Do you have professional indemnity insurance?

I’m going to further break down these questions and show you the answers you should be looking for. Remember that our goal with this case study is to find the cheapest bookkeeper for daily transactions accounting.

1. Bookkeeping Experience

This was once the most important aspect of a bookkeeper’s resume for employers because it demonstrated that this particular candidate has experience that will benefit the business. If the bookkeeper you’re looking for has plenty of experience, then follow up with Question 3 regarding cloud-based functionality and whether they’ve used the latest versions of MYOB, Xero or Quickbooks.

2. Bookkeeping Tasks

This question is important because if someone is educated enough to complete and lodge your BAS, or even lodge your end of year financials, then they’ll want to be charging for the skills they have. You may as well get your accountant to do your bookkeeping if you are prepared to pay for someone with high skills education and experience. Many bookkeepers have plenty of experience doing accounts receivable and accounts payable and all of the steps in between so if it’s a cheap bookkeeper you want, then weed out the ones who can lodge your BAS for you. Read more about bookkeeping tasks.

3. Cloud Accounting Software

It’s important to know if your bookkeeper is familiar with accounting software that is accessible in the cloud because they may know some of the advanced features that comes with that — like integrations with other cloud-based services for project management, estimating, time billing etc. It may also come in handy because they’ll be able to work at home, or even from remote locations, and be more available at potentially lower cost (less travel time and cost).

4. Work Availability

Many bookkeepers will SAY that they’re available whenever you need them, but in reality they each have their own set of requirements and they may not want to say this right up front for fear of limiting their chances of getting your work. Some bookkeepers are mums (or dads) and they need to fit into school hours, while others are really looking for a full-time or part-time job. Some bookkeepers will be prepared to work at night and on the weekend (others may only work at these times) whilst some bookkeepers will only want to work during business hours.

We all need to manage the work-life balance that comes with leading a fulfilling life, and for some people, this includes working at night. Some bookkeepers want to spend time with their kids during the day and work when they have quiet time. Some bookkeepers work for multiple clients and can only fit you in one half day a week. It’s important to understand where your bookkeeper sits in this area.

5. Bookkeeper Location

This is a pretty big consideration, even in the modern times of cloud-based bookkeeping because your bookkeeper’s location can affect how busy they are or how long it will take them to get into your office to do their work. We’ve had some examples where some of our team members live miles from the nearest town; therefore to have to travel there takes time and considerable cost. If you have faith in remote contractors and are willing to work with a bookkeeper who works from home you may find you’ll get the most ideal bookkeeper and the best price — this is something I managed to do when I closed EzyLearn’s bricks and mortar training centres and instead went totally online!

6. Do you have Professional Indemnity (PI) Insurance?

This one is a biggie because if the bookkeeper has PI Insurance they’ll also have the trappings that comes with it like:

Professional association membership
CPD / CPE point requirements
Basic Education Requirements to attain their Registration

If a bookkeeper has PI insurance you’re probably talking to a Registered BAS Agent, as bookkeepers who attain this level of bookkeeping do so because they want to perform one of the most important tasks they can for a business — lodge the BAS. A Registered BAS Agent is governed by the same government authority that governs Tax Accountants — the Tax Practitioners Board (TPD). Indeed, many businesses already have a tax agent or accountant who is responsible for lodging their BAS. Therefore, I’ve found the biggest reason BAS agents are popular is because you know you’ll receive an excellent job on the tricky aspects of GST and Payroll, PAYG, Superannuation etc without paying accounting rates.

I hope these questions help you filter a great bookkeeper from all the enquiries that come for your job ads and remember if you’re interested in finding a cloud-based bookkeeper, feel free to browse the National Bookkeeping Directory or Request a Quote.

Posted on August 2, 2016July 29, 2016 by Steve Slisar

Release: New Training Guide for Basic Bookkeeping

The meaning of basic bookkeeping terms

You don’t need to know double entry bookkeeping to complete our online MYOB, Xero and Quickbooks Courses but the more you know the better. We include educational videos about basic bookkeeping terms in our bookkeeping courses and they were created by Jacci a Registered BAS agent, but we’ve also created a separate bookkeeping basics guide that is available to you for free.

These are the types of terms I am talking about:

General Ledger
Chart of Accounts
Trial Balance
Tax codes like FRE, N-T, GST and CAP
How to create proper tax invoices
Cash and Accrual accounting
Income and Expense accounts
Sales & Purchases vs Cashbook
Debits/Credits
Change in Debit and Credit accounts
Credit Control
Debtors and Creditors report

When you perform the daily bookkeeping tasks for a business you focus on the tasks at hand like:

buying goods on account,
paying bills,
making sales and generating invoices and then
keeping track of the payments and receipts.

When you learn how to do these tasks using accounting software you don’t need to understand all the debits, credits and double entry of accounting because the software takes care of it for you.

The most popular of our MYOB courses is the Daily Transactions Course 502 because it takes students through a typical scenario of the accounting transactions of a VoIP telephone system supplier and installer.

This telephone company is very similar to a plumber, electrician, builder and most tradespeople because they combine products and services in their invoices. They’ll also often hold an inventory of items they sell regularly and they need to purchase items specifically for a job they are working on for a client.

If you are looking to take on all the bookkeeping tasks for a small business you’ll need to know all aspects of how to use accounting software but if you are just looking for data entry or an accounts payable and receivable job the Daily Transactions course may be all you need.

Read about the contents of this course here or delve in deeper into the case study examples of the MYOB Daily Transactions Course Workbook.

Posted on July 13, 2016July 20, 2016 by Steve Slisar

Intuit Quickbooks: take a 70% discount or free trial ultimatum

Intuit Quickbooks sign up ultimatum – clever marketing or a turn off

I was reviewing the course content for our soon to be released Intuit Quickbooks Setup online training course and noticed the interesting offer that the company makes when you sign up for the free 30 day trial – take the discounted price or lose the offer of a discount!

For their premium online product, Quickbooks Online Plus, that’s a free trial OR the 70% saving of $294.

On the flip side they do offer the ability to cancel at any time. What do you think of that? Feel free to like us on Facebook and share your opinion.

I use MYOB, Xero and Quickbooks and I like Intuit Quickbooks

Call me a masochist but I believe the best way to be able to use and recommend accounting software is by getting exposed to the programs and how they work by using them yourself – I also think most good bookkeepers should be doing this too.

I confess that I currently use each of these major accounting programs (MYOB, Xero and Quickbooks) and find the Quickbooks Online software very impressive.

Intuit Quickbooks has all the features small businesses expect, including mobile phone apps that make it easy to keep track of receipts using your phone’s camera, for a price that is VERY attractive to small businesses.

Why Intuit Quickbooks can take the Aussie accounting crown

I wrote about the threat that Intuit represent to MYOB and Xero in my blog about whether these two accounting software companies could end up being SMASHED by Intuit in 2014 and if you look at the share price of this company over the last 5 years you can see how they are in a very healthy position (with a valuation just shy of $30 Billion) to maintain strong and constant pressure on the two most widely used accounting software programs. Except for the fact that people don’t like change these are the 3 factors that I think can win Intuit the Accounting software crown in Australia:

Excellent features, including Payroll and bank feeds as basics – they have it all
Great user interface that is easy to use – Xero seems to be trying to emulate parts of the Quickbooks dashboard
Attractive price compared to Xero and MYOB – They constantly have good specials and regular cheaper prices
An App marketing place for project management, point of sale, CRM and other online tools – Intuit have the benefit of being a massive global company with millions of customers (US market leader)

Payroll included for no charge and they’ll convert your current Xero or MYOB data

Payroll has always been a premium feature for MYOB, who earnt significant annual income from businesses who used the software for their payroll and HAD to upgrade to get the new tax tables (even though this was previously a simple file update). Intuit QuickBooks give this to you for their normal subscription prices. The other pain factor for most people is getting the data across from their existing system into Quickbooks and Intuit have sorted that out with a free conversion offer.

When we talk about Quickbooks you should be aware that Quickbooks has always been published by Intuit, but when it was a computer based software program that you had to download, it was distributed in Australia by a company called Reckon. You can read here about the changes since Intuit Quickbooks became a cloud accounting program.

Pre register now for the free training workbook

Pre-register your interest in our forthcoming Intuit Quickbooks course to receive the first workbook for free!

This offer will only be available to everyone registered in our system before the release announcement date and of course it is free to register and free to receive the workbook!

Posted on June 27, 2016February 6, 2018 by Steve Slisar — 1 Comment

Is MYOB really a CRM and which CRMs are best for people in sales?

CRM = Customer Relationship Management

THE PURPOSE OF HAVING a CRM is so that when you call one of your clients or prospects, you know everything about them and can start a conversation based on what they’re looking for — their needs.

This might seem a little strange when you think about it because you could be out of date with your info (say you’ve entered old information on this particular client) but, casting this quibble aside, CRM’s are generally a terrific way to provide excellent customer service, on a consistent basis, and this is often the competitive edge that will you need to stay in business. (I’ve written a little comparison of real estate agent CRM’s but I wanted to add a couple other ones to the mix for good measure.)

Accounting Software and CRMs

In the early days, MYOB used every aspect of their software to sell itself to small business clients.

The fact that the software enabled business to keep contact details and search for past orders was a good reason to call the software a CRM.

However, times have moved on and even with powerful and well known CRM brands like Salesforce, there seems to be dozens of CRM providers to choose from, with prices ranging from $15 per month/ per seat to over $150! In fact if you head over to MYOB’s Add-On Centre you’ll find plenty of CRM’s that now integrate with their software.

We are now entering the integration phase of software development – which cloud-based services integrate with other services you’re using – and we wrote an article at the beginning of the year about a home appliances technician who uses accounting software integrations on his tablet to run an efficient and profitable little business.

Real Estate Agent CRM’s

One thing that has become apparent to our team lately (we’re working on social media marketing for real estate agents) is the difference in mindset between bookkeepers and real estate agents and if you think about it for a second it makes sense.

Bookkeepers are usually people who just want to get themselves into their work and sort out the financial and accounting details whereas real estate agents want to find big shiny things to sell and earn a commission based income.

It’s the classic back office versus front office personality style, the salesy and bold vs the unassuming and detailed office admin person.

The thing that real estate agents are looking for in a CRM are:

Quick and Easy contact detail collection (do it once and get all the data) – ideally at open homes
Automated categorisation of contact (Who’s keen and what are they looking for) – often defined by the type of property they enquire about
Constant messages pinging prospects with their brand (like weekly emails about their open homes this weekend)
Great reporting to see what works (so they can repeat it) – like how many emails sent, calls, open homes etc

The relationship with a real estate agent is often brief and very intense because property owners (vendors) will be speaking sometimes every day with their sales agent to see how the selling process is going. With property marketing campaigns in the capital cities like Sydney and Melbourne only lasting a couple weeks in some instances there is a massive amount of information to be collected yet the reporting needs to be simple.

My Preference for CRMs is Simple

Although I’ve had some exposure to Salesforce when I originally spoke to that company (many years ago and much has probably changed) they only offered yearly plans (but showed them as a low monthly fee) and the upfront cost was too high so I didn’t go down that path.

Instead I found some great nimble tech startups (at the time, now they’re quite a bit bigger) who offered software that did all the basics very well and offered normal cloud-based pricing ie. low monthly fees: Zoho CRM and HighRiseHQ

I found that these two programs did many useful things. They:

enabled me to integrate with our form collections (no need for double entry)
gave me the ability to very easily make comments every time I spoke with them
integrated with my email marketing software
enabled me to use tags to categorise and find contacts
offered a low monthly cost!

The Dark Horse in Real Estate CRM’s is CreataCRM

I had the pleasure of meeting Reece, the managing director of CreataCRM, at Cebit 2016 and was amazed I’d never heard of this company before.

When I took a look at their software I was blown away – here is an Australian based software developer who has worked with some of the top performing McGrath real estate agents to build a complete and thorough cloud-based CRM with all the integrations you could ask for, including:

MYOB AccountRight (live and even the old v19)
Xero
VoIP telephony
Email broadcasting
Workflow Automation

The most amazing part about their software is that it costs just $11 per user per month! Now that is a lot of software and a VERY low price. I’m thrilled to be able to share this information with you because here is a company with a great product that focus more on their product development and software features and less on making themselves look big and flashy.

If you have had any experiences with CRM’s I’d love to hear from you and add further depth to our conversation and study into CRM’s.

At EzyLearn we offer online training courses to help you up-skill and find employment. Choose from our range of cloud-based online accounting software courses, to business start up and management courses, to marketing and sales courses, or update and further your skills in a range of Microsoft Office programs (Excel, PowerPoint, Word) or social media and WordPress web design).

Posted on June 23, 2016May 11, 2021 by Steve Slisar — 1 Comment

If you have fewer than 19 staff you must be SuperStream Ready by June 30

Companies with over 20 employees should ALREADY be compliant

ATO SuperStream for myob and xero accounting software training courses In July last year, EzyLearn published a couple of posts about SuperStream, the government initiative to improve the efficiency of Australia’s superannuation system, which all businesses with 19 or fewer employees must be compliant with by June 30 this year. As we’ve now reaching June 30, it’s important to ensure that you’re fully compliant with SuperStream, the government’s electronic system for sending superannuation payments to your employees’ super funds.
Continue reading If you have fewer than 19 staff you must be SuperStream Ready by June 30

Posted on June 7, 2016February 9, 2023 by Steve Slisar — 3 Comments

Free Tip for real estate agents who want to use video in their social media with WordPress websites

Getting video into social media advertising and marketing is king for real estate agents

property marketing is important to sell your house in Sydney's lower north shore property market

You may recall a recent post about the exciting work we are doing with real estate agents around Australia to help them with their social media marketing as their industry goes through massive technological change.

Real estate agents are adopting Facebook pages, using Facebook advertising and creating their own websites to make them stand out from other agents but most importantly to show property sellers that they’re very experienced in the local property market and also great people to deal with. This stuff also applies to bookkeepers, accountants and most businesses where a good personal reputation is important!

Creating videos, serving videos and displaying videos

We spend much of our marketing efforts “writing” blogs to add value to you, the reader. We also optimise these pages so they can get discovered by people who use Google and other search engines to find information. Through our digital marketing agency, virion we’re doing this work for real estate agents AND bookkeepers so make sure to check these services out or contact us if you want to know more.

The thought of creating, uploading and then displaying videos on a website is very daunting to some people and usually it’s the inserting the video into a website as a blog or a page that is the part people aren’t sure about. So, I created a video for you! Yes, feel free to enjoy my calm, relaxing, yet very capable voice go through a process that our team go through dozens of times a week.

We have a course on WordPress and this video and other new videos will shortly be inserted into that course but the other aspects of performing this type of work involve these questions:

Where are you going to store the videos. We prefer Wistia because of their fantastic analytics but most people are familiar with Youtube and the fact that it’s free is a great benefit too.
How are you going to display it. We prefer to keep our content on our own websites but lots of real estate agents are happy to build up a following on many different social media platforms and Youtube is definitely one of them.

Enjoy the video below and make sure to Request a Quote if you are interested in having my team and I manage your online digital marketing using quality content.

Youtube videos into WordPress Blog pages

Also, stay tune for updates about our forthcoming Facebook for Business Courses.

Posted on May 31, 2016May 12, 2023 by Steve Slisar

Bank Recs is BAS preparation but lodgement is legal

Due dates for BAS lodgement can be deferred by BAS agents

Due dates for lodging BAS's and extensions for BAS Agents using the BAS Agent portal - Bank Recs do most of the work — *Image: ATO website*

If you’re doing your BAS with the help of a Tax or BAS agent you might be aware that although the actual due date for the March quarter BAS is 28th April you can get an extension by using a tax or BAS agent to the 26th of May.

We’ve had quite a few conversations lately with bookkeepers about whether they can do this or not and if not who can they turn to, to do it.

When you lodge a BAS with the ATO you are effectively telling them how much you’ve earnt and spent but more importantly you are defining how much the business actually pays in tax – and they DON’T want you to get this amount wrong.

If the amount is wrong and in your favour you may incur fees and charges and the TAX and BAS agent system (that is managed by the Tax Practitioners Board) has been set up to assume that only someone who has the training and experience is responsible for lodging these important documents. If they get it wrong a small business owner can sue them for the time it takes to fix the problem and for this BAS agents need professional indemnity insurance.

Non-registered Bookkeepers and BAS Agents

The good news for both businesses AND ordinary bookkeepers who are NOT registered BAS agents is that you can have a bookkeeper do your data entry, as well as help you with various aspects of your business accounts and administration (like accounts payable, receivable and even customer service etc) for a good, low rate.

All you need it confidence in using MYOB or Xero accounting software. Our Xero Complete course will teach you everything from setup and configuration through daily transactions like invoices, purchases, expenses and payments and advanced topics like BAS, Reporting, Payroll, Projects and cashflow reporting.

Many of these bookkeepers operate as independent contractors so the small business doesn’t need to employ a staff member to do the books [want to start your own bookkeeping business cheaply? Look at joining National Bookkeeping] and some of them are very experienced in bookkeeping and even running their own businesses.

The good news is that you can still use one of these bookkeepers to take care of the accounts side of your business and use your accountant or a BAS agent for the BAS preparation and lodgement.

Bank reconciliation done right is where all the work is done

Now we have the BAS lodgement details out of the way let’s get into the bank reconciliation. This work is often done by the accounts person or contractor and it’s where most of the time and effort in preparing a BAS is spent. If this is done correctly the BAS preparation is pretty simple so it made us delve a little further into the steps taken in doing this work. Here are the simple steps:

Launch your accounting software
Go to the bank reconciliation area
Start matching entries in your software with lines on the bank statement (much easier and faster with bank feeds and Internet banking).
Reconcile each month
Run your BAS report

Many people at this stage will need to provide copies of their bank statement to their accountant, BAS agent or bookkeeper so that person can see actually real world evidence of that transaction (sometimes bank feeds are perfect either). It’s at this stage that you realise whether you made the right choice in the bank you choose because not all banks are equal in Australia even if they are grouped as the BIG four. I’ve written about my disappointment in how hard it is to use a bank like NAB before and I’m afraid I’m gong to have to do it again, comparing NAB to CBA for the ease of getting bank statements.

Bank Statements and Internet Banking – Bad news NAB

CBA Netbank easy to get past statements up to 7 years old compared to NAB business banking

CBA provide 7 years of storage for bank statements so if you do have to go back and get an old one guess what? No calls to make, not bank statement fees to pay, no need to search through your filing cabinat for paper statements, all you need to do is go back to that period and download the file as a PDF and email it to your accountant or bookkeeper.

NAB is too old, statements are hard to get and customer service needs to change with statement search

To do this with NAB is very similar to walking into one of their branches (well the one they just closed down at Dee Why anyway) – it’s old, clunky and hard to work with and often I’ve found you need to email or call or do physical searching around your office for this rudimentary information – this task alone can make the whole bank reconciliation experience very frustrating.

Do your end of year reports now

facebook marketing and advertising course online

While we are on the topic of reporting you may be aware that there are some tax deductions and expenses that you can claim this financial year so it’s a good time to know exactly how you have performed this financial year. Plus you’ll see how far short or ahead you are from last year and you can do your own Jerry Harvey style clearance sale – everything has to go, go, go because we have TOO MUCH stock.

We’re preparing some blogs that’ll be published shortly about some of the deductions and tax breaks you might want to take advantage of. Hopefully after these we’ll be able to focus on our online digital marketing courses like Facebook Pages for business and Facebook advertising for real estate agents! Every one will benefit from these Facebook courses but we’ll slant towards how real estate agents can use Facebook to attract vendors in their local area – it’s fascinating.

Posted on April 20, 2016May 24, 2016 by Steve Slisar

To Job Seekers MYOB is Still Number 1

Most existing business use MYOB

I love the power of being able to login to our accounting software to resend invoices or create them when I have some idle time and I’ve discovered that lots of trades people and independent contractors love it too, but most enquiries we have from prospective students is about MYOB accounting software because that’s what most small businesses need help with.

That is also why we’ve bundled the most popular software requirements for those who are applying for office admin or accounting jobs – MYOB, Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Word – AND created a special bundled price for the lot!

Superannuation companies need Excel

I was speaking with the risk model manager for a very large superannuation fund earlier this week and we were discussing the course outline of our Microsoft Excel courses and how that fits into the needs of their own workforce (he was exploring a corporate training arrangement) and I mentioned something that resonated with him.

If you are learning a program like Excel or Word from scratch the training materials can be quite generic and cover almost any topics, but as soon as you head into the Advanced Excel Course topics you may also be looking at customising that course using tools, formulas, functions and macros that are specific to your own business – particularly as a large company.

Cafes and Restaurants use Word and Excel

I was speaking to a local business owner of a cafe in Morisset, close to my home (yes, I’ve escaped the Sydney property prices, lack of space and high traffic!) about their new menu when they confessed that they used Microsoft Excel to create the menu after struggling with Word to do it. They are a mother and daughter team and worked together to get the new menu ready for their customers.

What stood out in the conversation is just how complicated Microsoft Word is once you start exploring the more intermediate and advanced capabilities. We use these advanced tools when we create our Training Workbooks and it’s worth using the skills because you can save a lot of time for repetitive tasks or when you make changes, but for smaller or more creative tasks like forms and tables Excel is often a simpler program to use.

Save $397 and do the lot

We’ve bundled the MYOB, Excel and Word courses, with assessment and certificate options and all you need to do is select these courses at our enrolment page to receive the automatic discount. This offer is called the Job Seeker Offer and is available for a limited time so enrol now and take the saving. Then feel free to share the results of your work if you want to.

Posted on April 13, 2016March 26, 2021 by Steve Slisar

Major bank wants to NAB uber small businesses

NAB partners with large accounting firm to bypass bookkeepers

Is Airtax competing with the accountants version of Xero and MYOB for cashbook accounting — NAB group executive Antony Cahill with Sammy Kumar of PwC Picture Stuart McEvoy with Airtax credit card from The Australian website

As an ex-NAB small business client I confess a biased against the bank and their archaic computer systems.

You could probably tell that from blog post where they asked their NAB Dee Why branch clients to temporarily change their BSB number while there is some property development in the Dee Why square (where I had my first computer training centre)!

Continue reading Major bank wants to NAB uber small businesses

Posted on April 8, 2016May 24, 2016 by Steve Slisar

Facebook Advertising and Impressions for Real Estate Agents

Facebook advertising and impressions of you

Has someone been telling you you must get onto social media? Are you a real estate agent with a Facebook page that is pushing people away? Are you spending hundreds of dollars per month and pushing your Facebook community away from what you do and to all the big companies!?

Target home owners in your suburb

This is why everyone loves social media isn’t it? The fact that you can almost perfectly target your marketing message to your ideal customer makes social media perfect, the only issue you have now is “Are they ready to buy”? Are they ready to use your services at that moment? What happens if they aren’t?

I interviewed Michael Griffiths when he ran his Internet marketing business for our business marketing course and he pointed out was that only about 3% of the people who come to your website are ready to transact, the rest of the visitors are exploring, learning and getting to know people (hopefully you are one of them) who they may use in the future. That’s why recommendations, testimonials, blogs and social media pages are important because they show prospective buyers that you are active, current and in tune and the messages you give out will almost help them define whether they like who you are.

Facebook may not work immediately

The dilemma for real estate agents is whether they should advertise using Google Adwords or with Facebook Advertising and the answer is really both, but for different reasons.

Google Adwords gets you in front of people who are searching for you or the services you provide
Facebook enables you to get in front of all of your potential market
Social media, blogs and newsletters help you remain front of mind

ReMarketing keeps your ad in front of prospects

Everyone is talking about remarketing and giving you to power to show your ad to your target audience no matter where your prospect goes online. The problem is that they may never need or want your services and you’re continuously paying for the ad to appear. The problem with some Facebook ads is that you pay for impressions – every time someone sees your ad – as opposed to PPC (every time someone clicks on your ad).

It’s better to offer your prospects a way to be reminded of you and you do that by getting people to like your page, follow you on twitter or LinkedIn and subscribe to your blog. Every time you create new and interesting content your prospects will see you and if they are no longer interested they’ll disconnect, unsubscribe, Unlike, Unfollow you.

Facebook is best for your past clients and potential advocates

The best way I believe to use Facebook advertising is to create a custom audience of all your past clients and make sure you show up when they are using Facebook. It builds the likelihood of them recommending you to their friends and it keeps you front of mind, particularly for real estate agents where the sales funnel can take several years sometimes for someone to use your services after getting to know you.

123ezy is a digital agency that creates real estate agent websites and helps them navigate the changing world of property marketing and building an online reputation based on all the hard work they have already done. EzyLearn creates courses to help students learn how to use office productivity, accounting and marketing programs to manage their business or work. We’re assembling a Facebook Advertising for Business Course and you can register for our free Facebook Advertising Course now.

Posted on March 29, 2016March 29, 2016 by Steve Slisar — 1 Comment

Bookkeepers need help with Xero ANSWERS

EzyLearn Answers for student support in online training courses in MYOB, Xero, Quickbooks online, Microsoft Excel, Word, Powerpoint and WordPress

Xero enrolments for bookkeeping businesses

Despite the fierce competition from MYOB to own the cloud-based accounting market, Xero cloud accounting software is powering along and many of our course enrolments have come from existing bookkeepers who are being directed towards Xero by their clients. We’ve priced our Xero course to be comparable with our MYOB course so it’s currently cheaper but we’re listening to our bookkeeping students to add course content that is relevant to their needs.

What xero bookkeepers want to know

Xero enables you to login from any computer via the internet so trades people, professional services providers and even retail and food outlets can access their accounting software from a tablet, Mac, Windows PC or even their smart phone so it’s little wonder that small business are moving to Xero in the cloud. It’s also proving popular because bank reconciliations can be performed from anywhere by Xero bookkeepers using bank feeds as opposed to printed bank statements.

Payroll is live and constantly updated AND the payroll function can be performed by experienced payroll bookkeepers no matter where they are located in Australia or around the world.

Xero Answers for Xero Bookkeepers

Not long after we began offering LIFETIME course access for our online MYOB courses back in 2011 we introduced a service called EzyLearn ANSWERS and we’re now extending that service to our Xero training courses. We’ve included our Xero course in the EzyLearn ANSWERS service because of the large number of bookkeepers asking questions about how to use the more advanced functionality, because we want to add more new content to the course and we want to add new content that is relevant to bookkeeping working with their small business clients.

The best news is that every Xero course student has access to this service and our bookkeeping course creator, Jacci, who is an assistant accountant and registered BAS agent is keen to see how she can help.