Category: Microsoft Excel training course

New videos and training workbooks and exercises for Microsoft Excel 2007

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We Don’t Lock Our Microsoft Excel Course Content

You Can Use the Calculation Fields in our Excel Exercises as Often as You Like!

learn Excel online training course unlocked calculations and formulas
We keep all the calculation fields in our Excel course exercises unlocked so you can play around with different figures of your own as often as you like.

DESPITE THE POPULARITY OF cloud-based accounting software applications like Xero and MYOB, Excel still remains one of the most indispensable software programs for businesses and individuals alike. That is why we always make it a priority to constantly update our Microsoft Excel Training Course.

You can apply Excel to so much

Accounting software, even robust packages like MYOB, only allow you to perform a finite number of functions that relate to business accounting. However, Excel can be used for a multitude of different purposes — both business and personal, merely one of which is to develop a financial forecast for an investment.

EzyLearn courses provide real-life case studies

learn excel online training course

Our Intermediate Excel Training Course uses the construction of a granny flat for investment purposes as a case study example. We chose a granny flat for the case study because most people construct them as an investment, whether they’re in business or not, so it’s a good real-world example.

It also deals with depreciation, which you can claim in your tax, regardless of whether you’re in business or not.

Our calculation fields remain “unlocked”

But even though, with the current property booms in our major cities, granny flat construction has become more common, it is not so common that every person taking our Excel courses is planning to build a granny flat for their next investment. That’s why we decided not to lock our course content.

What does this mean? It means that all the calculation fields in the exercise files of our Excel training courses are unlocked, so that your education remains unlocked too. You’re free to play around and replicate them as you need, so you can get a proper handle of how to use Excel in business or for work.

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Visit our website for more information on our Microsoft Excel Training Course, with its new granny flats case study. We provide a range of online Excel training courses for beginners’, intermediate and advanced students.

Online bookkeeping accounting training courses for CPD points

EzyLearn Excel, MYOB and Xero online training courses count towards Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for bookkeepers and accountants. We’ve been an accredited training provider of the Institute of Certified Bookkeepers ever since the organisation started in Australia. Find out how CPD points can be of benefit to you.

 

 

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What Happens if You Have Backlog of PAYG and Super Payments?

Don’t get lumped with penalties when you don’t need to!

failure to lodge penalties how to manage payroll in Excel online training course
It’s not only frustrating and disheartening, but a waste of business funds to be penalised for lodging your financials too late.

A LOT OF SMALL BUSINESSES have trouble managing their payroll, especially when they only have a few employees and paying to access a payroll system in their accounting package is an unnecessary expense. You’ll learn how to use Excel to manage your PAYG and super contributions in our Intermediate Microsoft Excel Training Courses. However, sometimes you may have a backlog of PAYG and super payments. Let’s take a look at how to manage these.

Rescue bookkeeping

A backlog of PAYG and super payments that date back more than three months is known as rescue bookkeeping, although it can often include other bookkeeping issues, like bank accounts that don’t reconcile with statements.

PAYG payments

For businesses that only withhold up to $25,000 each year, you’re supposed to make PAYG payments and file a withholding report each quarter. You have 28 days from the end of the quarter to do so, after which time, you may incur a Failure To Lodge (FTL) penalty.

Superannuation payments

As with PAYG payments and reporting, you can also incur a FTL penalty for not lodging or paying your employees’ superannuation contributions in time. All businesses, regardless of size, have to make superannuation payments each quarter — the ATO sets out the due dates for each period on their website.

Lodging late PAYG and super payments

The ATO only applies penalties for failure to lodge reports or make payments for each period of 28 days (or part thereof) that a document or payment is overdue. Each period incurs one penalty unit for each document, up to a maximum of five penalty units.

From 2015 onwards, the value of a penalty unit is $180 (previously it was $170) for small businesses, which are defined as entities with an assessable income or GST turnover of no more than $1 million a year.

The maximum penalty a small business will pay is $900 for each document or payment that is overdue. Note too that FTL penalties will also incur a general interest charge (GIC), applied on top of the penalty.

Managing late PAYG and super payments

Use the Ad Hoc Payroll Guide, a new case study that is included in our Intermediate Microsoft Excel Training Courses to determine the rate of PAYG tax to withhold and the required super contribution amounts in Excel. Once you’ve worked out the required amounts (visit the ATO website for tax tables prior to 2017), lodge the necessary PAYG payments and reports to the ATO; pay super contributions using the SuperStream super clearing house.

The ATO will write to you if you are required to pay a penalty — sometimes they are waived for first-time offences, or if the amounts are small.

Our courses now include real-life case studies

learn excel online training course

Our Intermediate Microsoft Excel training courses will also teach you how to create a payroll spreadsheet from scratch to suit your own business, so you can easily work out your PAYG and super obligations. Visit our website for more information on all of our Excel training courses.

learn PowerPoint online training course

Create brilliant presentations and graphics for all kinds of business purposes.

Gone are the days of excruciatingly dull PowerPoint slide presentations. Nowadays PowerPoint is the hidden gem used to generate animations, videos, movies, advertising and graphics. It’s a great ally to the marketer or social media person in your organisation.

This creative program can also be used to conjure up the most beautiful and modern pictorial slides to enhance any presentation or induction. Find out more about our 2016 version PowerPoint courses.

online bookkeeping courses to earn cpd pointsEzyLearn Excel, MYOB and Xero online training courses count towards Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for bookkeepers and accountants. We’ve been an accredited training provider of the Institute of Certified Bookkeepers ever since the organisation started in Australia. Find out how CPD points can be of benefit to you.

 

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Excel Can Prove that Granny Flats Don’t Always Add Value

Using Excel to Financially Forecast the Viability of Your Investment

financial forecasts excel online training course
Excel is the tool you need for developing a feasibility study so you can assess the viability of any kind of investment.

When you are planning to invest in a project, you naturally have to weigh up the risks. One of the chief ways of doing this is to complete a financial forecast to determine the viability of your investment. One type of investment that has been exceedingly common and popular with the current property boom has been the investment in a granny flat.

Many homeowners and investors who own a property with adequate room and the right conditions, have chosen to build a granny flat on their existing property as a means of earning extra income.

In our Microsoft Excel Intermediate Training Course, we feature a brand new case study, using a granny flat as a way of demonstrating how you determine the viability of an investment.

Granny flats earn income, not add value

Of course, you need to consider whether you’re legally allowed to rent out a granny flat, which in some Australian states — Victoria, South Australia and Queensland — you aren’t. If you’re found renting a granny flat in any of those states, your local council can ask you to remove the granny flat from your property.

You may determine that a granny flat will earn around $12,000 a year in rental income, but it could take up to 10 years to break even on construction costs. Although some of those costs can be deducted as expenses and the dwelling depreciated over time, depending on where the property is located, property values may not increase by that much. This is amplified if you’ve just purchased the property, compared to a person who’s owned their property for 5 or 10 years.

Granny flats can reduce your rental return

Depending on how the granny flat has been constructed, its proximity to the main dwelling, and whether there are any shared or common areas, there’s also the potential to reduce the rental income on the principal dwelling. If the property has been previously tenanted, the shift from single to dual occupancy will reduce the rent of the principal dwelling. This could be offset by the existence of the granny flat, however, it moves the goalposts for your break even date. You may also experience more tenant churn, which will see more of your rental income going to real estate agents in letting fees, and greater wear and tear on the dwellings. You may also experience longer than average vacancy rates.

How to develop a financial forecast that can be used to determine the viability of a granny flat as an investment is covered in our Microsoft Excel Training Course, with its new Investing in a Granny Flat Case Study. Visit our website for more information on our full suite of online training courses. And don’t forget — EzyLearn online training courses can be counted towards your Continuing Professional Development Points! 

learn excel online training courseAt EzyLearn we are constantly refreshing the content of our online training courses. Where possible, we draw on real-life case studies as examples, to help you learn, and apply your skills, in a relevant way that makes sense. Visit our Micro Courses page to learn more.

 

 

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Linking a Financial Forecast with Xero and Excel

Excel Will Help You Work Out the HOW of Depreciation

learn excel online training courseWe recently updated our advanced Microsoft Excel Training Course content. It now contains a case study, by way of an extra exercise workbook, using a granny flat building project to create a financial forecast.

We chose a granny flat building project for our case study because it’s an investment decision quite a lot of people with or without a business have made. It’s also a capital asset that can be depreciated over time. Therefore it has the potential to affect your taxes in lots of different ways.

Our Excel Training Course, with its granny flat financial-forecast case study, will teach you how to use Excel to create a financial forecast, which you can then replicate for your own investment — whatever that may be.

Your bookkeeper uses Excel to calculate depreciation

When you build a new structure, such as a granny flat, which you intend to rent out or use for businesses purposes — i.e., it’s an investment and not for your own personal use — the building can be depreciated along with some of the fittings and finishes (floorings, curtains, paint, etc). That’s despite the value of the land upon which the granny flat is constructed increasing in value over time.

Once you’ve set up your financial forecasting file in Excel using the correct formulas that will update as the investment progresses, you’ll be able to track all of the future costs, income and depreciation in that spreadsheet.

Input depreciation into Xero

Excel will calculate the depreciation amounts for you, which you should then enter into Xero. We cover how to deal with depreciation in our Xero Bank Reconciliation Course, because lots of businesses own, or will own, a capital asset at some point.

However, this doesn’t tell you how to determine the depreciation amounts, which most business owners have to get their bookkeeper to work out for them. Most bookkeepers work this out in Excel based on the depreciation rates provided by the ATO. However, if you have already created a financial forecast in Excel, you won’t need to get your bookkeeper to do this for you.

Individuals can claim depreciation too

Even if you’re not a business owner, but you’ve still built a granny flat that you intend to rent out, you can claim depreciation in your tax returns. Instead of entering the depreciation into Xero, you’d include it on your annual tax return, so it’s really important that you work this out in Excel first and regularly update it.

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Once you know how to use Excel for financial forecasting, you can use the same formulas and modelling for any financial forecast — be it for a granny flat project, business investment, anything that requires you to make a financial decision. Visit our website for more information on our advanced Microsoft Excel Training Course, with its new granny flats case study.

Do you want to brush up your Xero skills? Or perhaps you use MYOB but want to get a handle on Xero? Check out our suite of Xero training courses — all available for one low price. 

Online bookkeeping accounting training courses for CPD points

EzyLearn Excel, MYOB and Xero online training courses count towards Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for bookkeepers and accountants. We’ve been an accredited training provider of the Institute of Certified Bookkeepers ever since the organisation started in Australia. Find out how CPD points can be of benefit to you.

 

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Which Granny Flat is a Better Investment?

A Real-Life Granny Flat Construction Scenario

learn excel online training courseChoosing between a one-bedroom and two-bedroom granny flat is a decision you’ll need to make early on in the project, and it’s largely a financial one.

EzyLearn’s Microsoft Excel Training Course includes a new case study, “Investing in a Granny Flat”, which uses the construction of a granny flat as a real life example to help you to better understand how to develop a financial forecast for an investment.

Determine construction and ancillary costs

How much it will cost to construct both a one-bedroom and two-bedroom granny flat is the first step. You need to work out how much it will cost to get each granny flat constructed to the point that someone can move in, as well as any ancillary costs, like council fees and levies, real estate management fees interest rates and so forth.

Determine rental income

Some granny flat companies will give you rental income estimates, but you’re encouraged to investigate this yourself. Rental incomes are heavily dependent on your local area and the demand for that type of property. In Sydney, the demand for rental property far outweighs the demand in regional NSW. Take into consideration vacancy rates in the area and the types of property that are in demand. Areas with high vacancy rates and low demand for one-bedroom units could indicate there’s little demand for a permanently rented one-bedroom granny flat, which will put the rent down.

Determine depreciation amounts

Both granny flats will be subject to the same depreciation rate, however the amounts will differ due to the differing value of each dwelling. In addition to an annual depreciation rate on the dwelling, consider other elements of the granny flat that will also be subject to depreciation. Floor coverings, for example, can be depreciated over time. Carpeting is typically depreciated at a rate of 20 percent, where tiles are depreciated at 2.5 percent because the latter has a longer lifespan.

Determine the best investment

Add all of these costs into Excel to determine the average annual rental yield, expressed as a percentage of the property value. Rental yields are used to show the return on an investment. The higher the rental yield, the better the return is. Taken in combination with your own personal circumstances and plans for the future should help you to determine which option represents the better investment.

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Our Microsoft Excel training courses, featuring the new granny flat case study, go into much greater detail. Or view our full suite of training courses. 

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learn excel online training course

At EzyLearn, we’re committed to helping students of all our courses find better employment opportunities, become their own boss and upskill. To this end, we constantly update our courses with new, highly relevant content — it’s why we provide you with the option of Lifetime access you can always refer back to our courses as you progress in your skills’ development. 

We’re thrilled to announce our new Micro Courses which are be added to our existing courses, or can be purchased alone. These are based on real-life case studies and relate to real people in genuine, real-life scenarios. Subscribe to our blog and be alerted of updates.

 

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Calculating PAYG Obligations Without a Payroll System

Third Quarter is Looming; Are You Up to Date with Payroll?

ad hoc payroll payments ExcelMost businesses using an accounting program like MYOB or Xero will use the included payroll package to manage their employees’ payroll. For businesses with only a few employees, however, the additional payroll function is an unnecessary expense.

In our recently updated Advanced Microsoft Excel training courses, we have included a micro course on ‘Ad Hoc Payroll’, featuring a detailed spreadsheet for calculating PAYG and superannuation obligations. In this instance, our micro course is a detailed spreadsheet based on a case study, so it’s relevant and applicable to real life.

PAYG and the businesses it applies to

Every Australian business with employees who are each paid more than the tax-free threshold has a legal obligation to withhold tax on their employees’ behalf. This is known as the PAYG System (or Pay As You Go), where amounts of tax are withheld from each employee’s wage payments.

Businesses that withhold up to $25,000 each year only need to make payments to the ATO each quarter; businesses withholding amounts greater than $25,001 may have to make payments to the ATO each month or as regularly as each week.

At the time of writing, the tax-free threshold is currently $18,200, which is equivalent to:

  • $350 a week
  • $700 a fortnight
  • $1,517 a month

Superannuation contributions

Again, any business that pays its employees more than $450 each month must also make regular superannuation contributions on their employees’ behalf. We’ve written in the past about the government’s clearing house called SuperStream, which allows you to easily make super contributions — for free.

But first, you need to work out how much super you need to contribute for your employees. The superannuation guarantee is currently 9.5 percent of your employees’ gross wages, which is payable on top of their wages — not deducted out of.

Using tax tables to calculate wages

Each year, the ATO produces a range of tax tables to help you work out how much to withhold from payments you make to your employees. In our Ad Hoc Payroll Micro Course, we’ve already added the most current tax tables to the accompanying payroll spreadsheet, as well as the superannuation guarantee tables.

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We feature a number of real-life case studies, which we have turned into micro courses. You can use the Ad Hoc Payroll Micro Course to determine the rate of PAYG tax to withhold and the required super contribution amounts in Excel, rather than paying to access the payroll functions of MYOB or Xero. Our Intermediate Microsoft Excel training courses will also teach you how to create a payroll spreadsheet from scratch to suit your own business. Visit our website for more information on all of our Excel training courses.

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online bookkeeping courses to earn cpd points

 

EzyLearn Excel, MYOB and Xero online training courses count towards Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for bookkeepers and accountants. We’ve been an accredited training provider of the Institute of Certified Bookkeepers ever since the organisation started in Australia. Find out how CPD points can be of benefit to you.

 

 

 

 

 

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How does $20,000 mortgage repayments equate to $47,598.02?

Microsoft Excel Course now includes a mortgage spreadsheet

Microsoft Excel Training Course can help you halve your mortgageA mortgage for your home is a huge debt, particularly for those living in the swelling capital cities with soaring house prices. The pro and cons of buying your own house and living in it are:

  • You don’t pay capital gains tax on a property you live in, but
  • You can’t claim the interest component of your loan

The big problem with this is the interest charge – you can’t claim the cost of it yet it’s a massive component of each and every payment you make on your mortgage. You’d need your house price to go up at least at the interest rate you are paying to make it a good investment – and right now you’d be doing fine (perhaps except in Perth now).

Bigger payments reduce the interest paid

Our Microsoft Excel Training Course now includes an Excel spreadsheet file that will help you see just how much money you’d save if you paid even a small amount off extra each month!

You can use the mortgage comparison file to compare two mortgages, make extra payments or even shorten the term of the loan to see how much you’d need to pay each month if you want to pay your mortgage off quicker.

If you are an existing Excel Course student you’ll find the new file at the end of our Microsoft Excel Advanced Course 309.

Take 10 years off your mortgage while its easy to

I don’t want to turn this into a financial education blog, but there are several reasons to open this spreadsheet and start seeing the resulting figures to workout the best way to allocate the money you earn. Interest rates are at record lows, house prices ‘may’ be peaking, some people say that Australian banks are so highly leveraged to the residential property market that they’ll need to hold more capital reserves.

Either way you look at it, why not use your Microsoft Excel skills and play with some calculations to see how much better off you could be if you are financially prudent now. You can also use this Microsoft Excel file to do a stress test and see how much your mortgage would be if interest rates do go up as many people expect they will.

free online training course in Xero or Microsoft Word with MYOB or Microsoft Excel CourseFree Microsoft Word Course (or Xero Accounting) when you enrol in Excel Certificate Course

Note that if you enrol into Microsoft Excel Courses and choose the certificate option you’ll receive a BONUS course in either Microsoft Word (to create a professional resume) or Xero Accounting! Read our BONUS course offer announcement.

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Beginners to Advanced Microsoft Excel Course for $197 inc Exercise Files

$197 Beginners to Advanced Microsoft Excel Course includes Exercise Files

Microsoft Excel Training Course exercise files

One of the best ways of learning how to use a program is to use that program during your training. Some people can sit with programs like Microsoft Excel and learn by trying something out and making mistakes and then trying again.

[box type=”tick”]We’ve discovered that Microsoft Excel course students want to work with real world files in a logical step-by-step method that uses the exercise files for the basic skills and then keep using that file for the more advanced skills.[/box]

By the end you’ll have a powerful Microsoft Excel spreadsheet using advanced skills and because you learnt in a logical and methodical way, using gradually more complicated tools, you’ll have learnt most of the Microsoft Excel skills you’ve wanted and won’t even notice the time go by.

Real World Use of Microsoft Excel Spreadsheets

Excel training course exercise filesThe main uses for Microsoft Excel are as a:

  • Worksheet that enables you to lay out information in a logical fashion and then perform calculations with that data
  • Database that lists all of the information in a tabular format that can then be filtered and manipulated into a format that can be used in mail merges etc, and
  • Charts and graphs that visually present the information in a worksheet or table so that we humans can make sense of the information

Here are some of the ways that we use Microsoft Excel for our training business.

Present information for use in newspaper ads

In Microsoft Excel Course 303 we look at formulas and formatting and one exercise file we share with students and an example of what’s possible using Excel is the artwork we created for the newspaper ads for our courses at our training centres in Sydney. The table structure of Excel enables us to lay the information out precisely and if we need to change the dates

What costs us the most money

Yes, you can see the costs of running a business in a simple table, but when you put it in a chart you can visually see the differences in costs and in our 305 course on charting we’ll show you how to create the various different types of pie, line and bar charts as well as many other types. You’ll learn how to format the charts to make certain areas stand out and you’ll learn how to demonstrate trends.

Budgets and forecasting

It’s great when you have historical information to work with because you can spend a lot of time working out percentages, margins, budgets etc to try to figure out how you will go in the future. We include many exercise files in Microsoft Excel Course 306, including files to help you:

  • Maintain a household (or business budget)
  • Calculate sales margins and commissions for sales people (we have several different versions of this file to demonstrate how the file should look at the various stages of creating it).
  • Create a price list (including all wholesale product costings – that will be hidden from view)

 Making the right decisions

When we operated our training centres in Sydney we spent a lot of our time scheduling courses. We had to allocate training rooms, roster on our great trainers, print training materials and we needed to know when people where coming to courses. We discovered that most people who wanted to learn Microsoft Excel did a night class. We had these variables to work with:

  • The courses
  • What days people had come to these courses in the past
  • The time of the day that students had enrolled into these courses: morning, midday, evening or weekend.
  • Different training methods (class-based and Flexible Learning)

By discovering the best days and times that students had enrolled into courses from the past we were able to better schedule our courses to get the most students. It means we didn’t need to cancel courses.

See the contents of Microsoft Excel Course 308 for more information.

Figure out how to make more profit

In a business you can build a bigger business and make more profit by

  • increasing sales,
  • cutting costs,
  • focussing on your most profitable customers,
  • focussing on your most profitable products,
  • decreasing the time it takes to get your money (cash sale or terms).

Using Goal Seek in Microsoft Excel we discovered something that’ll help all independent contractors run a better more profitable business.

 

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Did I Mention a Free Excel Beginners Course?

Free Excel Beginners Course

I recently wrote about our Microsoft Excel [link]  Training Courses and how they have the features that make all of our online training courses popular, but I forgot to mention that we make the Excel Beginners Course available for free. These free training videos AND Excel Course workbook will give you the confidence to understand the main uses for Microsoft Excel.

Microsoft Excel can be used for lots of different things, but the main uses are:

  • Worksheet (to do calculations)
  • Chart (to visually show the data)
  • Database (to store data)

Our Excel Beginners Course videos will give you the basic Microsoft Excel knowledge very quickly, but the Excel Beginners Course workbook and exercise files will give you the chance to replicate what you see in the videos and LEARN BY DOING. You’ll get the training workbook to print out and we’ll also send you the excel files that we use in our demonstrations.

Excel Intermediate to Advanced Courses

Don’t worry, once you master the basics you’ll either want to know as much as you can about Microsoft Excel or decide that you’ll just use the software when you need it.  Either way, with our LIFETIME course access option you can complete and repeat the course as often as you want and with all skills levels (from Beginners to Advanced Excel) you’ll be covered.

We’ve been teaching people how to use Microsoft Excel since we started at Lane Cove in Sydney in 1996 and we look forward to helping more people learn Excel to become more productive, more employable and more successful.

Make sure you share our free Excel Beginners Courses with your friends on social media.

[button link=”http://ezylearnonline.com.au/courses/microsoft-excel/free-microsoft-excel-beginners-course-training-videos/”]FREE Excel Beginners Course[/button]    [button link=”http://ezylearnonline.com.au/enrol/” bg_color=”#99050c”]Enrol Now[/button]

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Forecast a Positive Future Using Microsoft Excel

Time to Reflect, Thank and Plan

sales-forecasting-using-microsoft-excel-training-courseWe had our office Christmas party (for our Sydney team) this week and I went through and individually thanked each of my team for their contribution during the year. I’m very lucky to be working with a great bunch of people – although, you know what they say:”The harder I work the luckier I get” – and I used our Christmas lunch to thank each of them publicly (in front of their peers) for their efforts because I think it’s important.

We started a lot of diverse and interesting projects during the year and they include:

  1. Assembling a course to teach people how to create their own course – ideal for sites that want to create their own online Inductions for contractors,
  2. Worked with the Australian Small Business Centre to create new sales and marketing courses for their Business Management Course.
  3. Created a MYOB Bookkeeper Directory to help our students start their own bookkeeping business and find new clients
  4. Established the StartUp Academy to help ordinary people start their own business working from home

Treat Yourself as you Plan for Success in 2015

Sales forecasting using Microsoft Excel Training Courses and MYOB DataOne of our team members said she’s going on holidays and really needs the time off because she will be studying VERY hard next year. She’ll have 5 weeks off and she’s 21. I started to wonder if I am a workaholic, am a little twisted in my opinion of what makes a good holiday or that I just love what I am doing, but I offered to give her work to do while she was on holidays overseas for that long period of time – after all, isn’t it great to earn some money working from your computer, using the internet for a couple hours each day and then getting into the festivities!?

I was thinking about my ideal holiday – work a couple hours every morning (early if possible so no one is awake to distract me), then feel rewarded and REALLY enjoy the rest of the day and night. It gives me the feeling of still being connected to the world at home, while achieving something workwise and then cutting off completely from work for the rest of the day.

When I think about the festive season and the quiet time between Christmas and when most people come back to work (5th January 2015 or later) I see an opportunity to stay in Sydney where it almost becomes a pleasure to drive on the roads and spend the time in thought and contemplation to plan for the coming year. It’s usually the time when I write down my major goals for the coming year and start to clearly define them, how they’ll look and operate and what is needed to achieve them. It’s the time when I end up getting on my computer and powering up Microsoft Excel to do those once a year checks on the past and forecasts for the future.

Microsoft Excel Course for Financial Forecasting

Export Sales Report information from MYOB AccountRight to Microsoft Excel
Export Sales Report information from MYOB AccountRight to Microsoft Excel

Forecasts are those interesting things that investments are based on. Someone with a spreadsheet and a business plan will guess how much they’ll earn in the forthcoming year/quarter/month etc and back it up with all their evidence in the business plan. To many people it’s a waste of time because “who can really predict the future”, but to those people who do it it’s a way of crystalising your plans into monthly or quarterly objectives that are based on the past (in most cases) and on intelligent estimates of what the market needs.

Export Your MYOB Reports

If you already use MYOB Accounting Software to manage your bookkeeping and accounts you can easily export a report about last periods sales and use that as a basis for next years forecasts. Many slight changes can result in more sales and higher profits in 2015, including:

  • new products,
  • expanded services or
  • price increases

But your decision to no longer provide 30 days credit terms or be more diligent with late payers can help you earn your money twice as fast. Either way you do it, now is a great time to export that data from MYOB, or Xero or Quickbooks and get it into a spreadsheet (worksheet) so you can start to do some mathematics to show how much more you’ll earn in 2015.

Online Microsoft Excel Training Courses

If you’ve followed our blog posts you’d know that we have a very popular MYOB training course. I wanted you to know that we have a popular Excel Training Course too and it comes with the same benefits as most of our online courses:

  • 12 months or LIFETIME Excel Course access
  • Assessment and Certificate Option
  • Includes 9 skill levels from Excel Beginners to Advanced
  • Includes exercise files to practice
  • Includes multiple version of the Microsoft Excel Software
  • Each of the 9 courses includes an Excel Training Workbook with step-by-step exercises
  • Comes with a 30 day money back guarantee

 

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Feedback from Students About Our Online Training Courses

We value - and need - your feedback about our online training courses.
We value – and need – your feedback about our online training courses.

Over the years, we’ve provided online training to numerous Australian – and international – students, whether via our flagship MYOB training course or one of our Excel or WordPress courses, or our more recent Small Business Management Course. Over the years these students have provided us with valuable feedback.

The feedback we receive from our students helps us to understand what’s working and what isn’t, which is why it’s invaluable to us that you get in touch and let us know what you think.

It was based on the feedback we received from our students that we decided to develop our Reach Accounting and Xero training courses. It is also based on the feedback we received that we changed the way we issued our certificates so that students received them faster and could use them to find work.

Recent Feedback

Here’s just some of the feedback we’ve received from our students recently:

“I found the workbooks the most helpful for giving practical experience.” — Karen Dimitri, Glengowrie SA 5044

“The best part is that you can do it on your own time and pace.” — Juliana van Wyk, Hilton WA 6163

“Short, easily digestable videos. Can fit in easily with a busy lifestyle.” — Korina Power, North Shore, Auckland 0630

“I could learn at my own pace.” — Jackie Smith, Sheidow Park, SA 5158

“Doing the workbooks and watching the videos at my own pace has helped me a lot in pursing the current workforce requirements.” — Merritt Ray, Loganholme QLD 4129

“I was able to finish the whole course in just a couple of weeks.” — YoonOck Lee, Atwell, WA 6164

“By watching videos on one particular topic and doing a test straight after relating to those videos, you don’t become too overwhelmed with too much information.” — Michelle Bankstown, NSW 2200

“I am happy as I could completely the course at my own pace. It was easy n simple to understand. As a mother I felt the course was very time efficient. Looking forward to putting my knowledge into action.” — Kimberline Francis, St James, WA 6102

“This course is best for me because I can access any time from home, I can replay any video provided when I didn’t understand.” — Mika Humphreys, Innisfail, QLD 4860

“Everything within the course itself was great. I liked the most how easy it was to understand and navigate through.” — Katie Davis, Whyalla, SA 5608

“Being able to actually move around the sample company file to get a feeling of how the software is structured, made me have more confident.” — Joy Khoo, Mudgee, NSW 2850

“The best parts of this course is that we get freedom to learn and complete this course in your own suitable time. There is not so much pressure that you have to complete in certain time limit. I would advise and recommend this course from EzyLearn to international students who want to further their career in bookkeeping and accounting. It was a great privilege to be part of your institute.” — Prabin Gurung, Auburn, NSW 2144

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We’d love to hear from you too. Get in touch via our course evaluation page.

 

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‘Commenting’ in Databases

We suggest only writing the glad, not the bad, when it comes to comments in databases - and indeed, perhaps in life.
We suggest only writing the glad, not the bad, when it comes to comments in databases – and indeed, perhaps in life.

Nearly every company has one – usually as part of their CRM software, but other times it’s just a good ol’ faithful Excel document. Either way, databases are commonplace in a great deal of companies and they’re often used to keep track of communication between staff and their customers.

But what’s the rule on commenting in databases, or specifically, leaving negative comments in databases?

Comments – Integral to a Database

Making general comments in a database following a conversation with a client is pretty much standard practice – in many cases, it’s often the reason you have a database. In customer service call centres, for example, leaving a detailed comment about the discussion you’ve had with a customer is expected – and serves as an invaluable resource for the next person who speaks to that customer.

In this instance, it’s sometimes appropriate to leave comments about the customer’s temperament – angry, rude, upset, and so forth. This just helps the next staff member manage this customer in a manner that suits the circumstances.

But many companies quite commonly also use databases for the express purpose of selling something to a new or potentially new client; negative comments speculating on the temperament or nature of a contact in a database, may not be altogether helpful in this instance.

Reading that the person you’re about to call or have a meeting with is a ‘disgruntled curmudgeon’ is almost certainly going to affect the way you interact with that person. If you go into something expecting hostility, you’ll naturally position yourself on the defense, which in turn is only going to illicit hostility back.

Ditching the Negativity

But what if that person was only responding with hostility because you pre-empted their alleged hostility by being defensive in the first place? That’s a question you may never know the answer to, unless you ditch the negative comments in your database.

That doesn’t mean you can’t write useful comments such as “spoke to John, but he said he wasn’t interested in our product’, but you should definitely avoid comments like ‘spoke to John who was extremely rude and said he wasn’t interested in our product.’ The added detail in the latter is not particularly useful and if that person does ever become a customer it could underscore your interactions with them.

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It can be a good philosophy to only write the glad, not the bad. Perhaps have a think about that when you leave comments in a database, or make a policy about your own database usage.

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Feel Threatened by a Newcomer in Your Workplace? Gain Knowledge, Instead!

The more confident you are in your abilities the less threatened you will feel by the arrival of a newcomer to the workplace.
The more confident you are in your abilities the less threatened you will feel by the arrival of a newcomer to the workplace.

As part of our MYOB Training Course, we’re constantly adding new content and helping our students win work and improve their employability. That’s why we always emphasise the importance of continuing to educate yourself — for the obvious skills advantages you bring to any company, but also for your own confidence.

For many people, it can be a little nerve racking when new blood enters the workplace and in today’s job market, it’s not at all uncommon to see a new face appear. Sometimes it’s in the form of a new employee there to share your workload and other times it’s because your organisation has employed someone to help restructure the business so they operate more efficiently.

The Many and Varied Threat

For many employees, this new face around the office can make them feel threatened — threatened about the future of their jobs and threatened by the prospect of the office dynamic changing. Fortunately, however, there’s an antidote for this rather common reaction to change: taking a course or continuing professional development.

The thing about feeling threatened is that it’s entirely to do with your confidence. You may feel like you’re not quite as educated or as skilled as this other person and as a result, you think your employer won’t need you any more. The truth is, your employer probably has no intention of letting you go, but nevertheless, the job market is changing and up-skilling to increase your knowledge base is invaluable — to you and your employer.

Confidence in Upskilling and Continuing Professional Development

Aside from the tangible knowledge and experience a highly-skilled employee brings to an organisation, they also bring with them confidence. The more secure you feel with your ability to do your job and do it well, the more confident you’ll feel as a result. For this reason, EzyLearn is a big believer in continuing professional development.

Our MYOB, and Microsoft Word and Excel training courses each come with lifetime access to the course content, so that you can review the course material and even access updated content, whenever you need it.

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A truly confident person would embrace the idea of working with someone new and potentially learning and sharing knowledge, rather than feeling threatened by them. But the key to achieving this confidence is being able to feel secure in your own knowledge base and that’s what EzyLearn’s Continuing Professional Development Program aims to provide bookkeepers with: knowledge.

So stop worrying, stop feeling threatened, and feel more confident in your skills and knowledge by taking one of our online courses today!

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What’s New in MS Office 2013? Here’s a Quick List

Frequent updates and infrequent use of software like Excel can really leave you stumped - that's where Lifetime Membership comes in real handy!
Frequent updates and infrequent use of software like Excel can really leave you stumped – that’s where Lifetime Membership comes in real handy!

At EzyLearn we offer online training courses for MYOB — the #1 Cloud-accounting software — but did you know we also offer training in Microsoft Excel and Word?

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!

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Most budding bookkeepers want to start learning MYOB at 12.30pm!

Excel Online Training Course 308 - pivot table value field settingsHow do we know that most students want to start their MYOB training course at 12.30pm? We put all our course enrolment information into an Excel spreadsheet, inserted a pivot table and then filtered the data. Does that sound simple? Well it will be if you enrol into our online Microsoft Excel course.

The good news is that the video tutorial below will show you exactly what we did. If you are reading this blog as an email subscriber click on the heading to get to our blog site to watch the training video tutorial. If you want to receive these blogs posts via email, make sure you subscribe to our Employment and Productivity Training Blog.

The other good news is that when you enrol into our online Microsoft Excel Training Course you actually receive the data file that we used in this exercise so you can replicate it yourself! These figures are for enrolments into our MYOB course, Beginners, and Microsoft Office courses at our Dee Why training centre when we operated class-based training centres in Sydney.

Like all our online training courses, the Microsoft Excel training courses come with LIFETIME student access. The current course not only includes training videos, but nine training workbooks and over 40 exercise files that you can use to practice your Excel spreadsheeting skills.

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New Training Material: Advanced Microsoft Excel 2010 videos

Excel Online Training Course 308 - pivot table value field settingsSometimes we use the EzyLearn blog to provide some free tips from new training material that we create, like manipulating Pivot Tables we mentioned earlier in the week. Today we are announcing that 14 new training videos are now available for our advanced Microsoft Excel course (number 308).

This is the list of videos that are now available:

Video for 3.1.1 – Using AutoFilter

Video for 4.1.1 part 1 – Cleaning up data using AutoFilter

Video for 4.1.1 part 2 – Cleaning up data using AutoFilter

Video for 5.1.1 – Perform an Advanced Filter

Video for 5.1.2 – Advanced Filter using Wildcards (search text within cells)

Video for 5.1.3 – Advanced Filter for multiple search criteria

Video for 5.1.3 – Narrowing search results using Advanced Filter

Video for 6.1.1 – Inserting a Pivot Table

Video for 6.1.2 – Filtering data in a Pivot table

Video for 6.1.3 – Sort dates by month in a pivot table

Video for 6.1.5 – Changing the value field settings in a pivot table

Video for 7 – Creating pivot table charts

Video for 8.1.1 – Get months values using the Choose function

Video for 8.1.2 – Show grades for student results data using CHOOSE function

 

Our new video references match the many exercise tasks you can complete to master the skills taught in the videos. Everything you watch in the videos you can re-produce using the exercise files that come with the course. The training workbooks contain step by step instructions so you can print them out and practice where-ever you are.

If you are an existing EzyLearn student with LIFETIME access you’ll have access to these new videos and all new content that we create. Stay tuned for more updates soon as we create new videos for the other advanced Excel topics covered in courses 308 and 309. Plus we’ll show you how to create your own macros.

If you like what you read and want to enrol to take advantage of lifetime student access as well as access to all levels of Microsoft Excel for just one price, use our enrolment form. Enrol into the Excel course today and start by 5pm tomorrow (next business day).