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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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Basic Bookkeeping Reports in Xero: Profit and Loss

Learn How to Run a P&L Using Xero

Profit and Loss statement
Profit and loss statements should be run by businesses regularly and are required by law.

A basic, yet vitally important, report for every business owner is a profit and loss (P&L) statement. A profit and loss statement, as the name suggests, shows whether a business is running at a profit or a loss over a given period. We’ve written about why running multi-period P&Ls before in QuickBooks and MYOB is a good idea for businesses with inventory, but single period P&Ls are equally important for all businesses.

If you’re a bookkeeping newbie, a profit and loss statement, which sometimes goes by other names — income statements, earning statements, revenue statements, operating statements, statement of operations, or statement of financial performance — is a basic report you’ll learn to run in our Xero Daily Reconciliations Course. If you’re planning to work as a contract bookkeeper, you should get in the habit of running P&L statements for your clients regularly (if you’re a business owner, ask your bookkeeper to run them).

P&Ls are required by law

Depending on how a business is structured, it may be required by law to complete a P&L. A P&L shows how the revenue of the business is turned into net income by subtracting all expenses from income. They’re also useful for understanding a business’ net income, which helps with the decision making processes. A business will also need a P&L if they’re applying for a small business loan.

The contents of a P&L

profit and loss statements P&LsAlthough the process of running a P&L differ between accounting software packages, they usually all contain the same elements, depending only on the business itself. In the first section, the cost of sales is subtracted from the revenue, which highlights gross profit. The business’ operating expenses are then subtracted from the gross profit, which leaves the operating profit. Now, all of the non-operating revenues and expenses must be factored into account, after which the business’ profit or loss will be displayed.

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Because P&L statements are often used by a business’ owner to make financial decisions, to inform shareholders of the business’ performance, apply for a business loan, or as proof of income in the sale of a business, it’s important that you understand how to create one correctly. Our Xero Daily Reconciliations Training Course covers P&L statements, and much more. Visit our website to learn more or to enrol.

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online bookkeeping courses to earn cpd points

 

Did you know that 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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Performing Weekly Reconciliations in Xero

Why it Pays to do Regular Bank Reconciliations

bank reconciliations weekly
Doing regular weekly bank reconciliations will help avoid confusion or errors later on.

In our Xero Bank Reconciliations and Journal Entries Course, you’ll learn how to carry out each step in the reconciliation process, in particular how to set up bank feeds. Bank feeds are an important function that allows transactions on your linked bank account or credit card to automatically show up in Xero, so you (or your bookkeeper) don’t have to spend time entering the details from scratch.

Both contract bookkeepers working from home or employees working remotely or in the office can log in and perform bank recs using bank feed data. Continue reading Performing Weekly Reconciliations in Xero

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Announcement: Social Media Marketing Course

EzyLearn Social Media & Digital Marketing Training Course logo image only

Social Media Marketing Course for 2017

EzyLearn Social Media & Digital Marketing Training Course logo image onlyDigital marketing is one of those fine arts that sometimes takes many attempts to get right and I’m guilty of that myself. I wrote a couple blogs recently about content marketing because I spend a lot of my time creating and modifying strategies, optimising and planning the content that my team creates for EzyLearn and other websites. However, I think many people are unfamiliar with what the term “content marketing” means — my mistake! I should have used the words that most small businesses associate with online and digital marketing: “SOCIAL MEDIA”!

Social Media Course — We Include EVERYTHING

So, now that I know social media is the keyword, I’m going to explain how every course we offer ties into your Facebook advertising and Facebook Page and why all of these aspects are important to you if you are going to spend more time and money building a strong online brand.

Content Marketing

virion and 123ezy social media course and content marketing catalogue No matter who you are or what you do you will need content and you will use that content to promote you and the services you provide. I have been using all of these tools to help convert EzyLearn into an “online only” training company in 2006 but I was able to explore how to provide these services to real estate agents when I managed the social media strategy for Derek Farmer, a real estate agent in Cammeray at the time. Here are the content options we had to play with:

Photographs and Images

Images are used in Instagram, Facebook, Linkedin and on your blog (if you have one). They are used to make a blog easier to read and in industries like real estate where good photography is important to get a high price and make a successful sale they are used to showcase the product being sold. I recently spoke to an asbestos removal company and photographs of what they do and how they do it are also an important part of their “content”.

We show you how to include images in blogs and even include fundamental image editing skills using GIMP (it’s very powerful and it’s free!)

Video Marketing

property marketing, video marketing, Facebook Page, Facebook Ads, Youtube and video marketingEzyLearn has several hundred videos as part of our online training courses and sometimes we use them to give prospective students examples of our training, explanations about how our special offers work or even videos of me explaining the EzyLearn journey since the late 1990’s! Real estate agents like Derek Farmer use video to help educate property sellers about the various aspects of the property selling process and what to look out for.

We show you how to get your video up to YouTube, or more professional services like Wistia and show you the analytics you can get about your video viewers and how to make a better video next time — it’s all about drop off rates. We also show you how to get a Call-To-Action within the video itself.

Blog Marketing

Blog marketing is my personal favourite because I love writing; you can really play with the keywords that Google loves so much and you can fill a website up with content that shows you are active.

We teach you how to create a website, create web pages AND blog posts, how to optimise them for the keywords you want to be discovered for and how to measure and understand the visitor analytics.

Facebook Pages, Timeline Posts, Advertising and Remarketing

This is the one that EVERYONE is interested in and for good reason; the demographic targeting is fantastic. Facebook is becoming increasingly important for real estate agents to promote themselves — indeed, Social Estate and BuddyBid are just two companies getting in early to earn a couple of hundred dollars a month for each real estate agent they take on board.

Note: This is something that any work at home mum (or dad) can do! You just need to understand how to generate new content or “republish” other interesting content on a Facebook Timeline and how to create a Facebook Ad. We cover all of this in our Social Media Marketing Course.

Facebook Pages

Our written guide and training course videos show you how to set up a Facebook Page for a local business (ideal for tradies, service providers like accountants or bookkeeper and of course real estate agents). By using a Facebook page you can assign the administration of that page to someone who simply schedules posts — that someone can be YOU.

Most people with a Facebook Page then need to make sure their Timeline is filled with content so that they pop up regularly in local news feeds.

Feeding Your Facebook Timeline

Real Estate Agent Facebook Page, timeline posts and ads help property and brand marketingMost people think it’s important to create a Facebook post every day but that’s hard to do if you need to generate original content. Instead most people re-post other content that is relevant to the audience — this is often referred to as curated content (for instance, where you make a comment or affirm your belief in an article).

Real estate agents often simply refer to the plethora of real estate blogs available and here are some examples used by David Howe, an honest and diligent McGrath agent in Northbridge, Sydney, who asked our designer team to create a website for him:

  • http://www.smartpropertyinvestment.com.au/how-to-maximise-profit-without-it-costing-you-a-cent
  • http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/lifestyle/food/sydney-taste/sydney-eat-street-10-things-to-try-in-crows-nest/news-story/
  • http://www.apimagazine.com.au/2016/11/debt-retirement-worries-high/
  • https://www.buzzfeed.com/markdistefano/too-real-estate
  • http://www.homestolove.com.au/how-to-design-the-perfect-laundry-4236
  • http://blog.templeandwebster.com.au/work-the-trend-the-new-natural/
  • http://www.afr.com/real-estate/residential/dont-want-to-move-want-a-reno-architecture-awards-show-how-to-do-it-20161104-gshwue
  • http://davidhowe.com.au/david-howe-real-estate-agent-northbridge/

This method of posting other people’s content is good enough to show that your Facebook Page is active. However, from an internet marketing perspective it tends to send people away from your Page and onto other websites where your competitors might advertise — especially if you report material by ratemyagent, openagent, realestate.com.au or domain!

In our social media marketing course we show you how to make a post like this and schedule them all in advance but also how to get your own unique content and how to link to content where none of your competitors are listed.

Facebook Advertising

Facebook Ad Views for individual property advertisement - Clarence TownFacebook ads are relatively simple to create so there is NO reason to get someone else to do them (particularly if they’re going to charge you the equivalent of 4 hours’ labour!). The key elements of a Facebook Ad are their structure: Campaigns, Adsets, then individual ads and once you get that right and understand how it works, creating a Facebook Ad can be done by someone in your office or who you trust (again, a work at home mum).

We show you the type of posts and ads that Derek Farmer paid to promote in his local area, why he chose to do it, how much he paid and what his viewer and reader statistics were. We’ll also show you how to advertise to your own client base in their Facebook Feeds and how to remarket to people who’ve been to your website or Facebook Page.

WordPress, Hosting, User Management etc

I believe that your own website is the best “landing page” for any marketing money spent because YOU OWN IT. The more traffic you direct to your own website and the more content you put there that is valuable to your customers and future potential customers the more valuable YOU and YOUR WEBSITE will become.

WordPress online training course and social mediaIn our Social Media Marketing Course we include every aspect of how to manage your own website using the very popular WordPress Content Management System. This includes having multiple users be able to publish content. We also teach you how to optimise your blogs and pages for important keywords using tags and categories, how to use meta tags on your pages and even on images so everything gets indexed by Google and how to make your website look fantastic with professional themes (templates).

Lead Capture and Email Marketing

Having a call to action on your website or Facebook Page is critical to truly analyse it’s effectiveness and understand it’s success — what’s working and what needs to change. A very important part of that is to capture the email address of people who visit your site and most websites do that using a giveaway, free reports, white papers etc. Once you have a potential clients email address you effectively have permission from them to send them email messages.

We use a number of different email marketing solutions including Campaign Monitor and Aweber, and these are very similar to MailChimp, GetResponse, Constant Contact and a plethora of other email marketing solutions. We’ll show you how to use these systems to capture website visitor details and send them messages automatically. 

Capturing, Analysing and Understanding visitor traffic

Video visitor Analytics - property marketing video for real estate agentsGoogle Analytics is the most popular website traffic analysing system and you can use it to measure the effectiveness of your website day-by-day, week-by-week and for specific date ranges.

We show you how to implement the code on your website, how to access the visitor traffic information on your PC and even your mobile phone and what elements to look for to understand what your website is doing. 

Conclusion about Social Media Marketing Course

We do all of this using our own website examples as well as Derek Farmers website so you can see what real businesses do to succeed online. Whether you want to do all of this yourself, hire an experienced internet marketer or find a suitably qualified work at home mum (or dad) this course will give you an abundance of knowledge and strategies to manage what you do.

See what’s included in our Social Media Marketing Course and enrol today at a huge launch discount!

[button link=”http://ezylearnonline.com.au/courses/marketing-training-courses/digital-marketing-social-media-courses/” color=”orange”] Social Media Marketing Course Contents[/button]

 

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Reckon One or MYOB?

Just What Do We Reckon?

find-a-good-bookkeeper
Reckon One was the original distributor of QuickBooks.

Not so long ago, we looked at the major differences between MYOB and QuickBooks. We also explored some of the other benefits of Quickbook more generally over MYOB, but Reckon One, which used to distribute QuickBooks in Australia before striking out on their own with their cloud accounting software, is also becoming a major player in the cloud accounting space for small businesses.

We thought we would take a look at how Reckon One stacks up compared with MYOB, which is still the market leader in Australia and the mostly widely used account software application among accountants.   

Reports

The reporting functions in Reckon One are extremely powerful. This is true of MYOB, as well, but with one major difference: Reckon One has the ability to customise and save the reports you’d like to run. This is a big time-saver, as it renders all your reports just one click away, rather than several. If you’re using a bookkeeper, they’ll be able to run your reports for you the first time, and then you’ll be able to go in and generate them as often as you like afterwards.

Payroll

Both products offer a very good payroll system for businesses that need it (Reckon One, at the time of writing, charges an additional $3/month to turn this feature on), while unlimited payroll comes standard with the MYOB Essentials Unlimited Payroll plan. Both products are also SuperStream Compliant, so if you’re looking for a stable, yet flexible, payroll system, either products are a good choice. Of course, depending on your business’s other needs, you may lean more toward the cheaper Reckon One option.

User Experience

MYOB AccountRight, even to this day, looks dated. The MYOB Essentials platform, however, has a much cleaner interface, as does Reckon One. The product you choose will depend on the size and needs of your business, the features you require, and who will, primarily, be using the software. MYOB is famously more difficult to use compared with Xero, QuickBooks or virtually any other accounting software. Indeed, everything you can do in Reckon One takes about three or four more clicks to perform in MYOB, so, again, it’s a matter of personal choice. There are many Apple users who can’t understand why people still use IBM computers, just as there are many IBM users who can’t understand why people use Apple products.

In selecting a cloud accounting package for your business, remember not to choose solely based on price. Make a list of the needs of your business and the functions you’ll require, and then select the accounting package that suits your needs the most. It’s also a good idea to speak with your bookkeeper before making a choice. 

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Right now, for a limited time, we’re offering over $300 off a number of our online courses — we also have new great courses in QuickBooks online daily transactions and, if you’ve ever struggled with filling in a timeline of posts on social media, or you want to start promoting yourself or your business in social media, try our Digital Business and Social Media Marketing Courses.

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You Need To Be a Job Hopper To Do Well In Your Career

When it Comes to Your Career, Hopping Around is OK

job-hopping-to-success
Those who hop may be the most successful, career speaking.

For many years, young people, particularly Generation Y, were cautioned about changing their jobs too often — or being a “job hopper”. It would give the impression they were flaky or disloyal or unable to commit, they were told,

You want to find a job where you can stay there for at least 10 years, where you can grow and progress through the company.

That was the advice handed out just a decade ago, perhaps even more recently than that. But the tide is now rolling the other way. Continue reading You Need To Be a Job Hopper To Do Well In Your Career

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Running Multi-Period Profit and Loss Statements

multi-period-profit-and-loss-statement-reporting

Be Aware of the Ebbs and Flows of Your Business: Multi-Period Profit and Loss Reporting

Nearly every business has its busy periods and its quiet ones. Crucial to the success of a business is knowing when these busy periods and quiet ones occur, so you can capitalise on them.

For a lot of Australian businesses offering professional services, December through January is usually when business winds down for the year. In the hospitality and accommodation industry, however, it’s typically the busiest time of the year, so planning for increased business is essential. Continue reading Running Multi-Period Profit and Loss Statements

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What if a Credit Check Comes Back Negative?

Do You Have to Drop a Client Because of a Bad Credit Check?

customer-with-bad-credit-rating
It’s only business: but sometimes a bad credit rating doesn’t mean you have to end the working relationship.

A Credit Check is one of the most important first steps of good credit and debt management but you can still do business if the check comes back negative.

In a previous post on credit and debt management, I recommended that all businesses — regardless of whether they offer credit to customers on a 30-day account or not — perform a credit check on any new client who will spend more than $1000 on goods or services in one sale, on an ongoing basis.

What should you do if the credit check comes back negative, and shows that the potential customer is guilty of late payments, pending legal action or already carries a significant level of debt? Continue reading What if a Credit Check Comes Back Negative?

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CPD points are available for our MYOB, Xero and Microsoft Excel courses

Earn CPD points to maintain your certification

Continuing professional development and education for registered and certified bookkeepers and BAS agentsIT’S THAT TIME OF THE YEAR again and many students are asking us if they can use our courses towards their annual CPD point requirements — the answer is yes and you can see how many points at the links below.

When stricter requirements were introduced by the Tax Practitioners Board (TPB) for anyone responsible for signing off the financials that are lodged at BAS time, the bookkeeping industry started to go through the type of regulation that has been in place for financial advisers and accountants for many years already — to continuously maintain their education regarding their industry.

How CPD points are calculated

I originally thought there was a universal method of calculating CPD points, but very soon after exploring how our online courses can help students with their CPD, I realised that the world of continuing professional education is varied. The best explanation I could find was actually from a 2008 document relating to the changing requirements for licenced real estate agents. You can get a copy of it from our “Selling Your Property Guide” Page.

That real estate industry document takes you through the method of calculating how to earn 1 CPD point, 2 CPD points or 3 CPD points and it’s centred around the type of training institution you use for your education. Government events or university courses earn the highest points while ordinary courses earn the lower points — there’s also a significant different in the price of these events 🙂

1 hour equals 1 CPD point

The most common method of calculating the amount of CPD points you’ll earn for an education activity is based on the time you spend learning. A 1 hour webinar will earn 1 CPD point while a one day course may earn you 8 CPD points, so we provide estimates of the time to complete our online courses based on how long they use to take in a classroom environment and you can learn about them at our CPD page.

The other interesting thing I learnt was that as long as you can justify that the learning you participated in applies to your industry, you’ll be able to put it on your CPD record form and present it to your industry association to confirm and apply to your CPD register.

 

Continuing professional development CPD record form for accountants and bookkeepers from Chartered Accountants Australia

Tax Practitioners Board makes the rules for bookkeepers

The TPB as they are fondly know as sets the rules and manage their compliance through Recognised Professional Associations. If you go to their association website you’ll find that there are a number of associations you can join to make certain you are compliant with the TPB requirements.

These are some other interesting links you should probably know about if you’ve reached this far in the blog and are still interested!

  1. If you are a professional bookkeeper you are required to know about the Tax Agent Services Act 2009 including the Code of Professional Conduct.
  2. A maximum of 25% of your CPD points can be earned from professional reading and here are their other guidelines on what is acceptable for CPD — they refer to it as CPE (for Education)
  3. This is how the TPB expect you to keep your records for CPE attendance.
  4. TPB’s main landing page for Continuing Professional Education.

What about Accountants?

Chartered Accountants also have their CPD requirements and you’ll want to check their CPE pages out:

Chartered Accountants Australia CPD Requirements

Association of Taxation and Management Accountants

CPA Australia CPD requirements

IPA Institute of Public Accountants CPE requirements

ICB in the UK!

 

CPD Continuing Professional Development and Education applied to bookkeepers and real estate agentsReal estate agents must complete CPD training courses to be compliant

I recently wrote about the similarities between bookkeepers and real estate agents and in doing some research our team came up with the CPD requirements for real estate agents and you can see that, along with a Certificate IV level qualification both professions need to maintain their continual education and keep evidence of it!

CPD Requirements for Real Estate Agents in NSW

Most real estate agents in Australia are sales agents and they must comply with the Property, Stock and Business Agents Act. The regulations for property ownership are different in each state and because sales agents receive deposits in their trust accounts and have a fiduciary responsibility to the people they act as an agent for, they must maintain professional standards just like accountants. Because real estate agents can misappropriate their clients deposits it is important that they maintain a good professional standing and be a person of good character.

Ongoing lifelong education is an important part of that process because it ensures that agents are familiar with the rules and regulations as they change over time but training is important for lots of reasons and one of them is to help real estate agents be better at what they do – even with their digital marketing.

 

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EzyLearn Online Course CPD points for bookkeepers and marketing professionalsWe can help with your Accountant, Bookkeeper & Real Estate Agent CPD Points

EzyLearn has helped Accountants & Bookkeepers learn about accounting software and spreadsheets and even marketing for their own businesses. We’ve also helped Real Estate Agents stay ahead of their competitors with Google, Facebook and other Digital and Social Media Marketing Courses.

Check out the total hours to complete our CPD courses and include that in your records.


 

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Announcement: Learn about every person who touches your property before it sells

I’ve created some education guides for real estate agents

Selling Your Property Information Guide 2 - Learn about every person who touches your property before it sellsIf you’ve read my recent blogs about the free WordPress training video for Youtube and real estate agents or Facebook Advertising for real estate agents you’d get the feeling I’ve been pretty submersed in the real estate industry! Well, you’re right and the good news is that if you’re a bookkeeper looking to start your own bookkeeping business this will help when I start sharing what I’ve learnt about the sales techniques used by real estate agents to sell property – it could help you sell your bookkeeping services.

For now I just want to share with you the news about our latest education guide on selling your property – it’s yours for free and has all the steps in the real estate sales process from the sales contract to settlement.

About the Selling Your Property Education Guide

Now, just to be clear we’ve done a LOT of research to come up with this guide because we make it available to the real estate agents that use our Digital Marketing services over at virion. Real estate agents can use this guide as a giveaway as part of their “Call-to-action and Lead Capture“. In creating this Education Guide we interviewed:

  • real estate agents,
  • property valuers
  • conveyancers,
  • property owners,
  • property stylists,
  • photographers,
  • video producers
  • auctioneers,
  • building and pest inspectors
  • tradies
  • online marketing experts, and more

Winter is the perfect time to plan your property sale

Spring is the season that is most often touted as the best time to sell your property. Property buyers start coming out of their homes after the chilly winter to go and inspect properties at open houses and most people want a sale to be made before Christmas. If you’re one of these people looking to sell then this guide will explain why you need to start preparing now. Here’s what we’ve included in this guide, our table of contents:

Selling Your Property Information Guide 2 - Learn about every person who touches your property before it sells - Table of Contents

If you are a real estate agent you can use this

Content marketing has been my marketing method of choice since 2008 after we spent a lot of money on Google Adwords and other advertising methods to try to attract students to our online training courses. I like content marketing because people (like you) get to know a bit more about us, you get to see the quality of our work and over time (after over 500 blog posts!) you get to see my commitment to EzyLearn and EzyLearn students. This is the type of commitment I believe real estate agents will need to make to stand out from the crowd and become more relevant in a digital age.

I’ve been fortunate to work with Derek Farmer (real estate agent in Sydney’s Lower North Shore) who understands the need for agents to change the way they come across. He spent tens of thousands of dollars to create a series of educational videos about each of the steps in the property selling process because he wants his vendors to understand each of the steps. He also realised that he was spending a lot of time explaining what goes on during the selling process and created the videos to share his experiences in these situations and inform vendors about how they can deal with their emotion and what decisions they can make when these situations arise.

If you’re a real estate agent and you want to re-brand our “Selling Your Property” Education guide please make contact with us via our Digital Agency (virion). Happy preparations!

Facebook Course  - 1 Creating a Facebook Page COVER PageComing Up… The Facebook Page Checklist

Facebook is one of the tools that real estate agents are jumping onto as quickly as they can and there’s a good reason for it demographic targeting – they can promote their brand to every person who lives within 2km of their office or “sales patch”. Bookkeepers or any other businesses can also use this targeting for their marketing and we’re putting the finishing touches on our Facebook Page Checklist AND our first Facebook for Business Course – Setting Up Your Facebook Page.

We’ll be giving away the Checklist for free so make sure you subscribe to receive it via email.

 

 

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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

Cloud CRMs that integrate with MYOB AccountRight - online training coursesIn 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

best-real-estate-agent-crmsOne 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

zoho-crm and cloud based integrationAlthough 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

CreataCRM integrates with MYOB Cloud and is used by top performing McGrath real estate agentsI 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.


Xero online training course

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 (ExcelPowerPointWord) or social media and WordPress web design). 


 

 

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Xero appears as the king of the cloud, but MYOB does it too

ServiceM8 on the go Job Management Xero Integration - Master Xero with Xero Complete (Beginners to Advanced) training courses - EzyLearn

MYOB Cloud App Integration

servicem8 provides cloud based booking, scheduling, time sheets invoicing for all major accounting programs and they're Aussie

Our Xero courses are proving very popular with bookkeepers and small business owners so ex-MYOB owner Craig Winkler (who now owns a significant shareholding in Xero) must know a thing or two about marketing but it’s important for MYOB users to know that they can use cloud-based add on services just like those available from Xero.

I was speaking with a research analyst recently and he confirmed my thoughts about the next frontier for the “fight in the cloud” that will relate to add-ons and cloud based features that build on the basic accounting software.

Continue reading Xero appears as the king of the cloud, but MYOB does it too
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How hackers can destroy your Google content marketing efforts tonight

Content Marketing points to your website

Content marketing for real estate agentsHaving your own website enables you to build a credible online profile (that lasts a long time) and the power to clearly understand visitor traffic analytics. This is important because your goal with a content marketing strategy is to provide useful information that your website visitors are looking for and just like real property there are risks that strangers want to get inside and cause damage.

Just like real property these risks are mitigated by good site management services and you can learn about some of the hacker risks below.

Anyone can attempt to hack your site

Hackers are found all over the world from developed countries to countries where their people earn less than a dollar per hour so in some circumstances the time it takes to hack a site is irrelevant and the rewards are significant. Those rewards can be for:

  • financial gain,
  • the challenge of it,
  • recognition, or even
  • out of boredom

This means that every business, regardless of size or industry, is susceptible to a hacker attack.

Hacker attack types

Remember that hackers can sometimes spend a lot of time planning an attack, but all you see are the end results over night so it is important to be vigilant at all times. Hackers can affect your business is different ways and there has been a lot of publicity about these attacks this year. These are some of the goals for hackers:

  • Stealing your customers’ data
  • Stealing your private business data (like internal communications)
  • Serving malicious software
  • Deleting or disabling your site
  • Gaining control of your website or computer
  • Directing traffic away from your website

How your website is vulnerable

Most websites of small businesses are managed using a content management system like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal etc and these systems have the capabilities of creating user accounts (including the administrator) and enabling users to create content like comments on blog posts. They also include the capability of using themes, plugins and other programs that connect to the main content marketing system and give it more functionality. It’s when these aspects of a small business website are not kept up to date, managed for hacker activity and originally configured to minimalise the chance of attack, that you can get unstuck.

Why to choose 123ezy for content marketing for real estate agent websites

123ezy-Content-Marketing-real-estate-agent-websitesWe’re combining with content marketing writers and our team of experts to make content marketing available to individual real estate agents to help them build a profile and credibility online. I’ve been working with online services even before EzyLearn started teaching people about “how to send and receive an email” and “how to navigate around a website and use a search engine” at our Dee Why training centre since 1999 and I’m looking forward to helping other sales and marketing focussed people do the same.

We operate an online training business that relies on our websites being up and running ALL of the time – if there are issues we need to be able to redirect website visitors to an alternative site for continuity and we are constantly monitoring our website visitors, vulnerabilities and remedies.

Even with the latest themes and plugins and fancy graphics and animations, just having a website is not enough these days. Real estate agents (and most other professionals) need a system that collects prospect information AND sends automated marketing messages to them, while allowing them to opt out at any time and that is just the start of the content marketing we’re offering to real estate agents. Want to see our ARMS working? Register Here.

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Will The Ideas Boom be NBN-Paced?

We need fast NBN to deliver our innovation!

Thinkink about starting your own business and want to learn from small business mentors and other entreprenuersFollowing his $1 billion innovation announcement in December, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull received quite a grilling on the ABC program 7.30, hosted by Leigh Sales, who brought up one of the most widely criticised initiatives of the Abbott-Turnbull Coalition government: the NBN.

Although the government’s innovation statement was generally met with praise, especially for its $200 million commitment to funding the CSIRO (which, under the previous Abbott-led government, had its funding cut by $111 million), as well as a number of other measures that will make it easier for scientific research to be commercialised and encourage more children to learn coding and other computer sciences at school, there was criticism that no mention was made of the NBN. Continue reading Will The Ideas Boom be NBN-Paced?

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Is Xero really the easiest accounting software to use?

Xero was a market leader, but what do accountants think of it now?

xero cloud accounting software works on tablets phones and desktop computersWhen Xero was launched a few years ago, one of its selling points was that, compared with other accounting software – in particular, MYOB – Xero was incredibly easy to use, and it was also cloud-based, which meant you could access your accounts from any computer, any device, anywhere, anytime. This helped Xero to get a major foothold in the marketplace here in Australia, where MYOB had always reigned supreme.

But it wasn’t long before we started getting requests from bookkeepers and accountants for a Xero training course, in addition to our already existing MYOB training courses. It turned out that, as more businesses (tradies, for example) started using Xero because of its cloud functionality, their bookkeepers and accountants were finding that they needed training in some of Xero’s features and functions, despite Xero being billed as the easy alternative to MYOB.

Perhaps Xero isn’t that intuitive to use without a training course?

Since introducing our Xero training course, we’ve also noticed a significant upswing in enrolments, especially from bookkeepers, with many noting that the bank reconciliations and adjustments features in Xero are difficult to navigate. This got us wondering as to whether Xero really is that easy to use compared with MYOB, or whether it there might be an easier alternative out there, especially for small businesses managing all of their own accounts.

QuickBooks wants to be the small biz accounting software of choice

Since QuickBooks re-emerged in Australia, with full backing from their US-based parent company, Intuit, they’ve been cornering the small business market, with their inexpensive pricing plans and now by announcing a partnership deal with PayPal (paypal want you to be paid quicker) that enables a two-way flow of data between both QuickBooks and PayPal.

The QuickBooks-PayPal deal follows a similar union between Saasu and Westpac, which promises Saasu and Westpac customers with direct bank feeds to provide business owners with real-time insights into their cashflow. As one of the Big Four banks – and, quite often, the preferred bank for most Australian businesses – the union is hoped to give Saasu a leg up into the increasingly competitive cloud-accounting market, which saw the shuttering of the Australian-owned Reach Accounting earlier this year.

QuickBooks is well-placed to topple Xero

At more than half the price of Xero’s ‘standard’ plan (the starter plan at $25 per month is the most limited ‘starter’ plan I’ve seen), QuickBooks’s starter plan is already appealing to the money conscious small business owner; the PayPal deal only strengthens that.

Ever since PayPal spun off from eBay earlier this year, it’s been announcing new services that specifically target small business owners primarily doing business online – first by introducing inexpensive invoicing, card readers, and now by integrating with QuickBooks. As PayPal is the only online payment service operating in Australia, the two companies are now exceptionally placed to take the Australian small business market.

Perhaps losing the small business market isn’t a primary concern for Xero, which seems to be aligning itself to take the MYOB medium-sized business market, anyway. Regardless, QuickBooks is definitely a force to be reckoned with (forgive the pun) in the Australian cloud accounting space.

Join the wait list for our Quickbooks Online training course

We’re in the process of developing a QuickBooks training course, so if you’d like to register your interest to receive alerts and announcements about its progression, you can do so at our website. Alternatively, if you’re looking for training courses in either Xero or MYOB, you can enrol in either course online today and do your course over the Christmas and holiday season when you might have some time to do one while you reflect on your goals for 2016.

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QuickBooks and PayPal Want To Help You Get Paid QUICKER!

Quickbooks is stealthily forming partnerships to fight MYOB and Xero

Quickbooks Online is back and they want to beat MYOB and Xero

Small business owners know better than anyone the difference an an invoice paid on time (or early) can make to their cashflow.

Yet, getting paid on time, never mind early, remains as elusive as a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.

A union between PayPal and QuickBooks Online hopes to change that. Manage your Credit Risk! Continue reading QuickBooks and PayPal Want To Help You Get Paid QUICKER!