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Satisfaction Statistics for online MYOB Training Courses

Our offer and your satisfaction

EzyLearn Support Satisfaction Statistics for MYOB training coursesWe strive for an innovative training experience for our Microsoft Excel and MYOB training courses by providing:

  • Beginners to advanced software training skills for one price so you don’t have to agonise over which course to choose for your current skill level
  • Lifetime access to course resources including updates
  • Variety of learning tools including training videos, workbooks with exercises, exercise files and knowledge reviews

As a result it is important for us to develop training materials that are easy to use and self explanatory so that our students learn quickly and we don’t need to provide too much support. We need to ensure that any problem a student faces is dealt with so that future students are guided more smoothly through their learning experience.

Sometimes it’s the software

Zendesk customer support for our online MYOB training courses

I wrote in a recent blog about the significant changes that MYOB are going through with their software and how it affects not only our students but real, live businesses that use MYOB software in day-to-day operations. We’ve experienced this most recently in our MYOB bank reconciliation course where we exported the accounts list and journal entries from a previous version of MYOB so that students can easily import them into the current version. This worked very well for all the previous versions until MYOB started developed their current versions using the Microsoft .NET platform.

After going through several scenarios about how to improve the flow of our course and scouting MYOB’s support communities we’ve discovered that importing from previous versions to the current version is a little more difficult than it use to be. Students will just need to create the data manually and this isn’t a major problem, but it highlights some of the issues that are faced in the real world anyway.

But what can we do?

To handle our growing number of student members (and we call you members because you have lifetime access to the course materials including the new updates) we implemented a powerful customer support system called Zendesk, a system that is used by over 20000 companies world-wide including Twitter, msnbc.com, Denver Broncos, Lonely Planet, and SAP. We also turned on the satisfaction ratings which scared us at first because we would truly see how well we are doing according to our students. The result? 90% Customer satisfaction – that’s a high distinction I believe.

Why write a blog post about it?

tim tams and coffee at Sydney training centre
Source: http://annychih.com/the-best-job-in-the-world/testing-out-tim-tams/

There are several aspects to learning that most people are used to:

  • Training that is easy to follow and easy to duplicate so you can do it yourself
  • Training material to answer most of your questions
  • The social experience of meeting other people and sharing stories during the coffee break

Sadly, online training can’t provide the thousands of personal experiences our trainers experienced with their students during the coffee breaks, while eating Tim Tams. It’s this human contact element that we can’t replicate online so we closely watch the satisfaction ratings for the answers and support that our team provide to students when they have questions or difficulties.

We can’t replicate the coffee and Tim Tams online, but we can implement leading support tools and find great team members so we maintain a high distinction in support.

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MYOB AccountRight version 2012 is different

Reasons to decide if upgrading MYOB Accountright version 2012We create new training content for our online MYOB training courses each quarter and we’ve just been going through a flurry of recordings and re-writes for our MYOB Setup course because we know that MYOB AccountRight version 12 is different.

MYOB AccountRight version 2012 is part of the cloud strategy

Did you know that MYOB is going through a lot of changes as they position themselves as a cloud based accounting software provider? A recent article in The Australian goes onto explain that MYOB’s cloud-based strategy is designed to get people away from using Microsoft Excel (for which we have training courses with lifetime access) and onto their cloud based systems. It also explains that one benefit to the company is the ongoing monthly revenue stream as opposed to many of their customers who only upgrade their software when they really need to.

MYOB is created on a Microsoft programming platform

The other major reason for the changes in MYOB AccountRight version 2012 is that it, and all their other products, have been re-written from the ground up using a whole new programming language in Dot Net (Microsoft .NET framework). We wrote a controversial blog post about how accounts are recommending some of their customers not to upgrade their MYOB software and some information on their website reveals that MYOB themselves are not recommending the upgrade under certain circumstances, in particular:

[quote] If you use M-Powered services, or other third party add-ons, we recommend waiting until we’ve finished developing these features before upgrading. [/quote]

Benefits of MYOB Training Course lifetime access

Either way, we are upgrading our training materials and keeping our old training material available for those students who want access to both versions. We promote lifetime access for our MYOB training courses and all students on this enrolment plan will have access to the new MYOB AccountRight version 2012 courses for free.

Stay tuned as we keep you up-to-date on our progress. The 45 new videos for our MYOB AccountRight version 2012 course have now been recorded and are uploading to our training video server as we speak. When they are live at the training site we’ll issue another blog post.

You can find out more about the upgrades that MYOB AccountRight version 2012 software is going through by visiting this link at the MYOB website.

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Need to reinvent your career? This weekend?

Your Career

Reinvent your career become a bookkeeper or start a bookkeeping business

Our MYOB Training Courses are available through our partner network of accountants, business development and career services companies across Australia and one of our partners is exhibiting at the Reinvent your career expo this weekend.

I recently wrote about their project to help students find bookkeeping work or start a bookkeeping business and you’ll get a chance to learn more about what they have planned this weekend!

MYOB and your career

Many of our students learn to use MYOB accounting software so that they can

  1. Find work in the accounts department of a company,
  2. Become more valuable to their current employer, or
  3. Start their own bookkeeping business.

When you look at this list you realise that learning = change and change usually provides new opportunities and advancement. Workface are a team of career experts and MYOB Bookkeeper Training at Reinvent your career expoI will be at the stand to demonstrate how the company can help you and your friends become more valuable in your career by becoming a bookkeeper.

Workface have a professional business development consultant who provides training tools and support for those students who want to start a bookkeeping business so make sure you pop into the expo this weekend and come and say hi.

It’s in Sydney so I don’t expect out-of-towners to make a trip to Sydney for it, but if you are Sydney-based and want to participate in our open meetings to build a community of bookkeepers please come and talk to me.

***

Want to start a business from home?

I’ve had the pleasure of working with many interesting and intelligent people and since operating my first physical training centre in Dee Why in 1999 I’ve found it very rewarding to help people learn new skills so that they can find a job. We now do a lot of online training and I’m even more excited when we can help people start, promote and manage their own business – particularly if students are doing it for the first time. If you are interested in exploring ways of starting a business from home and working as an independent contractor see the business opportunities available.

 

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Video: Receipts in a Shoebox?

Receipts in a shoebox

Receipts in a shoebox? Shoeboxed Australian websiteI WAS LOOKING in my top draw and noticed some receipts, bundled by the month, with a bull clip holding them together. Do you know someone who also stores their receipts in a shoebox?

I have, of course, now entered them into our MYOB accounting software. However, it begs the question: How many business people do you know who still store their receipts and other paperwork with way?

The legal requirement to file receipts

Continue reading Video: Receipts in a Shoebox?

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What do Facebook, Paypal and Xero online accounting software have in common?

what do facebook, paypal, and xero online accounting have in common?
Jamie Sutherland

I hope you enjoyed the first of hundreds of new videos that we will be creating and releasing from now and over the Australian summer as part of our bookkeeping academy. Whether you plan to start your own bookkeeping business or find a job in the accounts department, these new skills will help keep your knowledge current and up-to-date.

You may have noticed that we’ve mentioned quite a bit about Xero lately and while we are at it, we thought we’d share with you some information we discovered about the company and more specifically who is buying shares in the company.

Continue reading What do Facebook, Paypal and Xero online accounting software have in common?

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Is being a work-at-home mum like being on holidays?

cloud based voip telephone systemsOne of the great benefits of being a work at home mum is being able to watch your kids grow up while you take some time out to do work. Since we operated computer software training centres in 1999 many of our students have been either working mums or mums returning to the workface after spending many years in babyland and for many it has been a difficult change.

We’ve always noticed that many mums look to enter the workforce in the bookkeeping field because the work is not time critical yet requires a good skill level that ends up paying well. The great news is that bookkeeping is moving further and further into the cloud so you can now literally do the books from your home.

We’re proud to say that we have a team of work at home mums keeping the engines running at EzyLearn Online. Our MYOB training courses are some of the most popular MYOB courses in Australia and we are able to provide them at their current prices because of the work-from-home mums that are part of our team.

Our business utilizes some state-of-the-art software as a service (SaaS) tools available today and we’re committed to helping all work-at-home mums learn the skills they need to ensure that they can have the work-life balance they are looking for. Our Work-at-home mums use VIRION business grade voip telephone services, HighRiseHQ online CRM, our online learning platform and our online student support system that manages queries from students.

Where you live has never been less important than now. As long as you have a good broadband internet connection and the skills to use cloud based applications you can earn a living while bringing up your children.

To those work at home mums reading this blog post we want you to know that we have some exciting announcements between now and the end of this year about the plethora of online software applications that enable you to earn a living from home while looking after your kids. If you haven’t subscribed yet, feel free to do so and receive updates as they are announced.

Stay tuned for announcements of new courses planned in the coming 6 months…

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Grandpa Jack is a nerd

Samsung-Galaxy-S3 with Telstra and not OptusI wrote about strategic management decisions earlier this year to confirm our decision to make our online training courses available to training institutions to use as part of their courses. I chose those words because they were fresh in my mind and part of the Applied Finance course I am studying with Kaplan Professional. It confirmed in my mind that the “market” changes every month. Every month you need to improve what you offer and how you offer it otherwise you may drop behind.

I was reminded about this concept today when I ordered my new Samsung Galaxy S3 from Telstra after being a loyal Optus customer for more than a decade. The prices of Optus and Telstra are now very similar and I was have terrible problems with the quality of the Optus network, it was an easy decision to make. While I was in the shop I had a conversation with Grandpa Jack who was buying exactly the same phone and the Telstra shop man and I joked that Jack’s grand kids would look at him very differently and think he was a nerd.

It occurred to me that Grandpa Jack wasn’t really a nerd, he was just in the market for a new phone and a new plan and wanted the best phone he could buy considering he’ll probably keep it for as long as possible. This concept made me think about our online MYOB training courses and how students who’ve been enrolled since our LIFETIME student access started in January 2011. Do they still see the website as a great tool to learn new things about MYOB since we’ve updated and improved the MYOB Reporting, GST & BAS and the MYOB Payroll course?

If you are an early EzyLearn student and have some comments about the value of your course today please feel free to email our sales team at sales@ezylearn.com.au and share your experiences.

Oh, by the way, as I was leaving the Telstra shop I heard Jack asking the shop assistant, “What is a nerd”?

 

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Get a WordPress mobile site because Google says 75% need it

Google Smartphone mobile usage stats - get a WordPress websiteWe recently wrote about WordPress plugins that are available for websites built using the WordPress CMS (Content Management System) that enables the website to be viewed better on a mobile phone and statistics provided by Google (which you can check out and dive into yourself) show that we are one of the world leaders in mobile phone adoption.

Interestingly just under 25% of Australian smartphone owners used the website browsing capabilities of their phone to perform job searches!

We made the decision to use WordPress for our website several years ago (and build a WordPress Training Course) because it is:

  1. An open source solution
  2. Used by millions of website owners around the world
  3. Supported by plugin and themes developers

With the importance of Google searches to bring inquiries to your business and the adoption of Smartphones every business needs to have a website that:

  1. Looks Professional (using inexpensive WordPress themes)
  2. Can be viewed easily on a smartphone
  3. You can update yourself!

Check out the Google OurMobilePlanet website and get all sorts of interesting stats for yourself.

 

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It’s time to thank YOU

It’s only days before Christmas 2011 and from all of us at EzyLearn HQ we want to thank you for watching our training videos, using our training worbooks and completing our knowledge reviews, reading our blog posts and telling your friends about us. I personally also want to thank the core EzyLearn team for enabling us to grow and provide a great online training solution for thousands of Australian’s and international students.

Thank you Frankie, Yvette, Richard, Jacci, Ross, Amy, Luke, Iroshini, Warren and Allison. Also a big thanks to Simon, Scott, Amy J, Faisal, Jennifer, Nicholas and Mathew. You have made a real difference to EzyLearn this year and to our students and the hard work you’ve done will reward students for years to come.

This year has been one of our best years because we made a commitment to be the best online training company for

  1. MYOB accounting software and bookkeeping
  2. Microsoft Excel & Microsoft Word, and
  3. WordPress website Content management system and blogging platform.

Other training companies spend their time and energy trying to provide hundreds of courses with the aim of trying to get anyone they can. We decided to focus on our core skills and give everything we could. We also tried to make our online training courses affordable and inclusive so you don’t have to worry about your availability or skill level.

Here are some highlights during the year:

Creating a WordPress blog post

online WordPress training course - blogging and website designSocial media has gripped us all this year and if you are a business that didn’t know about websites, blogging, Facebook pages and Twitter you were considered lost. We’ve used WordPress to create our own websites for years and this year we introduced the WordPress Training Course.

You might find it interesting that we were writing blog posts about WordPress back in 2007 and even earlier, but this year we expanded our content significantly and included Google Analytics, Feedburner and other skills in it.

LIFETIME student membership

In January 2011 we introduced lifetime access to our online MYOB Training Course. This gave students access to all courses (Setup, Day-to-Day, Bank Reconciliation, Payroll Introduction) and it also provided them with a safety net and a resource when they are in the workplace. Rather than say thank you and goodbye once our students have completed their online course we welcome students to come back as often as they need.

A significant benefit to this offer is that students get access to all new content that has been created for the course or updated content for the existing material. An excellent example of this is our online Microsoft Excel course. We have training material since 1999 on Excel version 2000, 2003, 2007 and 2010 and as we create new content for Office 365, existing students will have access to the new material for no extra charge.

Welcoming Entrepreneurs as Business Partners

Our Business Partner program has enabled other dedicated professionals to use and promote our training material as part of their own business activities. This has enabled us to focus on the delivery of training materials and management of a learning platform while other business owners earn money by their promotional and sales activities.

We are 100% dedicated to this program going into 2012 so if you are interested please ensure you make contact with us.

Testing your MYOB knowledge and skills

Online training assessments and tests for coursesOnline training is still relatively new for many prospective students so we introduce the concept of knowledge reviews and skills tests to demonstrate how they are a learning tool as well as a testing tool.

We created a significant volume of new tests and quizzes as part of our online training courses this year and as a demonstration of their efficacy we introduced a free public MYOB skills test to see how much you knew about MYOB. It was also a great way for students to discover a new way of learning something online.

Partnering with Bookkeeping Industry groups

A significant number of our online training students complete their training to perform bookkeeping tasks as an employee or as an independent contractor. To demonstrate our commitment to “would-be” MYOB Bookkeepers and provide you with reputable accredited MYOB courses we became an accredited training provider of the Institute of Certified Bookkeepers. EzyLearn is also a member of the Australian Institute of Training and Development, the Australian Web Industry Association and the International Coaching Federation.

We join these associations to support the online training and coaching industries, demonstrate our commitment to professional industry ready courses and keep abreast of all new training techniques and technology.

More than just an online training course

Support is an important aspect of online learning and it is also a source of significant costs for organisations like EzyLearn. In balancing the costs of maintaining our current team members will the benefits of some rudimentary customisation of our courses we introduced EzyLearn Q&A. With a separate Q&A service for Microsoft Excel, WordPress and MYOB.

We’ve subsequently called this service EzyLearn ANSWERS. It’s a way of providing new training materials based on questions from our students. Students ask questions relating to their needs and our software specialists create a short answer to lead students to a solution. We use this service to increase the breadth of topics covered in our courses.

More team members to serve your needs

This year we added 8 new team members to help create new training content, manage our online learning site, answer questions and provide support. Most importantly it has helped us significantly reduce the time it takes between when you complete your course and when you receive your certificate.

You’ll meet more of these team members during 2012 and we hope to bring more people into EzyLearn to support your learning needs.

Faster loading videos and better online learning tools

We listened to the feedback from our students to improve as much as possible and to complement the addition of new team members we significant upgraded our video hosting capacity to ensure faster and easier viewing and navigation of our online training video tutorials.

This technology update enabled students with new devices like iPads and other Apple products to view our training videos and participate in mobile elearning regardless of their chosen devices.

Training for office administration for small businesses

virion small business telephone systems using voipThis year we formed a partnership with virion business grade VoIP to provide online training tools for their installation partners. As part of this project we included some new training materials to help office admin staff not only configure their new VoIP telephone systems, but we also provided spreadsheets for them to use as part of their phone bill analysis reports for customers to demonstrate how much money they could saving using Voice over IP.

We started looking at VoIP solutions for our own business in 2008 when we tried out the features of MyNetFone. In our constant search for better technology and support people we discovered the VoIP solution dedicated to small businesses, virion.

In 2012 we will strengthen this relationship by providing more in-depth training videos and tutorials. Our commitment to online training is focused on providing students with the tools they need to be efficient and productive in small business across Australia as well as provide these small businesses with the tools they need to operate great businesses.

Conclusion

If you think we have made a lot of improvements in 2011, just wait until you see what we have planned for 2012. We will:

  • create more training content for our MYOB course and WordPress /  Webmasters course
  • implement more services to help support your online learning
  • help you find more customers (for small business owners using your website and Google adwords, Analytics and SEO)
  • provide more tools to help you find a job (for job seekers by helping you write better resumes, perform better at interviews and be more confident in your work)

Thanks again for reading and following our progress we want to demonstrate your successes in our 2012 blogs posts.

All the best from the EzyLearn Team.

Sincerely,

Steve Slisar

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MYOB Training Course Update: New training content for MYOB Reporting – Profit and Loss Reports

The EzyLearn Blog is where we officially release information about updates and additions to our existing training courses and today we announce new content for the Reporting Subject in our MYOB Training Course.

We are thrilled to announce the production and implementation of the Reporting module in the online MYOB Training Course. In the production of this course we will be including the learning outcomes for BSBFIA401A Prepare Financial Reports subject that forms part of the FNS40210 Cert IV in Bookkeeping course and certification.

Topics included in this course will include training on how to

  • Prepare an asset register or property, plant and equipment, determining the depreciation calculation for these assets and keeping a depreciation schedule
  • Adjust expense and revenue accounts for prepayments and accruals
  • Adjust ledger accounts for inventory and transfer to final accounts
  • Create journal entries for balance day entries and prepare final general ledger accounts to show gross and net profits for the reporting period
  • Prepare revenue statement, balance sheet and cash-flow statements

MYOB Q&A Support

We’ve modified each MYOB Training Course to clearly indicate where you can ask our resident MYOB expert a question specific to your needs and your circumstances. The MYOB Q&A Support service was announced back in May 2011 and it’s just one way that we try to give you the best MYOB Training experience for a fixed price and LIFETIME training access!

Profit and Loss Report

Does that sound familiar? It WAS also called the P&L Report, but as our country marches in time with new international accounting standards we join the rest of the world in calling it the Income Statement. An Income Statement tracks revenues and expenses during a given period. The difference between the revenues and expenses represents a net loss or gain and Income Statements provide business owners with an understanding of the health of their business.

We’ve included our introductory video here:

 

 

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Are MYOB skills good enough to be a bookkeeper?

MYOB bookkeeper with Cert IV in Bookkeeping

MYOB bookkeeper with Cert IV in BookkeepingAccounting in the past

I remember the days when MYOB was a young company called Data Tech Pty Ltd, they were based in Crows Nest and gave trials of their software on floppy disk and videos on how powerful their software was on VHS. It was also an awkward situation if you wanted to become “certified”. Many people learnt how to use the software and offered their services and it wasn’t until you had a couple customers under your belt that you could become certified by MYOB. This scenario is now very different.

Education businesses around Australia (and New Zealand) now have strict guidelines to follow when they deliver and assess their training (as part of the Cert IV in Training and Assessment) and there’s a whole new official language which includes: Scope of Registration, Units of competency, Learning outcomes, competency mapping, Core subjects, electives, qualifications, subjects etc. The great news is that we are now “mapping” our training material with the outcomes for the Cert IV in Bookkeeping!

This qualification will be mandatory by 2013 if you plan to perform bookkeeping tasks for a business whether you are an employee, contractor or a small business owner.

In fact to give you an idea of how specific and focussed this new qualification is here are the electives (based on your desired goal):

Contract Bookkeeper
• (FNSICCUS401B) Deliver a professional service to customers
• (FNSICCUS402B) Maintain customer relationship

Small Business Owner
• (FNSICORG510B) Manage own professional development
• (FNSPRAC501B) Manage and maintain small/medium business operations

Permanent Paid Bookkeeper
• (FNSICORG510B) Manage own professional development
• (FNSICCUS402B) Maintain customer relationship

Are you a BAS agent?

You might also be interested to know that “If you provide BAS services for a fee or other reward, you are required by law to be registered as a BAS agent” with the ATO.

Our offer to students

We recently announced the Lifetime MYOB course student membership for all students so you can use our learning resources (including updates as they are created) and now we are happy to inform that we are mapping our training material to the desired learning outcomes for the subjects which make up the Cert IV in Bookkeeping. We’ll be working closely with an RTO (Registered Training Organisation) in a VET partnership and we’ll be able to help you get some fundamental MYOB and accounting skills via our online course, PLUS provide you with a pathway to your Certificate IV in Bookkeeping (including assessment and certification).

Visit out MYOB course website or enrol as a student.

Make sure you subscribe to our blog to receive these articles in your email. If this has been forwarded to you, click the title of the blog post and subscribe at our website.

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Navigate your way around MYOBCourse.com.au

I recently started a topic in a finance course I am doing with Kaplan Professional to discover that this tertiary qualification I am studying is done completely online. That means watching powerpoint slides with audio, reading a workbook and having access to an online forum if I have questions. Even the assignment task is submitted online and results received via the online learning portal.

My first thought was how interesting that a well reputed education institution stops having lectures altogether and I was a little disappointed that I wouldn’t have an opportunity to meet my fellow students and share stories and ask questions. After using the learning tools however I have come to the conclusion that the tools themselves are very useful and it re-affirmed our online training goals here at EzyLearn to become the number one source of online training in Australia for employment and productivity for small to medium businesses.

We have received help requests of how to get around our online learning websites so the video in this post is designed to give you a quick demonstration.

The production of the next MYOB course (MYOB Payroll) is underway and you’ll get a change to see these videos for free if you are a subscriber to this blog. This video is a small taste of the many more to come. Please feel free to comment or share this blog post with your friends. To visit the online MYOB course website, click here.

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Advertise on EzyLearn Computer Training websites

Are your customer the kind of people who want to learn about computer software programs like Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and MYOB Accounting software? EzyLearn owns a well planned and designed suite of websites which cater to this market. We call it our website real estate, and it gets some fantastic traffic.

EzyLearn is exploring the possibility of working with advertising partners in the recruitment, job seekers market place. PageRank is a Google metric that’s designed to show you the perceived value of a website, it accumulates a range of visitor statistics into one single ranking number. Google PageRank statistics include: number of first time visitors, returning visitors, time spent on the site, number of pages visited and much more, and if you download the Google Toolbar you can see the Google PageRank for every page you visit.

A number of our computer software training websites and website pages have grown to a Google PageRank of 4 and for selected keywords and phrases they appear in the first page of results. Some good examples are www.myobcourse.com.au and www.freecomputertraining.com.au. The FreeComputerTraining website is our most successful website in terms of traffic with over 55,000 unique visitors in the past 12 months. This website is used by many job network agencies across Australia as a free learning resource for those looking for employment across Australia.

If your business offers a service aimed at the needs of those who are seeking employment and are taking the making an effort to learn and improve themselves, this website may be an ideal place to put your display advertisement.

Any interested parties should send an email to online manager Richard Dabba at info@freecomputertraining.com.au.