Posted on August 22, 2016September 27, 2018 by Steve Slisar

Announcement: New Bundle Microsoft Office Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook Courses

Critical Office Skills and Job Seeker Confidence with Microsoft Office Essentials

A HUGE PERCENTAGE of EzyLearn students complete an online course with us because they are looking for a new job. However, many people lack confidence because they are not competent using Microsoft Office software programs.

At EzyLearn, we have always included Beginners to Advanced-level training content for our software courses; we don’t want students wasting their time worrying about whether they should do Beginners, Intermediate or Advanced. That said, we’ve consistently had requests for a combination course.

Introducing our Microsoft Office Beginners Essentials software courses — One low price and free student inclusions.

Dropbox included

One of the most powerful internet based applications that we use everyday is Dropbox. It’s powerful because it enables you to automatically backup any files you save into your Dropbox folder AND it enables you to access your files from any computer. When you delve deeper into Dropbox and start using it on your Smartphone you’ll also discover that every photo you take on your phone (and screen shot) can be automatically saved into your “Camera Uploads” folder within Dropbox so no matter how much phone storage space you have you’ll always have a copy of images in Dropbox.

The Dropbox Course is a Free Student Inclusion and compliments the Microsoft Office Beginners Essentials courses beautifully.

Microsoft Outlook Courses included

I personally use Google Apps for emailing, contacts, calendar etc because many years ago when I made the switch it was free and Google’s email program (gmail) had the best SPAM filtering on the market so I was guaranteed to only receive the emails I wanted and not all the rubbish — before then I used Microsoft Outlook for many years. Our Microsoft Outlook courses will teach you how to:

Manage your emails
Manage your calendar and meeting appointments
Manage contacts and use Outlook as a CRM
Manage tasks and checklists

Our Microsoft Outlook training course is not available separately but is included as part of our Microsoft Office Beginners Essentials training courses. With a confident knowledge of all of these Microsoft Office Productivity programs you’ll perform better in any job interview and who knows maybe even be able to help other people in the organisation!

Would you like to be an EzyLearn Trainer?

We’ve beefed up our EzyLearn Partner program — if you want to earn a couple hundred dollars a week OR make a living out of using and teaching people how to use computer software, Internet services, accounting software and online marketing, then take a look at our EzyLearn Partner page.

Posted on August 9, 2016December 6, 2016 by Steve Slisar — 1 Comment

Release: Concreting Business Case Study for Xero Training Course

Case Study: Tradespeople Using Xero Cloud Accounting

Tradies across Australia are getting onto the cloud for their accounting and there’s a good reason for it — many busy people can use the system from remote locations to get their work done.

This means the estimator can use it to generate a quote at a site, the office administrator can convert quotes to orders and invoices and the remote contractor can sign in and do accounts receivable calls from their home office. This is good news! All major accounting programs now offer cloud access — MYOB, Xero and Intuit Quickbooks.

I wrote in the past about Rohan from Painters, Men in White; Ken the home theatre installer and Jason the kitchen appliance repairer. Today I’m happy to announce that we’ve released a case study in the Xero Daily Transactions course that relates to the building and construction industry — in particular a concreting business that quotes for the pouring of a 3 level apartment building. Sue, a contract bookkeeper from Yarra Junction helped me write this Case Study based on her experience in the building sector and in particular with concrete companies.

Bookkeepers Upskilling with EzyLearn

Sue is typical of the students who enrol with us to broaden their skills in cloud accounting — existing bookkeepers who want to upskill. She has a lot of experience in the day-to-day management and accounts for tradespeople and found that she could perform the bookkeeping from her own home at any time.

We’re Constantly Updating Online Course Content

While I’m blowing my trumpet I may as well add that this is an example of what we promote with our online courses — that during your student access period you’ll have access to ALL the courses you’ve enrolled into including updates and new content. This is particularly useful for MYOB and Excel Course students who enrol using the LIFETIME course access option.

Xero Course Student Testimonials

I haven’t posted any new pages with student testimonials to the website for a while (but they come in with every course) but today it must be trumpet-practising time for me because here I blow again! When Sue completed the course, she commented:

“I would recommend this learning site to others and I am thinking about studying Excel next with this learning centre“. She also commented: “Convenient in that I can do it from home at my own leisure. The price was very reasonable.“

While Sue was working with us we put her through our Microsoft Word and Excel courses at no cost and the main thing that really stands out to me is how much everyone benefits by doing a Microsoft Word course!

Use Microsoft Word to Create Xero Courses

Helen from Bright learnt how to use WordPress and got leads for website design work using our WordPress course — Helen from Bright is a registered BAS agent who did our WordPress course and got paid creating a website with out help!

Many students enquire about the Microsoft Excel courses because spreadsheets are complicated for people who don’t know how to use them. However, I never cease to be amazed at how many people confidently state, “I know how to use Word, that’s easy”.

Microsoft Word is used in so many aspects of a business yet too many people think that just because they can type they are good at Word. Things like:

are covered in our 203 to 205 courses (so they are considered beginners to intermediate Word skills) yet I am surprised at the number of people I meet who don’t truly understand how these work!

When we work with a new contractor, even as part of our National Bookkeeping Network, we ask new members to write up an education guide if a bookkeeping customer is looking for a certain task to be completed. We end up putting the bookkeeper through our Word course and they discover a whole new world of computer skills that enable them to do more office admin work for their employers or customers — particularly when it comes to long form documents like instruction guides, tenders and even eBooks which are becoming increasing used in online digital marketing.

Bookkeepers Can Be Great Web Designers!

As I’m sharing so many EzyLearn student stories, I’ll provide another example of a recent student, Helen from Bright in Victoria (check out where Bright is located in Google maps and you’ll see just how far away she is from the nearest capital city — again, the beauty of working from home using the internet!)

Helen is a Registered BAS Agent and has been for a long time. She performs all the bookkeeping tasks that many of our students aim to offer by being a BAS agent, but she is also interested in being a little more visually creative — at least part of the time — so she completed our WordPress Course and as a result we’ve introduced her to some clients. Since then she’s actually been paid for creating and editing websites! One website she created and continues to edit as required is for ANOTHER student, Sonia who completed our MYOB course years ago to help her with her husband’s business!

Sonia now spends a lot of her time teaching mums (AND dad’s) about baby massage and how they can use infant massage to build a bond with their new baby and help them relax when they are uncomfortable. With a nursing degree and a huge amount of experience with children, Sonia is able to help parents and babies alike create a special bond through touch, and ease new parents into the sometimes stressful experience of welcoming a new baby into their family.

PROMOTED: Corporate Training Licence

If you like the sound of all these courses you may like to take a look at our special bundled offers or even a corporate training licence for your staff or team members.

Referral Marketing is Something We Like

I hope I’ve managed to share with you how we genuinely like to support our students and clients in their journey. We welcome your feedback and love to hear directly how you’re progressing along the way, how we can improve what we do, and any other input you may have.

If you’re looking for a new job, we can advise you on our comprehensive courses with lots of content and examples and a fantastic price. If you’re looking to start a new business we can help you with our Business Startup Course. If you’re a small business in need of a good bookkeeper, writer or website designer — we can connect you.

Stay tuned for some new training content releases about Selling Your Property, Facebook Marketing and Intuit Quickbooks.

Posted on July 25, 2016April 19, 2018 by Steve Slisar — 30 Comments

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

Earn CPD points to maintain your certification

IT’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!

If you are a professional bookkeeper you are required to know about the Tax Agent Services Act 2009 including the Code of Professional Conduct.
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)
This is how the TPB expect you to keep your records for CPE attendance.
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!

Real 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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We 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why Intuit Quickbooks can take the Aussie accounting crown

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

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

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

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

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

Pre register now for the free training workbook

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

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

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

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

CRM = Customer Relationship Management

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

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

Accounting Software and CRMs

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

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

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

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

Real Estate Agent CRM’s

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

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

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

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

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

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

My Preference for CRMs is Simple

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

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

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

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

The Dark Horse in Real Estate CRM’s is CreataCRM

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Companies with over 20 employees should ALREADY be compliant

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

Posted on June 21, 2016June 17, 2016 by Steve Slisar — 1 Comment

Announcement: Free Courses for EzyLearn Students

Free Excel, Word, WordPress and PowerPoint Courses

We’ve secretly been offering these courses for free for at least 6 months so students (if you’re already one) will have known about it, but I wanted to tell everyone that this is available. What does it mean? It means if you enrol into an MYOB or Xero course for example that once you log into our training site using your student account login details you’ll automatically be able to click on these courses and enrol yourself into the beginners course without paying any money or entering any course password!

We’ve always made samples of our training workbooks or videos available to students who want to learn more about EzyLearn and how we work so we want to do MORE for students who have made a commitment to pay for a course with EzyLearn.

How does it work

The first thing is to choose the course you want to do (or the combination of courses – to get a special offer discount!) and then enrol. Once you are a student in our system you’ll then be able to explore each of the other courses. When you get to the Free Courses (we use the term Free Student Inclusions) you’ll be able to enrol yourself and jump right into the course.

The great thing is we literally give you EVERYTHING in that course: videos, workbooks, exercise files and knowledge review tests, and not just a couple of training resources, so if you’re a beginner with any of those courses you’ll have the fundamental skills under your belt!

Share the love

My team and I have been doing a LOT of work lately on social media to help real estate agents build strong online profiles (check out the free video about inserting Youtube videos into a WordPress website!) so we understand the benefits of a Facebook page and to build a community so please feel free to “Like” us and share our details with your friends, family and contacts. Heck, that’s even easier to do now that you can give them some free stuff!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Creating videos, serving videos and displaying videos

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

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

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

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

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

Youtube videos into WordPress Blog pages

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

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

Bank Recs is BAS preparation but lodgement is legal

Due dates for BAS lodgement can be deferred by BAS agents

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

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

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

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

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

Non-registered Bookkeepers and BAS Agents

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

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

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

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

Bank reconciliation done right is where all the work is done

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

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

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

Bank Statements and Internet Banking – Bad news NAB

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

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

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

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

Do your end of year reports now

facebook marketing and advertising course online

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

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

Posted on May 24, 2016May 24, 2016 by Steve Slisar — 1 Comment

What’s your career preference? Bookkeepers vs. Real Estate Agents

Choice of sales vs administration work

Components of choosing a career path include education, experience and skills - MYOB and Excel are important skills for office work They say that, in life, nothing is certain but death and taxes. If you live in Australia, however, it’s fair to say that nothing is certain but death, taxes and real estate, since selling property seems to be the national pastime (Sky News does broadcast live auctions every Saturday now, thanks to a new partnership with REA Group). Since real estate agents and bookkeepers share a thing or two in common (they both handle the two most important aspects of their clients’ livelihoods), we thought we’d look into compliance for both professions.

Until 2010, when the Tax Agent Services Act was established in 2009, any person with a reasonably good understanding of an accounting software package, like MYOB, could provide bookkeeping and tax services to clients. With the introduction of the Tax Services Act, however, a bookkeeper wishing to provide tax services to their clients was required to register with the Tax Practitioners board (TPB), which has its own criteria that applicants must satisfy in order to register.

Although a bookkeeper who isn’t registered with the TPB can still provide general data entry services to their clients, by law, only a registered BAS or tax agent can lodge activity statements or tax returns on behalf of their clients. We’ve written about how a bookkeeper can become registered with the TPB before on this blog, so we’re not going to cover that here. Instead, we’re going to look at the compliance requirements for real estate agents and bookkeepers, which for the sake of clarity, we’re going to refer to as BAS and tax agents moving forward.

BAS AND TAX AGENTS
COMPLIANCE REQUIREMENTS	SKILLS
Completion of Certificate IV in Financial Services (Bookkeeping or Accounting) or higher – 12 month course	Proficiency in major accounting software packages – MYOB, Xero, Quickbooks, etc
Register as a BAS and/or tax agent with the Tax Practitioners Board	Excellent time management skills
Become a member of a professional organisation, like the Institute of Certified Bookkeepers (optional)	Multi-tasking skills – ability manage multiple clients at once
Satisfy continuing professional education (CPE) requirements, per the TPB.	Have excellent customer service skills
	Specialist skills in a particular industry – i.e., building and construction (optional)

Now, let’s turn our attention to real estate agents.

Before we continue, it’s necessary to mention that there are two different kinds of real estate agents, just as there are bookkeepers. When an agent begins their career, they usually complete a short course (approximately three days) that allows them to work as as an agent’s representative. An agent’s representative works under the guidance of a fully licensed real estate agent, and is allowed to assist on a variety of real estate transactions, but is not, by law, legally allowed to carry out real estate transactions for a client unsupervised.

A licensed real estate agent, on the other hand, has fulfilled a more extensive set of educational requirements, which is necessary if they are to carry out a real estate transaction unsupervised or operate their own agency. In Australia, there is no national piece of legislation governing real estate, as it is, instead, overseen by each state or territory government, which are responsible for licensing real estate agents via the relevant department of fair trading, consumer affairs or protection. Licensing requirements vary state-to-state, albeit only minimally, so for the sake of this blog post, we’re going to refer to the licensing requirements as laid out by the NSW Department of Fair Trading.

LICENSED REAL ESTATE AGENTS
COMPLIANCE	SKILLS
Completion of Certificate IV in Property Services (real estate) -18 month course	Proficiency in major software applications – MS Word, Outlook, etc
Obtain real estate license from Dept. Fair Trading	Excellent time management skills
Obtain auctioneer’s license from Dept. Fair Trading	Multi-tasking skills – ability to manage multiple clients at once
Become member of professional association, like Real Estate Institute of NSW (optional)	Skilled negotiator and sales person
Satisfy continuing professional education (CPE) requirements, per Dept. Fair Trading	Excellent customer service skills
	Specialist knowledge – i.e., local area, commercial/residential/regional real estate, etc
	Excellent networking skills
	Understanding of marketing and advertising

As the two tables show, BAS and tax agents are just as educated – and must remain to be so, if they hope to stay registered – as real estate agents. This may come as a surprise to many people, given the long held assumption has always been that real estate agents are uneducated, but that’s clearly not the case – nor has it ever been so, unlike BAS and tax agents who only recently had to meet a minimum educational requirement.

Bookkeepers, BAS and tax agents need to do what real estate agents do

Indeed, although the compliance requirements of both professions are similar, there’s quite a disparity in the skill sets of BAS and tax agents when compared with real estate agents. The latter are skilled negotiators with excellent sales skills, who also have a thorough understanding of marketing and advertising, which, along with networking, they use to get new listings. Few BAS and tax agents, however, have much knowledge of marketing and advertising, and most of them confess that they aren’t very good at sales (and really don’t want to do that type of work).

This is okay if they work for a well-known specialist tax franchise, like HR Block, which already has a name for itself and has a marketing department in its head office to oversee the group marketing and advertising needs. But an independent BAS and tax agent working from home, which most of EzyLearn’s students and readers do, don’t have those resources at their disposal. They need to find their own clients and do their own marketing, just like real estate agents do.

OR, someone else can do the marketing for you

If you’re a registered BAS or tax agent (or both!), and you’d like to learn more about sales and marketing so you can grow your client list and your business, become a National Bookkeeping licensee. As a National Bookkeeping licensee, you’re provided with all the resources you need to operate your own bookkeeping business, particularly how to market your business to get new clients. Visit the National Bookkeeping website or make contact to discuss for more information.

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

Facebook Advertising and Impressions for Real Estate Agents

Facebook advertising and impressions of you

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

Target home owners in your suburb

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

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

Facebook may not work immediately

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

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

ReMarketing keeps your ad in front of prospects

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

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

Facebook is best for your past clients and potential advocates

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

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

Posted on January 19, 2016November 11, 2022 by Steve Slisar

Learn MYOB and Microsoft Excel, get help finding work with Career Academy

Learn MYOB and Microsoft Excel and get Microsoft Word Course for free

One more rest for Australia Day before the year REALLY gets under way and it’s a great time to set your priorities straight for 2016.

Our two most popular online training courses are our MYOB Course and our Microsoft Excel course. They’re complicated programs and most businesses need them for their financial management, reporting and forecasting so they’re great skills to learn if you are looking for a new job.

MYOB AccountRight Sign In Screen for MYOB Training Course

If you’ve followed this blog you’d also be aware that despite significant growth in the number of enrolments for our Xero Cloud Accounting courses the dominant player in the Australian market is still MYOB and MYOB accounting software also has cloud-based capabilities that make it more and more powerful.

Posted on January 13, 2016November 23, 2022 by Steve Slisar

Tracey’s Will Hallam is going to Mercury and she’s starting a business to raise funds

Interview with successful business owners

Between October 2015 and January 2016 I’ve been doing something a little different and something that I haven’t really done in the past. You could say it’s part of the development of new ideas and concepts for EzyLearn and I don’t know how it will work out but am very interested in your opinion and feedback.

Business StartUp Course – EzyStartUp

Over the summer break we renamed our Small Business Course to the EzyStartUp Course and we’ve more clearly targeted that it is for people who are moving from being an employee to working as an independent contractor (with a bigger more comprehensive and detailed Business Plan Package coming later in the year for bigger businesses) and as part of these changes I’ve been interviewing successful business owners about all aspects of their business.

Setup, Legal, Vision, Ideas, Structure, Forecasts

I’ve been lucky to have met a lot of business owners of the last 20 years because many of them have been willing to share intimate details of their businesses in my interviews and the information covers all aspects of the business process from setup and planning to marketing and sales to exit strategies and succession planning. One of the people I interviewed is Tracey Dickson, who bought a promotional products business, built it up and made it valuable using technology and sold it when she was ready to exit. I’ve interviewed Tracey for a number of subjects for The Australian Small Business Centre Pty Ltd and in particular I’ve delved into what she’s gone through in writing a new children’s book based on a character she created called Will Hallam. You can watch the introductory video interview below.

Ideas turn into products that are packaged for markets who buy and use them

The process of creating these videos went a little like this.

I looked at each of the topics in the ASBC Small Business Management Courses
I compiled a list of questions that I thought are relevant for each topic (some as a result of further research)
Looked around at people I know in various different business types (importer, retail, professional services, marketing, sales trainer)
Studied these business owners websites and business to compile questions that cover the course contents but also relate to their business
Interviewed the business owner with input from them before and in between videos

After going through all the technical and know-how aspects about the steps you need to take it dawned on me that all of these business owners had something more than just knowledge and experience, they had all those character traits that make business owners successful. They include:

being inquisitive
always asking questions
learning new things
studying their market
evaluating their business
making changes if needed
sticking at it
trying again and again
working to a plan
working out another way to do things

There are probably many other words or phrases that can be used to describe these traits and they all add up to what makes these people and these interviews so valuable. For many people starting out in business for the first time it’s weird just keeping a time sheet and invoicing for the work they do and then following up for payment so listening to experienced business people and understanding the right attitudes will make as big a difference as the technical know how itself.

Will Hallam is for kids between 7-11 and Tracey has a global opportunity

Tracey is a meticulous person who puts in the ground work and she’s passionate enough about her new project that she’s taken the time to understand how the publishing industry works and what her readers (and their parents) are looking for. I think you’ll find her insights and thought processes very useful and please make a comment on Facebook or Linkedin to let me know your thoughts.

If you like what you’re reading so far subscribe to this blog and check out the new EzyStartUp Course.

Here’s my Introduction video interview with Tracey

Posted on January 12, 2016October 26, 2021 by Steve Slisar — 2 Comments

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.

Posted on December 29, 2015 by Steve Slisar

Do you have tender writing and advanced Microsoft Word skills?

Tenders help building and contractor companies win new clients

Mat from Ultraflow talking about tendering for work for small business sales and marketing courses The sales stages for wining new business in the building and construction industry can be a lengthy process that starts with specification and design. An architect will create a design from meetings with clients and gradually this design will turn into a multi-million dollar building that functions perfectly but how does the builder find the right team and resources? By tendering out the work.

Is tendering a sales, marketing or procurement process?

sales training - tendering process to win new clients and business I was speaking with Mat, the Managing Director of UltraFlow Siphonics for our Small Business Marketing and Small Business Sales Courses and he mentioned to me that they could literally be doing tenders every hour of every day. He mentioned that there are many different tendering portals where small (or larger) businesses can register and tender for the work that is available and that the key to a successful tender strategy is to narrow down the tenders you go for to one where your business is suited.

When a retailer sells a widget in a shop, that widget is clearly defined and the buying process is often quick and even impulsive but larger works use the tender process to clearly define what they are looking for and try to flush out as many bidders as possible. When the bidders are identified the goal for the organisation offering the tender is to get the best possible result at the cheapest possible price – weighing every aspect of the tender of course.

Go for tenders that meet the sweet spot criteria for your companies capabilities so you can perform them efficiently and profitably

Strong Microsoft Word skills are important

It is important to have excellent Microsoft Word skills if you are a tender writer because tender documents are long and often very detailed. Sometimes the tender documents are provided by the offerer and it’s important to be able to move around the tender document swiftly. Our Microsoft Word course includes every skill level from Beginners to Advanced so unlike some training companies which make you choose between one course or another we include everything.

Common Microsoft Word tools used in long and detailed documents are

Styles (covered in our Microsoft Word Advanced Course) – enable you to format areas of text quickly and keep that formatting consistent through the document. Much like the headings on our website pages and in our workbooks.
Table of Contents (Advanced Word Course) – enables you to quickly insert a table of contents based on heading styles that can automatically update the pages.
Document Map – enables you to quickly navigate long documents using heading styles
Sections and Breaks – ensure that main headings are on new pages and enable you to have selected pages print in landscape rather than portrait.

Australian Government resources for tendering

Here are some sites that have information about the tendering process to win government work:

Federal Government

Tenders Website

Commonwealth Contracting Suite

State Governments

New South Wales: Small to Medium Business Suppliers

Victoria: supplying to Victorian Government

Queensland: Tips for writing successful tender bids for Qld Government

South Australia: Standard Tender and Contract Documents for SA

Are you an experienced tender writer?

If you have experience writing tender documents for companies to win business we’d like to hear from you to get your perspective. I’m currently working on interviews with successful business owners for our small business courses and if you are Sydney-based there is an opportunity to contribute to our course and build your online profile at the same time. If you fit the description send an email to support@ezylearn.com.au (you MUST be Australian based and ideally from Sydney).

Posted on December 17, 2015March 25, 2020 by Steve Slisar

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 entreprenuers Following 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?