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

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

Credit Management is an Extra Job

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BAS Service, compliance anxiety and cash-flow

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

Getting receipts as evidence

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

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

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

BAS Audits, red flags and tricky GST codes

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

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

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

TIP!: Bank feeds can cause more work!

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

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

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

Coming up..

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

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

Posted on September 14, 2016June 12, 2018 by Steve Slisar — 2 Comments

Bookkeeping Basics: Cash vs. Accrual Systems

Bookkeeping Basics apply to every cloud accounting platform: MYOB, Xero or Quickbooks (QBO)

BOOKKEEPING IS THE PROCESS of keeping accurate records of the financial affairs of a business, and every business operating in Australia, whether it employs staff or whether it’s owned and operated by a single sole trader, must keep their bookkeeping up to date.

Bookkeeping plays a key role in the lodgement of your tax returns and business activity statements. It can also provide valuable information on the financial health and performance of your business.

The bookkeeping process for a business starts the very moment you begin trading, so it’s extremely important that you set up a system for managing your bookkeeping early in the life of your business — ideally, at the same time that you’re setting up your other operational systems (email accounts, websites, invoicing, etc). We’ve included bookkeeping basics videos in our MYOB training course for several years already but now these basics are part of a separate guide!

If you’ve never been self-employed before, just the idea of setting up a bookkeeping system is probably enough to strike fear in your heart, which is why we put together a free guide to setting up your own bookkeeping system, called Bookkeeping Basics, which you can download, for free, from the EzyLearn website.

The Bookkeeping Basics guide is an instruction manual on basic features and terminology used in every bookkeeping system, and will provide you with some good foundation knowledge of how your accounting software works, which you can use before you enrol in one of our cloud accounting training courses or find a good bookkeeper to take care of your bookkeeping for you.

Bookkeeping Basics Topic: Understanding cash vs. accrual accounting

The main difference between cash and accrual accounting is the timing of when when revenue and expenses are recognised. Although, the two methods are distinctly different from each other, there are many businesses that use a combination of both.

Cash-based accounting

A cash-based accounting system records transactions at the time the cash was paid or received, regardless of when the transaction occurred. With this method, if you get an invoice from a supplier, for instance, you won’t record the cost in your books until you’ve paid the invoice. By the same token, you won’t record a sale in your books until you receive the money from your customer.

Cash accounting is common among small businesses, especially contractors who work on small projects or are on weekly retainers with their clients, as it’s the simplest way to manage cash flow.

Accrual-based accounting

An accrual accounting system, on the other hand, recognises both income and expenses when the sale takes place, rather than when cash changes hands. When a web designer, for example, raises an invoice for a website they’ve completed, the sale would be recorded in their books, even though they haven’t received payment yet.

With accrual accounting, debtors and creditors are created in your accounting software, which shows what is owing to you and when, as well as what you owe others and when. This helps to give you a truer picture of your financial situation, in particular it helps you keep track of money you do and don’t have in real-time, rather than after the fact as is the case with cash-based accounting.

Which system should you use?

Before cloud accounting software, like MYOB, Xero and QuickBooks came along, a lot of small businesses used a cash-based accounting system simply because the alternative required a lot of grunt work, a lot of the time. Cloud accounting has made it significantly easier to set up and maintain an accrual-based accounting system — in fact, many small businesses that use a cloud accounting system often use this method by default, without even realising.

That being said, there are some things to consider when selecting a system for your business, such as:

The size of your business — i.e., will you be employing staff or using lots of contractors?
How complicated your business transactions will be
Whether you will have the resources to manage an accrual system.

Accrual accounting and GST

There is one last thing to consider, and it relates to GST. For small businesses whose annual turnover is less than $2 million, but greater than $75,000 per annum, they must register for GST and they may choose whether or not to register on a cash or accrual basis. (Businesses with an annual turnover of less than $75,000 are not required to register for GST, but may do so if they wish to.)

How you choose to register for GST will greatly affect your business’s cash flow. If you choose to register for GST on an accrual basis, GST will be payable on sales for which payment hasn’t been received yet, and could leave you out of pocket until your client pays you. That being said, GST can be claimed on unpaid expenses if you hold a tax invoice. If your business has a lot of expenses, this may balance out in the wash. If you run a leaner operation, however, it most probably will not, so this is something you should give careful consideration to.

This blog post is part of our Bookkeeping Basics series, which are being published to complement our new educational guide, also titled Bookkeeping Basics, which you can download for free from the EzyLearn website.

[box type=”info”] This blog post is part of our Bookkeeping Basics series, which are being published to complement our new educational guide, also titled Bookkeeping Basics, which you can download for free from the EzyLearn website.[/box]

Featured Mandurah (WA) Bookkeeper

If you’re looking for a reliable bookkeeper to manage your daily or weekly bookkeeping and accounts, either remotely or in-person, Deb from Mandurah WA is a qualified bookkeeper with tertiary qualifications and the practical experience of having operated her own business in the past. Deb has a lot of experience in the day-to-day accounting functions of a small business and you can contact her directly as a fully licensed member from her profile page.

Our National Bookkeeping website has recently gone through a significant upgrade so watch out for more stories about featured bookkeepers in forthcoming blogs! Join and we can feature YOU in our articles too.

Start a bookkeeping business in your local area

Many bookkeepers starting a bookkeeping business for the first time also find it quite daunting; after all, they have moved from the corporate world where various and multifaceted aspects of running the business are managed by other people.

We put these bookkeepers through our EzyStartUp Course to help them define their goals, pricing strategies, marketing message and professional profile. They also get support from a business mentor and brand building from our digital marketing team.

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

6 Questions You Can Ask to Find the Cheapest Bookkeeper

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

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

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

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

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

The questions you should be asking a prospective bookkeeper:

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

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

1. Bookkeeping Experience

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

2. Bookkeeping Tasks

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

3. Cloud Accounting Software

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

4. Work Availability

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

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

5. Bookkeeper Location

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Release: New Training Guide for Basic Bookkeeping

The meaning of basic bookkeeping terms

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

These are the types of terms I am talking about:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bookkeepers need help with Xero ANSWERS

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

Xero enrolments for bookkeeping businesses

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

What xero bookkeepers want to know

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

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

Xero Answers for Xero Bookkeepers

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

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

Posted on February 11, 2016March 26, 2021 by Steve Slisar — 1 Comment

Independent Contractor! PayPal Provides Instant Business Working Capital Finance

If you’re an independent contractor you’re a business owner

EzyLearn can help your business train WHS staff or provide credentialing and inductions.

As an independent contractor, operating with an ABN, you’re effectively running your own small business (so working capital important), and that means you’re subject to some of the same reporting obligations for the ATO as other small businesses are.

The only real difference is that as an independent contractor, your business model is a lot simpler to other ones.

If you use PayPal for receiving payments they already know your sales history and may lend you money without doing a reference check! Continue reading Independent Contractor! PayPal Provides Instant Business Working Capital Finance

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 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 17, 2015December 17, 2015 by Steve Slisar

Malcolm’s Business Innovation Plans Can Include You

Australian Federal Government Wants Business Innovation

Innovation package, bankruptcy changes, capital gains and raising equity funding — Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org

In December, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, unveiled a new $1.1b Innovation Plan, developed to encourage more Aussies to start their own businesses, specifically ones in the areas of science and technology and which are, well, “innovative”. With the announcement coming just a few weeks before Christmas, it seemed perfectly timed to give Australia’s would-be entrepreneurs the holidays to think about their plans innovation plans for 2016.

But with all this talk about scientific and technological innovation, you could be forgiven for thinking that only Australia’s Next Google can take advantage of the many new initiatives introduced by the government. So let’s be clear: this is fantastic news for anyone thinking of starting their own business, whether they’re bookkeeping or content marketing businesses. Just the very act of starting a business is, itself, an act of innovation – because more businesses means more employment opportunities for more Australians.

There is more opportunity to start anew after going broke

As I’ve mentioned in the past, the climate at the moment is incredibly favourable toward anyone looking to start their own business, and these new measures just make it even more so. That’s because some of the big changes come in the form of changes to our bankruptcy laws, which have always been notoriously punitive, and have tended to discourage businesses to take risks or entrepreneurs to try again, if at first they did not succeed.

That’s going to change. From 2017, the bankruptcy period will be reduced from three years to one, and businesses will also be allowed to continue trading while insolvent, as long as the business appoints a restructuring advisor to work on a turnaround plan, a measure not dissimilar to one within America’s Chapter 11 laws.

Grow and expand your business with equity investments from angels

One of the more exciting new measures to be announced, however, is one that will help more start-ups find funding from investors. To be introduced in 2016, the government will now provide a 20 percent tax offset worth up to $200,000 for investors in start-up businesses, plus a 10-year exemption from capital gains tax if they hold shares in the company for three years.

Together with the already announced tax breaks for small businesses; the raft of new technologies – particularly the recent union of PayPal and QuickBooks – that allow small businesses to work faster and smarter; and the increasing number of shared workspaces, like the NSW State Government’s Smart Work Hubs and the WOTSO Workspaces, which give small business owners and teleworkers the opportunity to work remotely among other like-minded entrepreneurs, you can make 2016 the year that you start your own small business.

Want to learn more about business valuations and preparing your business for sale? Information is included in our Small Business Finance Courses with in depth interviews with Tony Arena from BCI Business Brokers. Read about the Valuations and Raising Equity Funding Course.

Get started with the Start-Up Academy

If you’re subscribed to this blog, then you’re probably familiar with our latest partnership with the StartUp Academy, which aims to help people to start their own home-based business easily and successfully, through proven business opportunities and plenty of guidance for prosperity.

There are currently a number of business opportunities, across a range of different industries, that you can register your interest in at the StartUp Academy website. Each opportunity allows you the freedom to operate as an independent contractor from your home, regardless of where in Australia you are located.

Get the FREE guide to becoming an independent contractor

If you’re interested in becoming an independent contractor in 2016, whether it’s with the StartUp Academy or with a business idea of your own, why not use the summer break to study up on what it takes to become a successful independent contractor by downloading our free guide off the StartUp Academy website, and make 2016 an innovative one!

Posted on December 14, 2015April 13, 2016 by Steve Slisar — 1 Comment

Is Xero really the easiest accounting software to use?

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

When 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.

Posted on November 24, 2015September 27, 2017 by Angela — 1 Comment

What do bookkeepers do during the first consultation?

Interviewing a potential bookkeeper

become an independent contract and start a bookkeeping business IF YOU’RE LOOKING TO start your own bookkeeping business, or looking to hire a bookkeeper to help you with your bookkeeping, you might be wondering, how does a bookkeeper assess a business’s bookkeeping needs?

As it’s a legal requirement for every business to file a tax return and, sometimes, a quarterly business activity statement (BAS), it’s necessary, then, to keep accurate records of the business’s income and expenditure.

The process of keeping this up-to-date and, if the person is also registered to do so, complete any activity statements, is the role of a bookkeeper.

A bookkeeper, unless they’re just providing a business with general data entry services – reconciling accounts, paying invoices, chasing late payers – should be registered with the Tax Practitioners Board (TPB) as either a tax agent, BAS agent or both. If they’re not, and they don’t hold a bookkeeping or accounting certification, either, then they’re only qualified to charge for the general data entry services.

But, assuming they are TPB registered and qualified to prepare and lodge tax returns and activity statements, then there are a number of things you can typically expect of a bookkeeper during the first consultation with a prospective client.

Free consultation with bookkeeper: what to expect

1. Accounting data file health check

If a business already has an accounting package, a bookkeeper will perform what’s called a ‘health check’. This is a basic check to ensure the accounts have been set up properly in MYOB, Xero, Quickbooks or whatever accounting software the business happens to use – though it’s generally only these well-known packages that a bookkeeper will work with. If a business is using a lesser-known package, like Zoho books, for instance, they may not be able to work with it.

2. Recommend an accounting package

If a business doesn’t already have any accounting software – or maybe they do, but it’s not a package the bookkeeper is familiar with – they may recommend certain software for the business to use, typically MYOB, Xero or Quickbooks.

Generally, the bookkeeper will recommend that someone in the business is trained in whatever software they recommend, as there are some functions — invoicing for example, and even sometimes bank reconciliations — that the business will still need to take care of themselves to reduce their costs, unless the business wants to pay the bookkeeper to do this. Some bookkeepers provide this training so there’s a uniform approach to managing a business’s books.

3. Review of current systems/procedures

The bookkeeper may make recommendations to your general account keeping procedures or systems to improve or streamline them. This could involve, for instance, a recommendation to open a business bank account or using a certain credit card for payments; invoicing clients on a particular day of the week or as jobs are completed to improve cash flow, et cetera.

4. Draft a tentative action plan

In that plan, the bookkeeper will include a confidentiality agreement or letter of engagement which both parties need to sign; they’ll also make recommendations as to how the business should provide information, such as source documents which will differ based on the working arrangement. For instance, virtual bookkeepers may suggest uploading documents to Dropbox, while a local bookkeeper may go to the business’s premises or request the business to come to theirs.

The bookkeeper will also make suggestions as to how regularly their services would be required — once a week, month, and so on.

5. Answer any questions or queries

If the bookkeeper is registered tax agent, they should be able to tell you what sorts of expenses count as a tax deduction. Many people mistakenly believe that only an accountant can provide this sort of advice, but that isn’t true.

An accountant can only lodge and give tax advice if they’re a registered tax agent, and the same goes for a bookkeeper. Thus, should be well versed in Australian tax law.

Why a free initial bookkeeping consultation?

Typically this initial consultation is free and should take an hour or less and it also gives the bookkeeper an opportunity to see if you are the right fit for the client base they would like. Generally the initial consultation occurs in person, even if the bookkeeper will work from home or remotely once their services have been engaged.

In the case of virtual bookkeepers working in a different city or state to their clients, it’s now possible to carry out the initial consultation using Skype, Google Hangouts or any other video conferencing apps – or even just over the telephone.

If the bookkeeper finds that your circumstances are not ideal for their skills or time capacity they should have a network of other bookkeepers/accountants who they can refer to you.

Start a bookkeeping business today

If you’d like to start a bookkeeping business, EzyLearn has recently partnered with National Bookkeeping, which is looking for licensees.

As a licensee with National Bookkeeping, you’ll have access to EzyLearn training courses (which also means the license fee is one hundred percent tax deductible. Visit the National Bookkeeping website today and register your interest online.

Posted on September 14, 2015July 26, 2021 by Steve Slisar — 3 Comments

Tis the Season to Switch to Xero

MYOB – Bain Capital Cashing In While They Can

Switch to Quickbooks or Xero from MYOB — Intuit Quickbooks has made this offer for a long time already

You may be aware that MYOB is once again listed on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) as Bain Capital aim to grab some cash back for the massive investment they made in the accounting software company.

In the recent lull in the share price of companies on the ASX in general you’d think that MYOB company executives are worried about getting their money back let alone making a return on their initial investment. After all they are now competing globally with small startups like Xero (and SAASU) as well as MASSIVE accounting software companies like Intuit.

We’ve always been committed to MYOB accounting software training courses because the software is so popular with most Australian accountants and it is (even today) by far the most used accounting program for small business in Australia.. BUT, we’ve noticed a significant increase in enrolments for our Xero Accounting Training Courses and we wondered why? Why is August and September such a popular time for enrolments in Xero and it was then obvious.

[quote]Everyone is finishing off their end of year accounts for the 2015 financial year and those that want to make a change away from MYOB are switching to Xero now.[/quote]

Our Xero Course is Now Beefed Up and it’s Yours for Nothing Extra

We’ve just increased the cost of our Xero courses because we’ve beefed it up with:

3 new Xero Training Course Workbooks,
More detailed Xero knowledge review questions AND some
Industry specific training guides for the tradies who want to change to Xero.

[box type=”tick” size=”large” style=”rounded” border=”full”]Existing Xero students can access all of these new training aids for no extra cost and that is a great feature of our 12 month membership offer- you can lock in the current price and get all of the future benefits as we get the Xero course to the same level of detail as our popular MYOB courses.[/box]

Xero Seems to be the Tradies Choice

Plumbers are switching to Xero from MYOB accounting software — From The Reece Plumbing Website

Ever since I interviewed Ken from Love My Home Theatre I started to realise the appeal of Xero for tradies! Plumbers, Electricians, Concreters, Builders, Pest Inspectors, Painters and most other tradies are always out doing their work whether they are quoting, working or finishing off they are always seeing their customers and potential customers so it make sense for them to do as much as they can while they are ont and about. They also have to keep good records of:

Products they purchase for their customers
Resources they allocate to their customers
Money that is owed after the work is completed
Progress payments as the jobs are gradually completed

Bookkeeping is also something that isn’t second nature for tradies and it’s usually done by their wifes, partners, a trusted friend or someone who knows their industry very well. Being cloud-based (online) accounting software tradies can now create quotes using an iPad or other mobile device and the invoicing, debtors follow-up and bank reconciliation can be done by a bookkeeper (from anywhere).

For this reason we’ve created a Xero Training Guide for Plumbers and Concreters. We’ve got some classic examples of how a plumber may buy products from Reece plumbing on their account for one of their clients and they need to keep track of this purchase.

Reece Plumbing Integrates with Xero

One of the most interesting observations about what Reece Plumbing have done with their purchase and payment system is their integration with Xero Accounting software so that customers don’t need to perform data entry and automatically have a copy of each of their tax invoices.

The benefits sited by Reece are:

No need for manual uploads of tax invoices/receipts
No data entry mistakes
Save time and money
See your tax invoices in Xero

Learn more about the benefits of using the Reece Plumbing Xero Integration.

After School Holidays is a Good Time to Learn How to Use Xero?

If it is time for you to migrate or transfer your accounting information to a new platform we’d love to help you. We’ve also had a lot of bookkeepers learn how to use Xero so it’s clear there is a ground swell to good online (cloud) accounting software and Xero seem to have done well so far. If you are interested in adding Xero to your pack of software skills take advantage of our current prices – you can always start your course when you come back from school holidays and the kids are back in school.

Will the NEW Quickbooks Make a Comeback?

I’ve written before about Quickbooks and they are still doing great stuff with their pricing. As the blog image above suggests they have maintained a steady first year discount for at least 12 months (from our observations) and maybe this is their strategy to squeeze the margins for much smaller startups like Xero.

It’s a good time to note that the Quickbooks we’re talking about is the NEW Quickbooks from the massive US Company Intuit, not the one that WAS distributed in Australia by Reckon before Intuit and Reckon dissolved their distribution agreement.

I’ve taken the time to explore Quickbooks and it’s pretty impressive and easy to use. If its something you want to learn about make sure you visit our Quickbooks Training Course page and pre-register to receive the course at an Introductory price.