Search Results for: cloud accounting

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How to Become a Payroll Officer

woman_payroll_administrator_administration_officer

WE HAVE FOUND it particularly useful to talk about the kinds of job outcomes they might expect from enrolling in our online training courses. If you’re after a job as a Payroll Administration Officer, or working with payroll generally, then you’ll need to be able to conduct payroll processing, tax and superannuation calculations and the payment of staff within a company.

People working as payroll administration officers, or payroll administrators, can also work as bookkeepers, or even BAS agents, who specialise in payroll only; either within the payroll department of a business or accounting / bookkeeping firm.

Here are some common Payroll Administration tasks in a job description.

Continue reading How to Become a Payroll Officer

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How to Become a Bookkeeper

BOOKKEEPERS PROVIDE ESSENTIAL services to businesses by processing and recording everyday financial transactions, and keeping accurate records.

They usually work in small to medium-sized businesses, where the scope of their role and responsibilities will vary based on the size of the business.

Many bookkeepers are also required to prepare and lodge business activity statements (BAS). To provide BAS services for a fee, bookkeepers must be registered with the Tax Practitioners Board (TPB).

Continue reading How to Become a Bookkeeper

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SPECIAL OFFER: MYOB, Xero & QuickBooks Online Courses ALL for One Low Price

Bookkeeper Combo Bonus Courses learn Xero, MYOB AccountRight & MYOB Essentials and QuickBooks Online Training

The Internet has spawned several cloud accounting software program all over the world including:

Continue reading SPECIAL OFFER: MYOB, Xero & QuickBooks Online Courses ALL for One Low Price

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Xero, MYOB, ERPs and Supply Chain Tools

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ERPs, or Enterprise Reporting Planning systems, are divided into three categories or tiers. Xero, MYOB, QuickBooks and other cloud accounting software used by small businesses, sit at the low end of the scale; they’re tier three ERPs.

Xero is using it’s 3rd party app integrations and its API to climb up the ERP food chain and some good bookkeepers are being dragged up along with it.

Continue reading Xero, MYOB, ERPs and Supply Chain Tools
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When Does Practice Ignition Make Financial Sense for a Bookkeeper or Tax Agent?

busy bookkeeper using practice ignition

THE ACCOUNTING SPACE is currently dominated by systems that make it easy for small businesses — a builder or tradesperson, virtual assistant, online retail shop — to manage their business’s accounts with the help of their bookkeeper, tax agent or BAS agent and/or accountant.

However, very few systems are dedicated to helping the bookkeeper, tax or BAS agent or accountant manage their clients — that’s the builders and tradespeople, virtual assistants and online shops and retail outlets they provide bookkeeping and tax services to. Until now.

The new way to automate your quoting, defining your scope of bookkeeping/BAS services, having clients agree and pay for your services – all in one streamlined system Continue reading When Does Practice Ignition Make Financial Sense for a Bookkeeper or Tax Agent?

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How Accountants Can Remain Competitive

See yourself as a personal trainer — for business

man on treadmill carrying weight wearing business suitACCOUNTANTS DO GREAT WORK for their clients (so be sure to see our EOFY checklist and our EOFY series of blogs for tax preparation for how to keep ’em happy). Accountants find ways to help them save money, make money, and improve the profitability of their businesses. But too many accountants spend too much of their time on compliance work, when they should be focused on the kind of work that will help their clients grow successful businesses. Continue reading How Accountants Can Remain Competitive

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Reporting in QuickBooks Just Got a Whole Lot Better!

running cashflow reports in xero and exporting to excel

Quickbooks now providing superior options for filtering and scheduling bookkeeping reports

Xero online training course bank feedsONE OF THE BEST THINGS about cloud accounting software is that your data is live, which means, providing your reconciliations are up-to-date, you get a complete snapshot your business’s performance and financial health regardless of the day, week or month you run those reports.

Running regular finance reports is the key to ensuring your business maintains a healthy cashflow, which is also linked to your credit management process and procedures. Previously, the main gripe many bookkeepers and business owners had about QuickBooks was that it lacked the reporting functionality of other apps, like Xero and MYOB.

That’s all changed now that the reporting features in QuickBooks have been given a major upgrade, giving business owners more power and flexibility to monitor their business’s performance. Here are just a couple of the things you can — and should! — do with the updated reports feature in QuickBooks.

Filter sales by services / products

If you’re like a lot of businesses, you probably offer a couple of different products or services, and, like a lot of businesses, there are certain products or services that are more profitable to your business — and, therefore, should be a major focus — to sell.

Now that QuickBooks offers the ability to customise and save any of its reports into your management reports tab, you can filter your customer sales reports by services or products, and also run them across multiple periods. If you have multiple sales people, you can also filter your reports by sales people, too.

Schedule email reports

In addition to being able to customise and save your management reports, so you don’t have to keep filtering out the data you don’t need and adding in the stuff you do, you can also setup a schedule so your preferred reports are automatically emailed to you (and your business partners or other stakeholders) as required.

QuickBooks gives you the option to select which reports you’d like to see, and the frequency at which you’d like them — daily, weekly, monthly, twice a month, or custom. This’ll mean you won’t have to keep asking your bookkeeper to run them for you, nor will you need to go in to run them manually yourself. It’ll also give you a better idea of whether or not your bookkeeper is really paying close attention or not!

Familiarise yourself with customisation options

Here at EzyLearn, we believe Quickbooks has a lot to offer small business and bookkeepers alike. The reporting functions in QuickBooks now offer up seemingly unending possibilities by giving you the flexibility to filter and  customise your reports by any number of variables — sales person, periods, services, etc. Sometimes you don’t know the kinds of reports you need for your business until your go in and have a play yourself, so that’s exactly what you should do.

Maybe you haven’t taken a good look at the capabilities of Quickbooks for a long time — check out the options available with our Quickbooks online training courses to take you up to speed. Alternatively, you can ask your bookkeeper, and they should be able to customise, save and schedule a report that suits your needs to a tee.

What Do You Want to Learn Today?

running cashflow reports in xero and exporting to excel

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, real estate and investment management courses, to marketing and sales courses, or update and further your skills in a range of Microsoft Office programs, (including Excel, PowerPoint, Word) or social media and WordPress web design). 

 

 

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Are Online Payments using PayPal and Stripe Right for Your Business Cashflow?

woman stressed about credit management and cashflow management

Getting paid seamlessly, online

woman stressed about credit management and cashflow management
Lack of cashflow in a business is still the chief cause of insolvency – which is why proper credit management procedures are as essential as ever.

WITHOUT SOUND CREDIT management processes, any business can come asunder. 

Credit management, in a nutshell, is the process of ensuring your customers pay you on time, every time, of which technology has played a big part.

Cloud accounting, for example, has sped up the time it takes a business owner to create and send invoices to their customers, which smartphone and tablet accounting apps has further aided too.

Continue reading Are Online Payments using PayPal and Stripe Right for Your Business Cashflow?
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Google Can Help You Make More Money – And It’s Not by Using Adwords!

Helping tradespeople, sole traders and contractors manage and keep clients

As a tradesperson or sole trader, don’t be one of the many who loses out on work opportunities because you’re not savvy online – for marketing and organisational purposes.

I’VE WRITTEN ABOUT how tradespeople can earn more money quickly and easily by using cloud accounting software like Xero or QuickBooks to quote, invoice and manage their clients. But this applies to anybody out there working for themselves; as a sole trader or contractor. 

In a recent home renovation I was involved with in Newcastle, NSW, I met many tradies with a lot of work on, and even more with plenty of work in the pipeline; but they had no system to manage it all. They frequently didn’t follow up on jobs they’d quoted for, didn’t get back to people enquiring about their services, and provided fairly terrible customer service in general. And they were losing money, as a result.

Increase your productivity with Google G Suite

There’s no reason for tradespeople, contractors or sole traders to lose business because they don’t have a system in place to ensure they remain productive. I work with lots of remote contractors, and I love it because we’re able collaborate on projects at all different times of the day, easily and efficiently.

When I owned a compliance management company called EzyAccess, I worked with lots of different contractors who were located all over Australia. There was Frankie in customer service, located in the Gold Coast, Queensland; Gary, our product specialist located in Goulburn, New South Wales; and our computer guys, Linus and Rodger, each from Sydney; along with three other women located in Sydney — Dulcie, Michelle and Angela — responsible for admin and marketing respectively. of course, then there was me: travelling between Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide.

Manage your time efficiently

To manage my team of remote contractors, I used Google G Suite (then called Google Apps for Work) — Google Calendar, in particular. 

We used Google Calendar to schedule time for particular tasks each person was working on so everyone knew what everyone else was up to, and could easily schedule time to collaborate on certain projects that required help from other team members — Linus and Rodger, for instance, frequently collaborated on projects. We also used Google Calendar to schedule meetings (internal and external ones) and sales calls. (More specifically, we’ve given a case study of a hairdressing salon doing this in a previous blog post.)

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Set up your own Google G-Suite with our Digital and Social Media Online Course


If you need help setting up your Google G Suite account, and would like to learn how your business can become more productive and earn more money, we cover Google G Suite in our Digital and Social Media training course. Visit our website for more information or to enrol.

 

 

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Xero Training Course May 2018 UPDATE

Cloud Accounting Software is CONSTANTLY Updated – SO IS OUR XERO COURSE

Xero Product Releases, LIFELONG Learning, LIFETIME Course access, Updates, best Xero Training CourseWhen I made the decision to convert EzyLearn from a Bricks and Mortar training centre to an online only provider of training courses I realised that we were going to have to get good at:

  • online digital marketing,
  • online pre-sales and student support, and
  • course content creation.

EzyLearn has been in business helping job seekers, business owners, managers and clients of rehabilitation providers learn how to use software for over 20 years. Read our story here..

I’m lucky today to have a professional team who’s sole focus is on getting better at all of these tasks – every week! I guess this post is as much a thank you to all of them for their help as it is an announcement that ALL of our XERO courses have recently been updated!

Beginners Xero Payroll Administration Training Course to Advanced Xero Payroll online course dashboardBeginners and Advanced Xero Training Course updates

Almost every course has been touched in our latest updates but here is a summary:

One reason that students choose EzyLearn for their online training courses is because they receive access to new added content and course updates.

Available to New, Current Students and LIFELONG Students

The usual time to finish the COMPLETE set of Beginners to Advanced Xero Courses is 3 weeks but one of the reasons we offer 12 months course access (and the LIFETIME Xero Course Access) is so that students can go back and review the contents when they need it in their business or job.

EzyLearn Discount Voucher Coupons online training for Office, Excel, Xero, MYOB, Marketing courses 2Get all the Xero Course details at our FAQ’s.

Current Discounts for Xero Training Courses

If you’re interested in enrolling into a Xero course take a look at the current special offers and subscribe to our Discount Voucher program to receive the discount codes.

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TSheets for Independent and Remote Contractors

TSheets is a cost effective way to manage and track your time

tsheets by quickbooks logoTSheets, THE TIME MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE, is a great way for independent and remote contractors to manage their client’s projects. It’s especially useful for contractors who are collaborating remotely with other contractors and businesses on one project.

There are a bunch of other handy tools contractors and sole traders can use for expense tracking and forecasting too.

But back to TSheets. TSheets was recently acquired by Intuit, the parent company of QuickBooks. Both TSheets and QuickBooks shared 12,000 customers in common and the time management system had been developed to work specifically with QuickBooks. Deeper integration with QuickBooks can be expected now, following the acquisition.

The acquisition is part of the push into the cloud accounting ecosystem that’s being led by the major cloud accounting companies. (Read: EzyLearn’s explainer on the TSheets acquisition and the cloud accounting ecosystem.)

Inexpensive time tracking

expense apps for self employed peopleIf you were to think about the top three cloud accounting apps in terms of the types of businesses they appeal to, QuickBooks would appeal most to micro businesses and independent contractors. Check out an earlier blog post where we assess two main factors: User Experience & Ease of Use, and Reporting Tools in a comparison between MYOB and Quickbooks for small businesses.

The popularity of Quickbooks for contractors and the like is not just because it’s by far the cheaper system compared with Xero and MYOB. QuickBooks has also spent a lot of time simplifying the process of managing business accounts so that, while it may not be the most robust program, it’s by far the most accessible.

TSheets has been built the same way. It’s also one of the most inexpensive time tracking systems — at a minimum of $30 per month for two users, while it’s free for one user to use TSheets for unlimited projects.

Bookkeeping Academy to include TSheets

New content is being added to our Bookkeeping Academy “Academic Development Program” to include using TSheets with QuickBooks (or Xero and any other cloud accounting system it integrates with).  The Bookkeeping Academy is where you can purchase online training via short courses that you can use for Continuing Professional Development (CPD) or Continuing Professional Education (CPE) or to upskill or re-train in one particular area. You can earn CPD points with our cloud accounting packages.

Read more about why continuing education for bookkeepers is so important in this ever-changing industry.

online bookkeeping courses to earn cpd points

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MYOB Launches Single Touch Payroll Trial Product

LAST WEEK, MYOB LAUNCHED a beta trial of its single touch payroll (STP) product, as it gears up for the July 1, 2018 compliance deadline.

Businesses with 20 or more employees need to have transitioned to the ATO’s Single Touch Payroll initiative by July.

Businesses with fewer than 20 employees have until July 1, 2019 to be compliant but for these small business owners and contractors the ATO has a new free app.  Continue reading MYOB Launches Single Touch Payroll Trial Product

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Is Xero’s Partner Program Really Affiliate Marketing?

Partnering exclusively with Xero

What to know about partnering exclusively with Xero

XERO HAS BECOME ONE of the major accounting software players in Australia. Like the other two major cloud accounting programs, Xero offers a partner program (officially, the Xero Partner Program), in which bookkeepers and accountants “partner” with Xero to exclusively offer Xero-based bookkeeping and accounting services to clients. Continue reading Is Xero’s Partner Program Really Affiliate Marketing?

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The Best Xero-Integrated Document Management Platforms

best xero integrated proposal quote software learn xero online learning training course videos

‘Seal the deal’ with a beautiful proposal

best xero integrated proposal quote software learn xero online learning training course videos
Sometimes it’s all in the proposal: win over your clients by presenting them with your value proposition in a way that not only looks professional and competitive; but that you can also track online.

FOR MANY BUSINESSES sending quotes and estimates to prospects doesn’t accurately describe the work you’ll be providing them.

Sometimes it’s because you’ll be providing an ongoing service or solution to a business problem — property management, content marketing, bookkeeping — and other times it’s because your business will be competing with others in a public tender.

In these instances, you’ll need to send a proposal to potential clients to explain your value proposition and how you’ll solve their business problem. Rather than sending a proposal in a Word document that you can’t track, use a cloud-based document management platform.

Here are some popular Xero CRM Integrations.

Continue reading The Best Xero-Integrated Document Management Platforms
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What is BOMA?

Could the future be fully automated marketing campaigns with Xero’s pal, BOMA?

XERO HQ BOMA learn xero online learning training course videosXERO HAS A NEW bookkeeper and accountant platform, Xero HQ, which is available to Xero Partners, and includes a whole new app marketplace geared towards bookkeepers and accountants with a minimum of 100 clients.

One of the most recommended apps in the HQ partner app marketplace, was BOMA, a marketing and advertising platform that lets you create and broadcast marketing and advertising messages across five channels (email, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter).

How BOMA is different

There are lots of marketing automation platforms on the market (MailChimp, Aweber, Constant Contact, Get Response, to name a few), so BOMA is competing in a crowded space. The first difference you’ll notice between BOMA and the market leader, MailChimp, is the price.

BOMA charges a minimum of $49 U.S. ($67.74 UD) a month to create unlimited social media marketing campaigns and send unlimited emails to 500 contacts; by contrast, MailChimp charges $10 U.S. ($13.43 AUD).

But MailChimp doesn’t integrate with Xero, so you need to import your contacts some other way (an Excel spreadsheet and by capturing data using an “opt-in” button). You also can’t create marketing or advertising campaigns for LinkedIn or Twitter in MailChimp, though it does support creating re-targeting advertisements for Google.

Content creation in BOMA

The most time-consuming aspect of any marketing or advertising campaign is the design stage. MailChimp provides templates, but unless you want to use the pre-designed templates, you need to bring your own images. Or pay to access an image library like Getty Images. Included in BOMA’s monthly fee is free access to a library of 250,000 images.

Once you’ve created your design, BOMA will automatically re-format it to fit any marketing channel, be it email, Facebook newsfeed posts, Instagram sponsored posts, and so on.

Automation and analysis in BOMA

automated marketing xero boma learn xero online training course videosBOMA uses machine learning, a sub branch of artificial intelligence, to power its contact segment feature. Machine learning is just as it sounds: machines learning to do things. It’s what powers the Netflix algorithm that recommends films and TV shows to you based on what you’ve viewed previously.

Without machine learning, Netflix wouldn’t be able to make individual recommendations (six or seven action movies with a strong female lead), but rather present a large pool of raw data (it’s entire library of action movies) for you to choose from.

And just as with Netflix, the more you use BOMA to send marketing and advertising campaigns, the better its insights will become.

Each time you send an email campaign, for instance, BOMA collects and analyses data about each individual contact so that it can make recommendations based on its analysis of that data: the best time to email certain contacts or the types of messages they respond to, and so on.

This is different to MailChimp and other platforms, which collect that data, but leave the analysis to you.

The Xero and BOMA partnership means that, aside from syncing client data in Xero with BOMA, you’re also given access to an exclusive library of content, covering a range of topics — “why use business software”, “get paid faster”, “create the perfect business plan” — that you can push out to your social channels.

In the future, if this integration was powered by machine learning, BOMA could create and send campaigns of pre-written content to an approved contact list at the times an algorithm has determined will be most effective, without any input from the user.

In the future, if this integration was powered by machine learning, BOMA could create and send campaigns of pre-written content to an approved contact list at the times an algorithm has determined will be most effective, without any input from the user.

What about MYOB and QuickBooks?

That’s a ways off yet, though. That’s because BOMA is a startup, and it’s still in the process of developing and turning on features that are standard on many other platforms. (It only recently made it possible to upload contacts from a CSV file, for example.) Getting to partner with one of the world’s largest cloud accounting applications is a major win, especially when Xero has given it top billing in its HQ partner app marketplace.

So if you search the BOMA website for any mentions of MYOB or QuickBooks, you won’t find one; not even so much as a passing mention to say it doesn’t integrate or support MYOB or QuickBooks.

The Xero/BOMA partnership

Who knows what the future might bring, but this is a platform play for Xero. And Xero has said plenty of times in the past that it would rather partner with third party providers, than develop their own services from scratch. If one starts to make real inroads, and it seems like a good long-term match for Xero, perhaps Xero will acquire it, but most likely it won’t.

And in the immediate short-term, BOMA ticks a couple of boxes for Xero: It provides a service that nearly every mid-size business needs, and it encourages bookkeepers and accountants to stay within the Xero ecosystem.

Xero is enticing to startups and app developers, because they offer a partnership, but don’t control how startups and their businesses operate. Currently, MYOB and QuickBooks don’t offer any such partnership, and that’s giving Xero the upper hand.  

***automated marketing boma xero learn xero online training course videos

We are always exploring and analysing new and emerging technologies and introducing new content as part of our Updates and Additions policy. Any new content we add to the course in which you’re enrolled is yours’ for free if you’re a current EzyLearn student. Find out more about our suite of Xero online training courses.

 

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What is Xero HQ?

Now you can do more with Xero

new xero hq learn xero online learning training course videos
Xero is adding to its list of features with Xero HQ so it’s no longer just for more basic bookkeeping, but can be used for analysis as well.

XERO HAS LONG POSTIONED ITSELF as the cloud accounting software for small-to-medium businesses. It’s one of the most popular of our online training courses; appealing not only to bookkeepers, but small to medium sized businesses in all industries.

What makes Xero so popular is that it is inexpensive software that’s simple to use and has lots of time-saving features.

In doing so, it’s basically left MYOB to hold the mantle of the accounting software used by accountants and bookkeepers.

Now, however, Xero is looking to close that gap, with the launch of “Xero HQ”; a data and insights platform for bookkeepers and accountants who are part of the Xero Partner Program.

Xero HQ wants to help you grow

To shake MYOB’s stranglehold on the accountant and bookkeeper market, Xero had to do something to differentiate itself and tempt accountants and bookkeepers away from MYOB.

And they’re betting that Xero HQ will be the thing that does it. Xero HQ will provide bookkeepers and accountants with data and insights tools so they can provide “advisory level” services to clients.

Xero’s focus on “advisory level” services is important here, because it reveals a couple of things Xero plans to do with the industry. The first is to continue to automate many of the tasks a bookkeeper would traditionally carry out — the introduction of bank feeds eliminated data entry, for instance — and the second is to up-skill junior bookkeepers, while simultaneously embedding them within the Xero ecosystem — which will fit nicely with their recently launched Xero Lifelong Learning platform.

What exactly is the Xero HQ platform?

If you’re part of the Xero Partner Program already, then access to the Xero HQ platform is free. The Xero HQ platform is essentially a separate workflow that you access online, which provides a number of features not available though your regular Xero software.

These Xero HQ features include the following:

  • Activity feed: When your clients’ GST or activity statements are due, a notification will appear in the activity feed to alert you.
  • Client list: This is essentially like a contact book, where you can store all your clients’ information in one place; even those clients who aren’t on Xero.
  • Explorer: This feature pulls data Xero knows about your clients to help you provide them with better advice, or help you up-skill in areas you know are important to them. For example: it will show you which apps are popular across all your clients, so you can learn how to use them.

Xero HQ app marketplace

The Xero HQ platform also has an app marketplace, which has a focus on apps that will help bookkeepers and accountants with their business. That’s different to the existing Xero app marketplace, which is geared towards small businesses in any industry.

The Xero HQ app marketplace is split up into three tiers, depending on the size of your bookkeeping or accounting practice.

Which Xero HQ app marketplace will suit you?

If you’ve 100 or fewer clients, then you’d be best suited to the “activate” package of apps especially “curated” by the Xero HQ team.

If you have between 100 and 200 clients, then you’re best suited to the “energise” package of apps; practices with 300 or more clients suit the “supercharge” package.

It’s up to you which apps you switch on, but Xero has eliminated the leg work involved in finding apps to suit your business needs.

Some common third party apps, recommended across all three Xero HQ app marketplace tiers include:

  • Futrli: A forecasting and reporting app designed to help control cash flow and accelerate growth. Technically, you can pull all these data out of Xero by running a number of different reports and exporting them into Excel, but this app does all that work for you, and just delivers the insights. Partner pricing starts at $399 per month.
  • Receipt Bank: Extracts relevant information from paper receipts and invoices, imports the data into Xero, categorises it, and stores both the data and receipt safely in the cloud. Your clients just snap a picture of the receipt using the Receipt Bank app on their smartphone or upload from their PC.
  • BOMA: Is a marketing and advertising platform that lets you export data from Xero and use it for your marketing and advertising campaigns. With BOMA you can create and broadcast marketing and advertising messages across five channels (email, Instagram, Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter), including sponsored advertising posts on those platforms. It also provides you with all the imagery, templates and other design needs to create your campaigns. It’s basically a one- stop -shop for digital marketing and advertising. Partner pricing starts at $49 per month.  

Xero HQ is where accounting meets CRM

In essence, the Xero HQ platform is where accounting and customer relationship management meet. Xero provides bookkeepers and accountants with a platform that enables high-level analysis and data management through integrating third-party Xero HQ partner apps.

As I mentioned earlier in this post, Xero HQ serves dual purposes: it encourages bookkeepers to move away from providing basic bookkeeping services to deeper analysis and advisory roles; and they can use the Xero Lifelong Learning platform to up-skill and provide those services.

“Xero HQ serves dual purposes: it encourages bookkeepers to move away from providing basic bookkeeping services to deeper analysis and advisory roles…”

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Our Xero online training courses include EVERYTHING for ONE LOW PRICE. Furthermore, if you select our Lifetime Membership option, you’ll have LIFETIME access to our ongoing course updates. All EzyLearn courses are accredited by the Institute of Certified Bookkeepers (ICB) and can be counted towards Continuing Professional Development (CPD) points. Find out more about our Xero online training courses.