Posted on March 1, 2023March 3, 2023 by Steve Slisar — 2 Comments

How can Elon make money with Twitter?

Business Today Article about Elon Musk firing Twitter staff - will Twitter become a payment service like PayPal for Xero Integration - EzyLearn

I’ve been on Twitter since March 2009 but I don’t use it as much as I could have, how about you? Lately we’ve been Tweeting about recent enrolments and graduates who have received their certificates because it is a great digital marketing tool to get short messages published. If you go to our website you’ll notice that these Tweets appear in a rotating banner at the top of the page.

Twitter is going through a massive transformation under Elon Musk and whether you like it or not you’ll find that Elon will achieve his goals for the software company. The reason is simple – he is constantly “iterating” and testing and measuring to see what works and what doesn’t work.

What I think will become the most fascinating aspect of Twitter is when it starts becoming a peer to peer payment platform.

Posted on November 14, 2022November 14, 2022 by Steve Slisar — 1 Comment

Learn Xero AND the Integrations that make it a platform for work.

Xero Subscriber Growth - Learn Xero in our online training course and get an Internationally recogised Bookkeeping Certificate - EzyLearn

Xero have just announced their financial and performance results and the headline figures show strong subscriber growth all over the world, including UK and US where they are trying very hard to get market share like they have in Australia.

It’s now more evident than ever that if you get certified in Xero that you could work for a business in most modern countries around the world. Is that what they called Internationally Accredited?

Posted on May 11, 2021September 21, 2021 by Steve Slisar

Xero Learn. Xero software offered for $6 per month. Why are businesses paying $60+ NEW: RESUME REVIEW SERVICE

It’s interesting and exciting that Xero now offer their Xero Learn service to training course publishers like EzyLearn for $6 per month. This ongoing access to Xero Accounting software seemed exciting at first but then I realised that it’s just accounting software! AND it’s just for training! AND 30 days is MORE than enough per case study!

Most students don’t want to access Xero accounting software forever. Even business owners don’t really want to pay an ongoing fee for their accounting software – they want something else..

Posted on March 22, 2021March 23, 2021 by Steve Slisar — 1 Comment

Is Xero the software of choice for real estate property managers

Re-leased-property management software integration image at Xero partner integration website - smart digital marketing

I was reading some recent announcements from Xero as they try to displace Sage as the small business accounting software of choice in the United Kingdom and notice some announcements they have about how Xero is a great tool for property management.

It was an eye opener because it shows how aggressive they are against MYOB by quoting a client publicly who converted from MYOB to Xero. They didn’t mention that Re-Leased software also has an integration with QuickBooks Online – but why would they? Here’s what they wrote..

Posted on March 4, 2020March 5, 2020 by Steve Slisar

Lowest MYOB Training Course Price Guarantee

Compare-Online-Xero-MYOB-Bookkeeping-Training-Courses-1

EzyLearn is a lowest cost procedure of training courses and for March 2020 we’re offering a lowest course price guarantee on the MYOB AccountRight and MYOB Essentials training courses!

Continue reading Lowest MYOB Training Course Price Guarantee

Posted on December 8, 2019October 26, 2021 by Steve Slisar — 6 Comments

Xero going up a pesky $2 rather than $27.50

Best value for money Xero online accounting training courses or $20 per week - $2 per month increase in Xero monthly support

It almost seemed like Xero was giving you $27.50 of extra value when they announced their $2 per month increase last week. These effects take effect on 18 March 2020 but not everyone wants Hubdoc and competitors like QuickBooks already offered similar functionality!

Xero has had a love/hate relationship with bookkeepers ever since the days when they promoted their accounting software as so easy that small business owners could use it themselves – without the cost of a bookkeeper – and it looks like they are well on their way with this mission. Continue reading Xero going up a pesky $2 rather than $27.50

Posted on September 10, 2018November 9, 2018 by Steve Slisar

Watch out for FAKE Statements of Attainment for Xero & MYOB Short Courses

I’VE WRITTEN MUCH ABOUT accredited training in the past, relating particularly to the use of the term “Diploma”. Just recently, I discovered more murky marketing by a newcomer to the bookkeeping short courses industry.

What’s scary about these training course providers is that they make claims to offer a Diploma, and then after 2 years in business, they apologise for “something beyond their control” like a change in legislation which tells them to stop calling their courses Diplomas, when they are NOT and NEVER WERE IN THE FIRST PLACE!

Want to know why they do this?

Continue reading Watch out for FAKE Statements of Attainment for Xero & MYOB Short Courses

Posted on July 24, 2018August 23, 2023 by Steve Slisar

The Risk-Free Way to Become a Freelancer

woman stressed about credit management and cashflow management

IF YOU’VE EVER DIPPED your foot into starting your own business, while keeping a steady income flowing from elsewhere, all at the same time, then you’re far from alone.

During the global financial crisis and in the years that immediately followed it, a funny thing happened to the job market: it birthed a freelancer economy, of which a third of Australians in the workforce are a part, and many of these freelancing individuals are also working at (an)other job/s.

Continue reading The Risk-Free Way to Become a Freelancer

Posted on April 10, 2018April 9, 2018 by Steve Slisar

What are Practitioner-Created (and Endorsed) Training Courses?

women studying accredited training course online in MYOB Quickbooks Xero

Learn from the professionals living and working in your industry

YOU HEAR A LOT about industry association-accredited training courses and internationally accredited training couses; which are typically training that’s delivered by an industry association at a prescribed time, in person, or delivered by a third party provider.

EzyLearn chose to be an Institute of Certified Bookkeepers (ICB)-accredited training provider for six years until this February, when we pivoted to focus on practitioner-created training courses instead.

“Real world” training courses

EzyLearn’s course content has always focussed on real world scenarios, whether that’s in our case studies or in the exercises students are asked to complete. That’s because we want our students to get a thorough grasp of the kind of work they’ll be expected to do during the course of their job.

That’s especially true for students of our MYOB, Xero and QuickBooks training courses, who either are, or will work, as bookkeepers for a number of different clients from different industries. So instead of including generalised case studies and exercises in our course work, we include ones that relate to specific types of businesses and transactions you’ll encounter working as a bookkeeper.

The same is true for our Excel training courses, where you can learn how to use Excel to estimate the return on investment (ROI) on a granny flat, among other real-world exercises.

The “practitioner-created” difference

We’re able to do this because our training courses are created by bookkeeping and accounting professionals, not by software companies.

Software companies and their developers do a great job at creating accounting software to manage a business’s accounting needs. But they don’t always know which different accounting scenarios will apply and when. Bookkeepers who understand Australian tax do, however.

EzyLearn doesn’t teach Australian tax law or procedures, but because our courses are developed by accounting practitioners, they’ll show you where different tax procedures apply.

Industry association courses

Membership with an industry association or associations can be a popular choice for some registered BAS agents and they often provide training to their members as part of their continuing professional development (CPD). This training usually takes the form of in-person seminars, which may discuss legislative changes or feature a product demonstration from a software company; and webinars that discuss similar.

For in-depth software training, most associations — the ICB, for example — refer students to an accredited third-party training organisation. This third-party accredited organisation will have chosen to become accredited with the ICB and pays an annual fee to them in order to have this accreditation and be able to share this fact on their website.

A lot software training organisations are partners with a provider, like Xero or MYOB, and the train students according to how MYOB or Xero recommend them to. There’s nothing wrong with this kind of training, particularly if you’re only in need of a quick refresh or a general software skills.

Software partners vs. bookkeeping practitioners

Most software partners are companies that understand software and cloud computing first, bookkeeping and accounting second. But training companies that offer courses developed by practitioners have set the new benchmark in software training.

EzyLearn has always offered practitioner-created training courses, and now we’re going to work with more practitioners to create more courses, and more content for existing courses.

Over the six years that EzyLearn was an ICB-accredited training organisation, we found that it wasn’t our industry association accreditation that brought students to our courses, it was the content, grounded in real-world scenarios, that did.

Practitioners create high watermark

Instead of learning how to create a pivot table in Excel, or other data sources you can use to create a pivot table, containing any old data and for any old reason, our practitioner create — and endorsed — Excel training courses give you a real-world example exercise to work from, so you understand when and why you will need to use a pivot table.

That’s important because Excel, as anyone who’s used it at an advanced level will know, is a complex maze of tables and graphs and formulas. So when it comes to Excel skills, you either use them or lose them. By grounding our Excel training content in real-world examples, it makes it just that much easier to hold on to what you’ve learnt until you do get to use them.

(If you do happen to lose them, students enrolled in our lifetime access courses can always go back and refresh their skills whenever they want.) By the way, we’ve written previously about the mighty Excel pivot table.

Continuing professional development courses

If you’re a bookkeeper or BAS agent used to working with one software — MYOB, say — you can update your skills with our Xero or QuickBooks training courses, which can be counted towards your continuing professional development (CPD) hours.

***

Find out more about the online training courses we provide and those helping to create, endorse and who are benefiting from our courses.

Learn Microsoft Excel from scratch or brush up your Excel skills, at your own pace, with our affordable Excel online training courses — where you get THE LOT (that’s 9 courses in total) for ONE LOW PRICE — everything included! Volume corporate discounts are available and our courses count towards CPD Points.

Creating and managing databases is included as part of our Advanced Microsoft Excel training courses — and you receive access to ALL OF OUR COURSES, including ALL SKILLS LEVELS for ONE LOW PRICE. You can even start your Excel journey with our FREE Beginners’ Excel Course Workbook. Read more about our beginners’, intermediate and advanced Excel training courses on our website, or enrol to start learning by 5pm tomorrow!

Posted on December 19, 2017December 20, 2017 by Steve Slisar

Video: Xero Training Course Announcement – ALL Included

Video, Video, Video. Everyone tells me you need to do it

I’M NO STRANGER TO NETWORKING, no stranger to making speeches, doing presentations and so forth. But creating a video is still NERVE WRACKING!

We all have issues about how we look, how we sound, how well we present ourselves and I went through all of these emotions before creating this video — SO I hope you like it.

It’s only short and covers all the topics I was hoping to convey and I’d love to hear your feedback. It’s so easy to create videos and publish them on your own website these days and we show you how to do this in our WordPress courses.

EzyLearn is a small business and we’ve been teaching students how to use software to:

find a job
do better at their current job and
start and manage their own business

And,we’ve been doing it for over 20 years.

When we created the training courses for MYOB in the late 1990’s I decided that we, as a company, need to create our own training materials so that we could define the learning stories that take students from epiphany to epiphany — that is one of the most rewarding aspects of training.

I was fortunate enough to work with some very experienced MYOB Certified Consultants who helped deliver and influence the contents of our MYOB bookkeeping course training materials. Since those days we have added and added, and refined content, based on feedback from student feedback.

We’ve also worked with registered BAS agents, accountants and corporate accounting staff to continue to add to and refine our courses so we can keep providing the BEST VALUE FOR MONEY COURSES in Xero & MYOB.

Working with the Best People

Having a good track record, great training courses and satisfied students is a great reward for running EzyLearn, but the best part — and the part that I could not do without — is the team of people I’m fortunate enough to work with, and part of this message is to thank YOU for helping me grow and manage the EzyLearn experience. Those people are:

Ange: For doing the research, putting new technology into perspective and writing many of the words that people read in our blogs and other training content over the last 6 years
Iroshini: For managing the technical end of our multiple Learning Management Systems
Brian: For helping to automate our Enrolment Voucher System that enables thousands of students to access low cost courses automatically
Tracey: For providing the last word in what is correct and incorrect in regards to anything BAS-related
Helen: For helping to co-ordinate the mammoth task of creating, version control and design of training materials
Luke: For consistently great customer service so that every student can get through their courses quickly and efficiently and new students understand all the information on our websites
Richard: For making sure that all of our procedures are followed meticulously and changed where needed
Rosie: For making sure that our accounts are something that I don’t need to worry too much about
Yvette: For coordinating and editing content and helping with marketing for all various aspects of the business
Linus: For the deep level coding and hosting advice you have provided when we need it

Plus there are the various smaller tasks which our international workers and virtual assistants have helped with as well, so thanks too to you all!

We’re going DEEP in 2018

As a training course content creator EzyLearn focuses on our niche markets of

accounting
office administration
marketing

and in 2018 we’re going to give existing students more (watch out for an announcement about our LIFELONG Learning Platform — which will include MYOB and QuickBooks courses, not just Xero).

We’ve also beefed up the success programs for employees working through their careers and the sales success program to help our students upskill and reskill to earn more in 2018.

Learn more about these programs here:

Visit Workface for their Career Academy Success Program, and the
EzyLearn page about the Business Sales Success Program for those who want to learn how to make more sales and get better clients for their business.

Make you subscribe using the form below or at this EzyLearn Blog Subscribe Link to receive these updates.

More about Property Investment Courses

I’ve spent a lot of time learning more about property investment, renovation and the real estate industry and we’ll have some new courses in 2018 to help you improve your retirement and wealth by investing in property. Stay tuned for that!

Posted on October 23, 2017October 18, 2017 by Steve Slisar

Different Ways to Find Work as a Bookkeeper

How can you earn money from bookkeeping?

BAS AGENTS PERFORM MANY of the same tasks as a basic bookkeeper, which includes entering receipts, coding financial transactions and generating invoices, but there is just one key difference: registered BAS agents are allowed to prepare and lodge activity statements on behalf of their clients.

In order to become a registered BAS agent, you must have completed, at a minimum, a Certificate IV Financial Services in either bookkeeping or accounting through an accredited and nationally recognised training provider.

Most people don’t have much trouble completing the Certificate IV, but the requirements set out by the Tax Practitioner’s Board (TPB) that often present a barrier to becoming a registered BAS agent. See the list of blogs below for more information about becoming a registered BAS agent.

Tax Practitioner’s Board BAS agent requirements

In addition to completing a Cert IV, in order to become a registered BAS agent the TPB also requires you to have at least 1,400 hours of work experience. This work must be done under the supervision of a registered BAS agent or accountant in the past 4 years (it’s 1,000 hours if you’re a member of a professional association).

You also need to have completed a board-approved course in basic GST/BAS taxation principles (this course may be included in your primary education). There are also mandatory continuing professional development (CPD) requirements that each BAS agent must keep up with in order to remain registered.

There’s a lot to do, but becoming a registered BAS agent isn’t the only way to carve out a successful career for yourself. Depending on how you want to work, there are plenty of other options you may also consider, such as:

Work for other bookkeeping businesses

If you work as an employee of a bookkeeping business, you can perform all the same tasks and duties as a registered BAS agent can, as you’ll be covered by their BAS registration and oversight.

As long as you are on the bookkeeping business’s payroll, you can provide BAS services — that means, you can also work as a casual or temporary worker providing you don’t invoice for your work using an ABN, but instead use your tax file number. This may also have other benefits, too, as the business will be required to withhold tax and contribute to your superannuation.

Work directly for a business as a wage earner

Again, as long as you’re on the business’s payroll, you don’t have to be a registered BAS agent to provide BAS services. The only difference here is that, while you can prepare the business’s activity statements, you won’t be able to lodge them. They will need to have their accountant do that last step, instead.

You can still work under a similar arrangement as mentioned above, either as a part-time, casual or temporary staff member, and, so long as you’re drawing a wage from the business, you can perform BAS services.

Carry out basic bookkeeping from home on the side

You may even choose to provide basic bookkeeping services to small businesses remotely from your home office, and still invoice them using your ABN. Many bookkeepers work as virtual assistants and some work a combination of casual and part-time hours for bookkeeping or accountancy practices, or as an employee of a business, and supplement their income with some basic bookkeeping work on the side, which offers both flexibility and stability at the same time.

*******

Thinking of expanding your bookkeeping skills? Considering becoming a BAS agent? Check out just some of the blogs we’ve featured on BAS agents:

Want more advice and information? Subscribe to our blog.

learn online training Xero courses videos for less

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.

Posted on February 14, 2017March 25, 2020 by Steve Slisar

What Bookkeepers Can Learn From Real Estate Agents: Facebook Advertising

Facebook – Great for Local Marketing

using facebook for bookkeeping marketing — *Facebook can be extremely useful for marketing to a local audience.*

In its decade of existence, Facebook has built up a wealth of data about its users, data that it likes to sell back to those who need it, in the form of targeted advertising. Facebook advertising, though similar in its approach, is very different to Google Ads in what it delivers.

Real estate agents discovered the value of Facebook advertising early, and have used a combination of images and videos to successfully deliver their marketing messages and sale pitches directly to their target market and in order to set their prices. Continue reading What Bookkeepers Can Learn From Real Estate Agents: Facebook Advertising

Posted on January 17, 2017August 13, 2018 by Steve Slisar

There is No Official Diploma in Xero

Nationally Recognised Courses in Quickbooks, MYOB and Xero Courses do NOT Exist

Federal Government Department of Education and Training myskills website check on RTOs and accredited courses A lot of our enquiries regarding MYOB, Xero and Quickbooks courses are from students looking for a bookkeeping job or start a bookkeeping business so when they ask about accredited or certified courses in accounting programs its because they want a qualification or because of what they’ve read on training websites – some of them are very confusing. The biggest confusion that I’ve come across lately has been about a Diploma in Xero! it doesn’t exist.

The best place to find out the truth about Nationally accredited courses is at the official government websites: http://training.gov.au/Home/Tga and https://www.myskills.gov.au/ and if you do a search at either of these sites for Xero,MYOB or Quickbooks and you’ll find there are no results and the reason is simple – bookkeeping skills are the same regardless of which software program you use.

When the Department of Education & Training began the process of regulating the education industry last decade I explored the options of applying to turn EzyLearn into an RTO and decided against it because of the red tape and high compliance costs. I’ve since spoken to managers at some VERY large companies that initially decided to jump on the RTO bandwagon only to discover many years later that it was all a huge cost for very little benefit. This doesn’t mean that RTO’s are bad, it’s just that the business owner needs to go through an evaluation process to see if it is financially viable. Here’s some recent news about RTO’s that have experienced financial difficulty.

EzyLearn has Partnered with an RTO for Cert IV in Bookkeeping!

EzyLearn creates, delivers and supports short courses, often called night courses, in the popular accounting software programs for a low cost and with the flexibility of online delivery so you can start quickly anytime (no waiting for a course schedule) and then progress at your own pace. See our Cloud Accounting Courses here.

If you’re looking for a Nationally Accredited Bookkeeping Certificate then learn more about what’s included and the costs for a Cert IV in Bookkeeping.

Compliance Requirements for RTO’s

A great example of one very onerous compliance task for RTO’s is that they need to keep student records for 30 years, 30 years! That’s more onerous that the 7 long years a business needs to keep tax records for the ATO! If you are really interested, take a detailed read of Standard 3 the site that governs RTO’s in Australia, Australian Skills Quality Authority (scroll down just past half way).

EzyLearn has always been a creator of training course content and we focus on keeping our content up to date, marketing it, delivering it via an LMS and supporting students – that includes delivering exceptional value for a low price and using as many learning tools as we can (workbooks, exercise files, training workbooks, knowledge reviews).

When students ask us whether we are accredited or whether our certificates are accredited we try to find out what is most important for them: to get software skills and experience or to get a nationally accredited certificate – there is a MASSIVE difference in price and I’ve written this blog to help you find the right course for your circumstances.

Nationally Accredited Courses and RTO’s

Here are a couple things that will help you find the right course and the right training company.

Only an RTO (Registered Training Organisation) is able to deliver nationally accredited courses and more specifically the assessments that deem whether you are Competent or Not Yet Competent.
RTO’s can only deliver Courses based on the subjects available from a Nationally Accredited Library of subjects

If you are thinking about doing a Nationally Accredited Course check out whether that training provider is listed at this site: http://training.gov.au/Search. While you are at it see if the course they advertise is also listed.

Diplomas are Available for Accounting: Check your RTO

See if you can find a Diploma in Xero, or MYOB or Quickbooks? The answer is no, because their isn’t one. What some training companies offer is a Cert IV in Bookkeeping or a Diploma in Accounting and they may focus on using Xero or MYOB or other software but if that is the case you should delve a little deeper into the RTO and see how good they really are. If you search the training.gov.au website you’ll be able to see all of the information about every RTO. The Investment Banking Institute in Melbourne is a highly regarded RTO for the provision of financial services and bookkeeping courses and when you visit their Official Organisation Details page you can see the courses on their “scope”, their contact details and if there are any restrictions on the training they deliver.

If you are really that interested in learning more about accreditation and accredited courses you should take a look at the Cert IV in Bookkeeping. There are 24 available courses but an RTO only needs to deliver 13, of which 6 are core units. That means that apart from the core subjects EVERY RTO is able to mix and match with 18 of the potential elective subjects. I’m not the best at statistics but this means there are LOTS of potential combinations of subjects that can make up a Cert IV in Bookkeeping.

See my conclusion and references for examples of the type of information a good RTO will make available about the student satisfaction (Quality Reporting Indicators).

Accreditation by the Software Company: MYOB, QuickBooks, Xero

Another type of accreditation are those offered by the software companies but let’s be honest, these services are revenue raising “partner” programs and the more “paying” partners a software company has the more money they earn and the more exposure to clients they have. I recall when MYOB was in it’s early days (and still called Data Tech) that the main requirements to become a partner where to do at least 3 installations – but there was not training or quality control beforehand, it was almost like you had to wing it and if you did 3 then you were rewarded with a partner status!

In those early days EzyLearn delivered MYOB courses and some of the students who came along shared experiences about “MYOB Certified Consultants” who just flew in, set everything up and then flew out leaving a mess that often they wouldn’t fix. These consultants made themselves appear like super heroes who could only possibly come for one day at a time (they were booked out for months of course and charged a fortune). The company’s accountant or accounting staff were usually left to clean up the mess and make everything right. Sure,things may have changed these days and the standards imposed by the software companies are much higher but to me this accreditation is one of the last places a bookkeeper should turn to – and the last accreditation an employer should look for.

The best accreditation in my mind is accreditation (or certification) by the industry and that’s normally delivered by not-for-profit associations that aim to increase the education and compliance of their members.

Accredited by the Industry

There are several associations for bookkeepers who want to become Registered BAS Agents but the most progressive is the Institute of Certified Bookkeepers. This organisation came from the UK where they are still a leading member group, when the Australian Bookkeeping Industry began the process of regulation and they recognised the benefit of letting their partners use their logo to demonstrate their membership status.

We spend over $1000 pa on this membership but we do it because our students are then able to join the Institute as student members.

Conclusion

Firstly,I did NOT see myself writing all this.

Secondly if it’s important for you to receive a nationally accredited qualification do some basic research in the company delivering the courses and make sure they are an RTO and not just using words like Diploma in Xero to confuse you and finally check out the subjects that they include in their Cert IV, you may find one company’s Cert IV is better than another.

MYOB Training Courses with 30 Day money back guarantee Finally, If you decide you just want to learn how to use the software using practical exercises and following step by step processes that are performed in most companies everyday then enrol into one of our EzyLearn courses. The Certificate we provide is a Certificate of Completion once all our Knowledge Reviews have been completed successfully and these knowledge reviews are at the end of each section of each course. In the MYOB course we have 5 courses.

The best guarantee I can offer is a 30 day money back guarantee. Happy Learning

Some other references you may find interesting:

http://www.asqa.gov.au/media-and-publications/when-to-consider-course-accreditation.html
https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/F2014L01377
http://www.asqa.gov.au/vet-registration/comply-with-your-obligations/quality-indicator-reporting.html
https://www.breastfeeding.asn.au/rto-annual-quality-indicator-results (example of the Quality Reporting Indicators for good quality RTO’s)

Posted on November 9, 2015 by Steve Slisar

Will you always be a MYOB Bookkeeper?

Now that you are more Internet savvy will you change careers from bookkeeping?

A report by the Department of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary (thank you to whoever shortened it subsequently) in 2012 attempted to identify the links between education and jobs. The report created for the NATIONAL VOCATIONAL EDUCATION AND TRAINING RESEARCH PROGRAM (NCVER) had 4 key findings and this was the first one:

[quote]Some fields of education have tight links to the workplace (for example, nursing), while others have a much weaker relationship with specific jobs, such as in finance and agriculture.[/quote]

I was reviewing the courses we offer and the most popular are our:

MYOB Courses (has been our biggest seller since 2008),
Xero Courses (which have had a MASSIVE uptick in enrolments this year) and
Microsoft Excel (doing very well now that we tell people about it).

As you can see our most popular courses are financially based ones and most of the students are aiming to either change careers or start their own bookkeeping business so they can work more flexible hours. If we look at the research paper and understand that our students (and most bookkeepers) are working in a variety of different business sectors it makes sense that they’ll be exposed to many different and new skills, particularly as businesses adopt the use of more software and in particular Internet based software – ie. the Cloud.

Is marketing a better career choice than bookkeeping?

If I look at what I spend most of my time doing it’s marketing, and I have to admit I prefer that work to bookkeeping, but you might also find that it’s not unusual for financial types to broaden the type of work they do.

Page 22 of this report, under the heading Trajectories and motivations, the report uncovered:

[quote]Students’ reasons for wanting to undertake further study are related to the reasons why they embarked on study in the first place. While getting a job was at the centre, this was interwoven with their priorities, values and circumstances more broadly. One nursing student reflected the views of other students saying, ‘This is my area. In five years time I will be a nurse. In ten years time a nurse. I will be a nurse until I retire’. Students undertaking accounting and finance programs saw their field in broad terms which included management and other aspects of the finance industry, but also included related areas such as marketing.[/quote]

I recently wrote about bookkeepers offering marketing advice to their clients and my discovery of this report re-confirmed that this is possible on a professional level!

Is Content Marketing the best type of marketing for small businesses like real estate agents?

I have to admit something at this point. My team and I are working on a project offering content marketing solutions for real estate agents and our showcase real estate agent sells homes in Sydney’s Lower North Shore. If you search for him you’ll get to the website that we’ve just assembled and you’ll experience the significant changes it will go through over the coming weeks as he finishes his round of educational videos for people who are looking to buy or sell a property. Go on, give it a quick search – his name is Derek Farmer.

With the importance of content marketing / online marketing / digital marketing it’s no wonder that this profession has great growth potential and just like bookkeeping it is work that can be completed on a contract basis and better still from your own home!

Here are some posts I recently wrote about WordPress and Content Marketing:

What is inbound marketing?

Can a bookkeeper give marketing advice?

How do you manage your online content marketing?

Who really cares about Sensis? Yellow Pages? Content Marketing shows you care.

Blogging for Business Training Course

Content Marketing vs Google Adwords

Want to try Content Marketing for your business?

I’ve teamed up with a some writers and editors and other marketing types to create our Content Marketing services (and course – which is currently in development) and if you are interested in being kept in the loop you can register at our content marketing course page for free – follow the links.

[quote]Work with me to put your content marketing strategy together[/quote]

Better still I’m one of the mentors for the Marketing training course at the Australian Small Business Centre (whose small business management courses are delivered via our LMS – Learning Management System) so if you enrol into that course (and choose the mentor option) you’ll be able to work with me to put your content marketing strategy together.

[button link=”http://ezylearnonline.com.au/courses/sales-and-marketing-courses/content-marketing-training-courses/landing-pages/”]Content Marketing free Registration[/button]

Posted on June 15, 2015June 15, 2015 by Angela — 1 Comment

Saasu, Westpac, St George Bank Can Help Reach Independent Contractor Clients

SAASU and the Big Four

Saasu recently announced a new partnership with Westpac bank to deliver direct bank feeds to Saasu and Westpac customers, including those with St George business accounts. Among the new features, the Westpac/Saasu partnership promises ‘real-time insight into cash-flow with online invoices, expenses, banking, budgets, payroll, inventory and financial reports.’

We’ve been following emerging trends in accounting software to ensure our training courses meet current market demands. It’s why, in addition to our flagship MYOB Training Courses, we offer training courses in Xero and are currently developing an Intuit Quickbooks Online Training Course.

As a St George customer, one of our team members was interested in what this new partnership would mean for Saasu customers, and even wondered whether it would be worthwhile making the switch from MYOB, given Saasu’s relatively cheap offering of cloud-accounting software.

SAASU could easily replace Reach Accounting

I recently wrote of the sad news of Reach Accounting software shutting down and there might be some good news for independent contractors who operate their own business. SAASU – a privately owned Australian company has a $15 per month plan aimed at helping small business manage their bookkeeping in the cloud with cheap accounting software.

Direct bank feeds without the use of third-party providers

What I discovered was promising. For Westpac customers, the partnership brings the ability for Saasu to provide direct bank feeds for free, without the use of a third-party provider, which so many other cloud-accounting platforms use – even MYOB utilises BankLink, for example. For non-Westpac customers, little will change in terms of bank feeds; Saasu will continue to utilise the services of Yodlee for bank feeds just like Xero and Zoho.

Bank feeds eliminate nearly all of the data entry associated with bookkeeping, and they’ve been a revolution for small business owners and bookkeepers alike. As the most time-consuming, yet crucial, part of the bookkeeping process, automatic bank feeds, which pull your bank transactions into your accounting software, allow BAS agents to get on with actually preparing a client’s BAS, while business owners have an up-to-date picture of what’s happening with their cash-flow as it’s happening.

Bank feeds are changing the role of the bookkeeper

Note that I’ve mentioned BAS agent, rather than bookkeeper. Technically, the BAS agent I’m talking about is a bookkeeper, but with bank feeds now pretty well commonplace among most cloud-accounting apps, there’s really no need for them to engage in that tedious data entry process, freeing them up to take on more clients and earn more money.

So will our team member be switching to Saasu? No, not just yet. The latest Westpac partnership is promising and our independent contractor certainly liked the pricing, but Saasu lacks one major feature that our independent contractor couldn’t live without: a mobile app, or at least a well-functioning one. The current Saasu app hasn’t been updated since 2011, and doesn’t work on an iPhone running IOS 5 or higher, so despite the volume of small businesses that invoice from the road (think: tradies), Saasu appears to have neglected it’s mobile properties.

Mobile is the future of cloud-accounting

MYOB has the MYOB OnTheGo app that businesses can use to check outstanding payments, create invoices, and even update customer records. The app allows users to manage their accounts when they have the time – like in the few minutes waiting to meet with a business associate for lunch, for instance – rather than forcing them to set aside large portions of their time to stay on top of their accounts, which is really why bank feeds and cloud-accounting have become so popular. Of course, MYOB isn’t the only company to offer a mobile app – Xero, Quickbooks, and Zoho all offer mobile apps to compliment their desktop offerings.

As for Saasu, they’re certainly the ones to watch. For what was once a nimble Aussie startup to have partnered with one of the big four banks, it shows that there’s a new frontier of cloud-account nearly upon us.

Posted on May 28, 2015May 26, 2015 by Angela — 3 Comments

Finally! Tax Deductions for Cars for Small Business Owners in the Federal Budget

Instant Tax Deduction, Just Add Money

invoicing small business — Here’s a carrot to start a new business and get instant tax deductions rather than deptreciation

In a recent post about subsidised childcare, I wrote about how the federal government has made it easier for families with one parent working at home to access subsidised childcare. In that post I also mentioned how much easier it is to start your own home-based business (for one, you’ve got all these marvelous training courses from EzyLearn to guide you on your way!) now than it was a few years ago.

But there’s some more good news for small business owners: the government also announced a raft of tax cuts and bonuses to the tune of $5.5b in this year’s federal budget, among them an unlimited number of tax deductions for buying cars, machinery or any other equipment valued under $20k each.

The government to inspire innovation

This is a huge increase to the previous amount small businesses were able to claim as tax deductions, which was a mere $1000 per item. Anything above that $1000 had to be depreciated via the decline in value process. Treasurer, Joe Hockey said the reason behind the tax breaks for small businesses was to encourage and inspire innovation in Australia, which has for years, suffered from a lull in home-grown innovation.

[quote]“This will be of enormous benefit to their bottom line and help businesses with their cash flow. It means innovation. It means jobs. It means more money to invest and grow your business,”[/quote] Mr Hockey told parliament in his budget speech.

For purchases over $20,000, they can also be claimed but will go into a pool to be depreciated; at 15 percent in the first income year and then 30 percent for each year after that.

But wait! There’s more: tax cuts and FBT allowances

Small businesses will also enjoy a tax cut of 2.5 percent for the 780,000 small companies with an annual turnover of fewer than $2 million, while sole traders will get a 5 percent tax cut, capped at $1,000.

Small businesses that give their employees more than one work-related portable electronic device (tablets and laptops, for example) will also be eligible for a fringe benefits tax (FBT) exemption from April 1^st 2016. This could prove to be a big motivator for small businesses that would like to see more of their employees working remotely from home or while they’re out on the road.

If you’re already in business and you’ve been thinking about upgrading that PC or company car, if you do it before June 30 this year, you’ll be able to claim it as a tax deduction for this financial year. The same goes for those of you who may have been thinking about starting your own small business, be it a home-based one or otherwise – any of those capital purchases you may need to make to get your business off the ground can be immediately claimed as a tax deduction so long as they’re under $20k.

For now, though, you can still get yourself skilled in MYOB before you start your business and claim it as a tax deduction by taking one of our online MYOB training courses, which give you access to ALL MYOB Training Courses for 12 months or LIFETIME access. Or for more on starting a home-based business, subscribe to our blog or browse the many training courses on our website.

Oh, and Did I Mention The Bookkeeping Business Opportunity?

I hinted at the 30 day money back guarantee that we now offer for the Bookkeeeping Business Opportunity, but you’ll be thrilled to hear that we will shortly also be announcing the inclusion of all of our software training courses!