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There’s Never Been a Better Time to Start Your Own Business!

Ah - the freedom of running your own small business!
Ah – the freedom of running your own small business!

A large number of bookkeepers who have completed our online MYOB course have successfully started their own businesses and to reiterate a recent blog post from Steve, the first step in starting your own business is making the decision to begin.  Secondly you have to come up with the idea, and whether it seems like it or not, all of us every day are full of ideas. It doesn’t matter what your level of education is or how old (or young) you are — we all have ideas and desires, so the initial stages of starting a business are really pretty simple. And never think you’re alone; did you know that small businesses (defined as having less than 20 employees) employ a whopping 47 percent of Australia’s total workforce. That’s a lot of people who had ideas and keep growing them.

Making Sure You’re Relevant

The actions you take after you’ve come up with your idea and how you develop this idea into a product or service that others are interested in or need is critical. We provide online training for Australia’s most popular accounting software, MYOB, and it’s clear there’s a strong demand for bookkeeping skills in small businesses around the country. Indeed, if you have accounting or bookkeeping skills and qualifications and are interested in starting a business, then there’s never been a better time to explore a Small Business Course that has now been loaded on our Learning Management System (LMS).

The Small Business Management Course for Self Starters

Our Small Business Management course covers all the aspects you need when starting a business. Our first subject covers ‘Originate and Develop Concepts‘. As you progress, the course provides you with the skills you need to create a business plan so you end up with something tangible and that ensures you’re idea can actually come to fruition. But the course is not only suited to those people thinking about starting a business; it’s also a terrific course if you want to elevate your skills in your current work too.

Our course has been designed by Maggie Richardson from the Australian Small Business Centre. Maggie has helped over 1,000 people build business plans that have turned their ideas into profitable realities.

Remember: Businesses are proven to be more successful when they operate to a business plan.

If this is your year to start a business, come and join us online with the Small Business Management Course or visit the Australian Small Business Centre and get started by subscribing to their blog posts.

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Monthly Bookkeeping and Debtor Management

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We have previously talked about how to account for bad debt, but what about the ways you can manage your debtors to avoid things turning bad, so to speak, in the first place?

Much of your debtor management comes into play when you or your bookkeeper is doing your books.

It might be a good idea to find a bookkeeper who can chase up your accounts receivable every week rather than stress about it all month!

Continue reading Monthly Bookkeeping and Debtor Management
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Why Is a Code of Ethics, Conduct or Practice Important for your Business?

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As a journalist, I choose to act in accordance with the Code of Ethics set out by the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA), of which honesty, fairness, independence, and respect for the rights of others underpins the code.

This means I strive to ensure that every story I research and write about is honest, fair, independent, and respectful to the rights of others—even this blog post! And over the years, most of the organisations I have worked for, have too, upheld the ethos of the MEAA Code of Ethics.

Of course, just because a particular industry or trade union prescribes a set of guidelines, doesn’t necessarily mean each organisation or practitioner within that industry will uphold them—case in point: News International’s involvement in the phone hacking scandal in the UK.

And usually, until there is a breach of ethics like that of News International’s, it’s rather easy to forget why a code of ethics is necessary, particularly since compliance to the code is often voluntary, or at least, highly malleable.

But by submitting to a code of ethics, conduct or practice, you’re establishing yourself as an authority in your field; you’re telling your customers, clients and employees that you have integrity.

If you’re a bookkeeper or operate your own bookkeeping business, your clients are entrusting you with one of their most prized possessions—their livelihoods, and a code of ethics illustrates to them how you and your business operate.

But there are other reasons to adopt a code of ethics, aside from professional status. Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream, for instance, instituted a “values-led business” code by donating 7.5 percent of profits to charity, while other organisations value a work culture grounded in a strong ethical framework that promotes high staff retention, greater customer loyalty, and increased productivity.

For all the different reasons an organisation or business would have to adopt a code of ethics, the outcome never deviates—a code of ethics ensures accountability.

If you choose to submit to the Australian Association of Professional Bookkeepers’ Code of Professional Conduct, you’re communicating to your clients what they can expect from you, and, in turn, what you can expect from them—conduct that is ethical and lawful, confidential, objective and independent, and competent.

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ANNOUNCEMENT: Are you thinking about starting a business this year?

small business course and business plan

Starting a Business

The first step in the process of starting a business is making the decision, but what happens next? It’s the idea. The great thing about being human is that we are always full of ideas. It doesn’t matter what level of education or even your age we all have ideas and we all have desires so the first step of starting a business is pretty simple.

The most important step however is action, how you develop your idea into a product or service that others are interested in or need. We provide online training for Australia’s most popular accounting software, MYOB so it’s clear there is a demand for bookkeeping skills in small businesses. If you have accounting or bookkeeping skills and qualifications and are interested in starting a business you might want to explore a Small Business Course that has now been loaded on our Learning Management System (LMS).

The Small Business Management course covers all the aspects you need when starting a business and the first subject covers “Originate and Develop Concepts“. The rest of the course goes through all the skills you need to create a business plan for your new business so it is a great course to do if you are thinking about starting a business. It’s also a good course if you want to elevate your skills in your current work too.

Our small business course is designed by Maggie Richardson from the Australian Small Business Centre and the good news is that she’s helped over 1,000 people build business plans to turn their ideas into reality. You’ll also be happy to learn that businesses are more successful when they operate to a business plan. If this is your year to start a business come and join us online with the Small Business Management Course.

National Bookkeeping Business Plan Template
Get a bookkeeping business plan created by a registered BAS agent and get started fast

Start a Bookkeeping Business

If a bookkeeping business is something you’re interested in then you’ll be excited to learn that our Registered BAS Agent and Course Creator, Jacci has completed Maggie’s Small Business Management Course and created a business plan for a bookkeeping business that you can use as the basis for your own plan – most of the hard work has been done.

Just change the details for your own circumstances and you’ll have a plan that will help you get clients and stay on track to make a profit and enjoy the benefits of choosing your own hours and working close to home.

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Is Reach Accounting good for serviced based Small Businesses?

We have previously written blog posts about our Bookkeeping Academy and in particular, how students of our MYOB training courses can gain access to this for FREE. We are currently creating training materials on how to use Reach Accounting from NetRegistry.

We are currently creating new content for various cloud accounting software vendors, and in particular is the Reach Accounting package. This package is ideal for small serviced based businesses such as graphic designers, website designers and even bookkeepers . The Sales layout (Invoice) is more suited to small service based businesses’ as it does not allow you to manage items or inventory, but at only $14.95 per month it is extremely affordable while enabling you to remain compliant with your recording and reporting requirements.

Reach Accounting BAS Calculation Report
BAS Calculation Report

Our Course Designer, Certified Bookkeeper and Registered BAS Agent had this to say about Reaching Accounting:

I love the report functionality and its ease of use, especially for people who are not familiar with bookkeeping or accounting reports. The BAS Calculation report is a prime example of this, whereby [quote]it gives us the information needed to simply transfer onto the BAS[/quote] . Another thing that really impressed me was the Thank Client Email functionality, this is received by the client in a professional look, displays the information needed and they can also see a list of their transactions regarding the invoice just by clicking a link in the email.

We are continually creating new content for our Bookkeeping Academy and if you have not already, sign up to one of our MYOB courses which include Lifetime Membership, and free 12 months access to all the content at the Bookkeeping Academy.

Please feel free to share your comments with us our Facebook page and connect with us at Linkedin.

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Is a bookkeeping franchise the way to go?

Bookkeeping franchise or your own business

start a bookkeeping business or franchiseA good percentage of the students who complete our MYOB training courses want to start their own business. Getting into any new venture can be daunting if you have never been in business before and if that’s you a bookkeeping franchise might be the way to go. There are many aspects to Small Business Management and they include:

  • how that business works,
  • how to get and maintain customers,
  • how to provide great customer service
  • how great customer service will bring new customers
  • ensure you do a consistently great job, and
  • manage your finances well

The key aspects to consider when looking at a bookkeeping franchise are the costs. When we ran our training courses in Dee Why (Sydney) there were many business owners in surrounding shops and I recall speaking to one franchised business owner who said that he chose the wrong location and his overheads were killing him. This highlights the most important gripe that most people have about a franchise; “what am I paying for?”

Franchise regulations

Franchising is regulated now which means that bookkeeping franchise operators like all others, now need to disclose more information about existing franchisees. StartupSmart recently wrote about the harsh franchising reality check that a couple went through in South Australia and it’s an interesting read if you want to explore a bookkeeping franchise further. The article quotes Phil Blain, Co-author of The Franchisee’s Guide:

[quote]Thanks to recent legislative changes franchisees are now able to access critical details in the disclosure document like full details of existing franchisees and also people who have left the system.[/quote]

What are you paying for with a bookkeeping franchise?

If the franchise you are researching charges you a percentage of sales it’s good to know exactly how they are going to get you new customers and justify this payment. It’s also important to know that if you buy into a franchise you will have to sell your business to someone who also wants to buy into that franchise. Sometimes the franchiser can have a sale in who buys your business.

The other popular alternative is to go it alone and start your own bookkeeping business by yourself. If you are in this category you will have to spend more time at the beginning choosing your logo and other branding aspects of a small business. You also won’t have the leverage in advertising that a larger company can offer.

MYOB Training Courses

If you are looking for work as an MYOB Bookkeeper and have contemplated buying a bookkeeping franchise feel free to ask questions and share your story at our Facebook page. We have teamed up with Workface to help not only our MYOB Training Course students, but any bookkeepers find work or new customers if they operate their own bookkeeping business. If you are looking for work as an MYOB Bookkeeper feel free to register at their site.

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Are business startups not using MYOB??

cloud accounting and bookkeeping with xero, saasu, and myobI wrote a recent blog about Daniel from Parking Made Easy and his new startup venture and when I dug a little deeper and asked some more questions I discovered that many of the new technological startup companies that he connects with on a day-to-day basis don’t use MYOB and are not considering it.

Daniel is a member of the Fishburners group, a co-working, entrepreneurial non-profit organisation that business startups can join to share ideas, get support and learn new things. Daniel did a survey of some of his fellow startup businesses at Fishburners and discovered some surprising information – not one of them was considering using MYOB bookkeeping software to manage their business financials! We had to ask why?

Several reasons where given, including:

  • Many of the businesses are still very small so they use Microsoft Excel to manage and keep track of their finances (75%)
  • Some of them were considering a cloud-based bookkeeping system because they could access it from anywhere (25%), including
    • Taking advantage of 12 months free use of SAASU, a cloud-based accounting program that is made available to members of the group
    • Another cloud-based bookkeeping system called XERO.

I wrote a blog post about these cloud-based (basically a website that you signup and log in to) online bookkeeping systems in early 2010 and it’s interesting to see how they have progressed over that time.

If you are completing our MYOB training courses don’t fear, the company is still by far the largest provider of bookkeeping and accounting software for small business in Australia so there are lots of jobs being advertised.

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What is a start up? Is your business in this category?

18% of MYOB course students want to start bookkeeping business
18% of MYOB course students want to start their own bookkeeping business

We use this blog to explore what is happening in the world of small business, including the technology they use and what they plan to use in the future. I’ve recently been speaking with a start up entrepreneur who has built a website that helps people like you and I find a place to park our car in our congested cities, by linking car space owners with car owners.

In the time we’ve known each other Daniel started with an idea and a passion to build his website and now has a live website for the world to use. Now that’s a start up business isn’t it? But what about your business?

A survey of students who have recently graduated from our Bookkeeping Academy after completing their MYOB training courses revealed that 18% of them want to start their own bookkeeping business. Is that a startup business? It is in my mind. It’s about having an idea and determination and the drive to start a brand new business and we are committed to helping startup bookkeepers build and grow their business.

The career and business building professionals at our Training Partners, Workface, write a blog about things that you can do to get that dream job or build that bookkeeping business you have thought about for years.

We are also in the production phase of some more great training videos about bookkeeping software that will come out shortly as part of our bookkeeping academy CPD program.

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Where to go to help your bookkeeping clients?

Bookkeeping_Academy_CPD_program_for_MYOB_Training_CoursesAs part of our CPD program for bookkeepers we are discovering, compiling and happily sharing the results of our research. In this blog post we reveal a valuable link of essential tools for bookkeepers.

As a bookkeeper you help you clients with ABN information, Business Activity Statements, Payroll and PAYG Informtion and a host of other activities. It is also common for you to be more accessable than a business’s own accountant so you are often asked for official information relating to communications with the Australian Tax Office.

This link is an essential tool for bookkeepers because it contains a table of links and instructions about topics you may be asked about as a bookkeeper.

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Don’t be afraid, connect with the ATO via Business Portal

ATO Business Portal to lodge your BAS online using MYOBAre you still receiving your Business Activity Statements via mail? We receive our notification that the BAS is ready at the ATO’s Business Portal but the Business Portal is much more useful than just a way to deliver your BAS.

There are some great features of online tax lodgement:

  1. You can lodge your BAS immediately online
  2. You can see historical lodgements
  3. You can change your contact details

The most complicated part of dealing direct with the ATO is the setting up of a digital certificate, but once that is sorted out you have all the convenience that you have come to expect from your internet banking and any other online service. All the information is there, you don’t have to rely on the mail to send or receive your BAS and you know exactly where you stand. If you have missed a lodgement you’ll also find that information at the portal.

The website address for the portal is https://bp.ato.gov.au/ so check it out and get through your compliance issues faster.

MYOB GST, reporting and BAS training coursesOur MYOB Reporting, GST and BAS course (which includes bank reconciliation) shows you how to get to the BASlink to produce a BAS using the data that you have already entered into MYOB. If you have entered everything correctly you will just need to complete your contact name and number and how long it took to complete. Then you can print that form out and keep it in your records. The information you see in the totals can then simply be entered in the Business Portal and submitted to lodge your BAS and get your compliance tasks out of the way so you can focus on running your business.

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Does your business innovate or compete?

Red Ocean Blue Ocean from Dr Sarah Laytons Blog
Red Ocean Blue Ocean from Dr Sarah Laytons Blog

At a recent business owners breakfast I heard someone speak about blue ocean and red ocean strategies. I’m going to write some blog posts about how to build your business as part of our project to help our MYOB students start, maintain and build their own bookkeeping businesses and this article is a fitting way to start.

The Blue Ocean strategy involves finding new demand in an uncontested market which essentially means to innovate. This essentially means create something new, but I think for many small business it could means package your services so that you can demonstrate a difference between your bookkeeping business and others. The Red Ocean strategy is all about competing head to head with your competitors to try to get existing customers to move away from someone else to use your services. You can get a better idea of what Blue Ocean strategy is at their website.

We try to innovate in our services by offering lifetime access to all courses, provide all skill levels in one course (ie. beginners to advanced) so you don’t have to waste time trying to figure out which level you are at and provide different versions of training for Microsoft Word and Excel (ie. 2000, 2003, 2007 and 2010.

This table shows the key differences between the strategies. See which strategy you are pursuing.

Are you looking at starting or growing your business?

Cert IV small business management coming soonDo you want to start a business? Do you want to create a business plan? Does it all seem a bit daunting?

[quote]We are working with Maggie Richardson, author of “Starting a business in Australia” to get her Cert IV in Small Business Management online.[/quote]

This course not only gives you a well rounded education of the requirements to start and build a small business, but you will end up with one-to-one help in creating a business plan as part of the course! Read more..

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What’s included in Day-to-Day MYOB Bookkeeping skills?

ezylearn-MYOB-training-workbooksA short time after we opened our first training centre in Dee Why in 1999 we offered MYOB training courses and our trainers included some very talented ladies Maria Landrelli and Marie Di Blasio. We quickly discovered that business owners and job seekers alike wanted and needed to learn some key Day-to-Day skills so we set about creating the ideal MYOB training course for Day-to-Day Transactions.

Most of our training workbooks are based around case study examples of a practice company. This gives you a real world example of the types of processes that many businesses go through as you learn to perform the transactions using MYOB. We’ve written a detailed description of the journey we take you through in our Day-to-Day MYOB Training Course so check it out and see if it covers some skills you’d like to master.

The MYOB Day-to-Day Course uses a case study of a small business telephone system supplier as they go through the process of purchasing products, providing customer quotes, ordering and supplying products and services, accounts receivable, receiving payments and banking. It’s the perfect course for someone looking for a job where the use of MYOB is required for data entry, or a small business owner that wants to take the next step towards a computerised bookkeeping system.

 

 

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MYOB Bookkeeping Case Study: A telephone system supplier and installer

Cisco IP Telephones for VoIP systems case study for MYOB training courseWe were reviewing the course outline for the MYOB Day-to-Day Transactions course because it covers most of the topics that someone would need if they are performing daily bookkeeping data entry tasks for a small to medium business.

The course provides the foundation skills that most of the other courses are built on. Once you have the day-to-day data entry skills you will be able to more confidently perform a bank reconciliation, generate reports and prepare BAS returns as well as enter the data and prepare reports for payroll.

The MYOB Day-to-Day course uses a very common case study of a company that provides products and services. We use an IT consultant that sells small business VoIP telephone systems and supports their customers with the initial setup as well as ongoing support.

Course features

Since January 2011 our full suit of 5 MYOB training courses comes with lifetime access so you can revisit the training videos, workbooks with step-by-step exercises and knowledge reviews as often as you want for the rest of your working life. Many students use the course as a resource for when they are using

Our MYOB training courses also come with EzyLearn ANSWERS, a service that we provide to create new course content based on  questions from our students. It’s a way that we increase what is covered in our courses while providing students with an level of customisation and support.

MYOB courses created by certified bookkeepers and BAS agents
MYOB courses created by certified bookkeepers and BAS agents

Another great aspect of this course is that we go into the Inventory module of MYOB Accounting software to see how a company can sell products as well as services using the Inventory module of MYOB AccountRight Plus.

Our MYOB training courses are created using consultation with business owners and certified bookkeepers and registered BAS agents who perform bookkeeping tasks for their own customers.

Free MYOB Training Course

We want to give free MYOB training away so you get a chance to learn more about us and see if we are the company you turn to for your MYOB training courses. Follow the link below and you will automatically receive our free MYOB training resources.

The free MYOB Training Course material is now available at our new MYOB Short Courses catalogue site. Access the FREE MYOB Training Now

Tips and Tricks

We announce new course content, free tips and tricks, free training videos and much more via this blog so feel free to subscribe and be kept up-to-date and well informed about MYOB, bookkeeping, Office Administration and Website Design. Enter your email address below:

 

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Hundreds of businesses already use MYOB hosted in the cloud!

ozBeanz MYOB Approved Hosting Provider for MYOB in the cloud
Screen Shot from ozBeanz website

In our research about cloud based accounting software we discovered that MYOB have an approved hosting reseller program. This is a program where MYOB partners with companies who specialise in providing hosting services so that MYOB users can access their data file from anywhere.

We recently spoke to one of those hosting businesses and took their service for a test drive and it was amazingly quick and did everything we needed it to do. We were able to login, access the MYOB data file, create an invoice and email it via the cloud based hosting account!

[quote]This is a definite boon for Remote Contractors who provide bookkeeping services from their own home, like working mums.[/quote]

The term cloud means different things to different people and Heather Cox from asponline wrote an excellent article about hosted MYOB services. We spoke to the people at ozBeanz as well and they have been MYOB Approved Hosting Providers for many, many years.

Do you have any experience using MYOB in the cloud? If you do, we’d like to hear from you at our Facebook page.

Our MYOB training course is also in the cloud so you can complete all 5 MYOB courses no matter where you are.

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Do you have an MYOB bookkeeping question?

When we introduce a new service linked to our online training courses we announce it here at the EzyLearn blog. Today we announce the EzyLearn Q&A Service for the MYOB Accounting Course. This service will be rolled out to all online courses over the coming year.

This is the time of year that forces most MYOB questions to the surface. It’s the time of year when all of a sudden you need to know how to enter a transaction or where to put a value.

EzyLearn’s online MYOB Training course is popular because the lifetime membership gives you the ability to go over the material as often as you like and when you like. It also gives you access to new material that we create. Businesses vary greatly and the needs of each small business are very different and we want to do something about it for you.

Our partner program puts us in touch with many people in the accounting, training and bookkeeping sectors and we are introducing  a new trial service called MYOB Q&A. The service is only available for students enrolled into our online MYOB training course and it works a little like this:

  1. Go to any Learning Outline page in the learning site
  2. Look for the MYOB Q&A section on the right
  3. Enter your details, the category of question and type in your question.

We will do our best to work through student questions with a Certified MYOB consultant to provide you with even deeper knowledge about how to use MYOB.

See what’s included in our online MYOB training course.

Enrol into our online MYOB course today and start learning by 5pm the next business day.

online MYOB training course and support communityUPDATE: This service, available to MYOB, WordPress and Excel students is now called EzyLearn ANSWERS.

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Advanced Xero Training Course Workbook for Cashflow, Budgeting and ROI is now available for Immediate download

Advanced Certificate in Xero Cash-flow, Reporting, Budgets, ROI and Credit Management

This Advanced Xero training workbook BUNDLE follows on from the BAS course case study of Jerry’s Messy Startup and continues Jerry Lames small business endeavours for The Next Quarter.

You’ll learn how to import transaction data for 3 months of bank statement activity and produce advanced financial reports to learn about and interpret the financial results for his business.

Advanced Certificate in Xero Cash-flow, Reporting, Budgets, ROI and Credit Management

This Advanced Xero Course workbook goes deeper into understanding the financial results of bad business decisions on cashflow and credit management. Many small business owners use all of the money in their bank account because they see it is there and available to them when they can instead chose options that help their cashflow.

Jerry uses digital marketing to find clients for his various businesses and in particular uses HiPages to attract leads. HiPages is a project bidding site just like Airtasker, Bark and ServiceSeeking and this case study looks at whether you are better off getting your own website and using Google Ads to attract people to your business directly.

I’ve written about project bidding websites a few times in the past and am not a huge fan for various reasons. See some of the articles I’ve written about project bidding websites.

Don’t get me wrong, project bidding websites are handy and cheap compared to creating your own website and running Google Ads campaigns but the main winner is the project bidding websites themselves.

Bella interviewed some EzyLearn course graduates and one of the interviews with Jo-Anne, a Registered BAS Agent in Melbourne, revealed a great way to use Bark.com when you’re starting a bookkeeping business.

In this case study Jerry buys a small warehouse for his business so he doesn’t have to bring clients to his house and we explore alternative ways that this “capital purchase” could have occurred.

Buy your copy of the Advanced Xero Course in Cashflow, Budgets and Return on Investment Workbook