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Turn Your Wage Payments into a Business Loan

Only Managing Payroll on an Ad Hoc Basis? We Show You How

managing ad hoc payroll
If you know that you can’t quite make payroll, a short-term business loan may see you through and avoid penalties.

WE’VE RECENTLY UPDATED THE course content in our Intermediate Microsoft Excel training courses to include a workbook and spreadsheet (that you can use in your own business) showing you how to manage ad hoc payroll using Microsoft Excel. This will enable you to calculate your PAYG and superannuation obligations in Excel.

Using Excel to work out your PAYG and super obligations is a great way for small businesses, with a small number of employees, to save money. It saves you having to purchase this extra module in MYOB or Xero, for instance, when you may rarely use it. Saving money for small business is crucial as often it’s these same small businesses that have trouble making payroll payments each week, fortnight or month — and then wind up incurring further fees from the ATO when they’re late with their reporting and payments. It’s a vicious cycle.

When you can’t make payroll

If you’re finding it a stretch to make payroll payments, don’t worry, you’re not alone. Lots of business owners have trouble making payroll. But there are things you can do about it. We find that it frequently comes down to poor credit management processes or perhaps a downward trend in a business’ cycle that’s been missed due to poor or inefficient accounting processes. All of these can be rectified.

If the reason your business can’t make payroll is due to one or more shortcomings in your business’ operations, remedy the problems now. Similarly, if credit management is the issue, and late-paying clients are partially to blame, then tighten up or implement a credit management process. If it’s the result of bookkeeping that’s not up-to-date, find a bookkeeper to manage this for you.

How you can make payroll when cash is tight

Get financing. There are lots of ways to do this, but a common method, particularly if you need access to funds quickly, is to get a short-term business loan. Many short-term business loans don’t require businesses to have a great credit score, and will offer funding of as little as $5,000 right up to $500,000.

You’d have between 3 and 36 months to pay back the loan, but you need to be aware — the annual percentage rates (APR) are usually high. Most lenders require the business to have been active for a minimum of 9 months, and have revenue of more than $75,000 per annum. However, if paid off quickly, these can be an alternative to incurring penalties — it will obviously depend on your business’ individual circumstances.

Keep on top of bookkeeping

If you stay on top of your bookkeeping, you’ll either reduce the likelihood that you won’t make payroll, or as a worst case scenario, be able to foresee the periods when you won’t be able to, and be able to arrange finance in time to cover it.

***

Use the Ad Hoc Payroll Guide included in our Intermediate Microsoft Excel training courses to determine the rate of PAYG tax to withhold — and the required super contribution amounts in Excel. Visit our website for more information on our entire suite of Excel training courses.

Xero online training course

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

All of our online training courses can also be counted towards Continuing Professional Development points.

 

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EOFY: Organise Your Reports and Records

We Show You The Reports to Generate Now for End of June

profit and loss statements P&Ls
Now’s time to take stock of the reports that need to be generated to keep you GST and tax compliant.

THE LAST QUARTER OF the 2016/17 financial year is upon us, so now is the time to organise your reports and records; including Profit and Loss Statements, Accounts Receivable and Payable, PAYG and Super payments. We’ve previously written about writing off stock and inventory and getting your business expenses in order. In this post we’ll take a look at the reports and records you’ll need for EOFY, which you’ll learn how to produce in our MYOB BAS Reporting and GST or Xero GST, Reporting and BAS training courses.

Profit and loss statement

Depending on the structure of your business, you may be legally required to include a P&L statement with your tax return or activity statements. Your tax agent will be able to advise you if your business will be required to file a P&L, which  requires all of your bookkeeping to be up-to-date before you can run it.

Even if you don’t have to file one with your activity statements or tax returns, it’s still a good idea to run a P&L for your own sake. A P&L statement identifies whether your business has made a profit or loss and which accounting period these occurred.

Accounts receivable, payable

Find out who owes money to your business and to whom your business owes money. This is obviously part of the credit management process, which any good business will have in place already, but it’s a good idea to keep a steady eye on what’s coming in and what’s going out as EOFY approaches.

PAYG, superannuation

The end of each quarter brings a lot of PAYG and superannuation reporting, but EOFY brings a double whammy of activity statements tax returns and PAYG and superannuation compliance. You’ll need to run these reports so your bookkeeper can complete the payroll component of your returns.

Inventory stocktake

If you sell goods, you’ll need to complete a stocktake of your business’s inventory so that any missing stock can be written off, and to ensure you’re starting a clean slate for the new financial year.

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Learn how to run the reports you’ll need for EOFY with our MYOB BAS Reporting and GST online training course or our Xero GST, Reporting and BAS training course.

Xero online training course

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

 

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End of Financial Year: Writing Off Stock

We show you how to write off stock and inventory before the EOFY

how to write off stock before eofy in xero myob
Do you know how to make inventory adjustments? Our Xero and MYOB BAS and GST Reporting courses can show you how.

IT’S A GOOD TIME TO START  looking at any slow-moving or obsolete stock that your business (or your client’s business) may be holding, as we’ve reached the end of Quarter 3 and have now started Quarter 4 for the 2016/17 financial year — which means the end of the financial year is fast approaching.

Writing off stock in MYOB or Xero is known as making an inventory adjustment, and our MYOB BAS Reporting and GST or Xero GST, Reporting and BAS training courses take you through the steps to do this. But first, you need to identify which items aren’t selling. We’ve created this case study to help you understand how.

Understanding your inventory’s performance

Every business needs to understand how their inventory is performing, and how it impacts their business. If the business owner is too busy to stay on top of this, then they should employ a bookkeeper to help.

A good example of why understanding inventory is important to a business is to look at an air conditioning company. This business makes money two ways:

  1. Selling air conditioning units
  2. Installing / maintaining air conditioning units

The margin on the sale of an air conditioning unit is not much, a few percent on top of the wholesale price. Where the business makes its money is in the installation or maintenance of the units it sells.

The business purchases three dozen units, of varying brands, models, price points, etcetera. It now needs to know which units are most popular with customers and why; which units aren’t popular with customers and why; whether it’s profitable for the business to continue to stock the unpopular units; or, conversely, whether it’s profitable for the business to continue stocking the popular units.

Inventory reporting

The business’s bookkeeper regularly runs a number of reports in their accounting software, including profit and loss reports and stock-on-hand reports. These reports are used to identify which units sell quickly, as well as the units that take longer to sell, and the profit margins on each.

The units that sell quickly don’t require a technician to install them. Although they’re responsible for the majority of sales, they don’t generate more revenue for the business. The units that sell slowly, do generate more revenue as they require installation and maintenance, however too many units were ordered and they’ve now been discontinued by the manufacturer. Some units have hardly sold, and, although not discontinued, have been superseded by newer models.

Stock write offs and future orders

Because the bookkeeper regularly runs these reports, s/he has been able to export them into Excel for further analysis. By the end of Q3, the bookkeeper can make suggestions to the business owner about the future of the business.

In particular, the bookkeeper suggests that the units that have been superseded are marked down to clear as much stock as possible, and cease any new orders. Likewise, the discontinued models will be marked down.

Orders for the units that replaced the discontinued models will halve the order volume. Likewise, order volumes for the top selling units will reduced. The profit margin on these units is very low and they result in no additional revenue from installation or maintenance. The profit that would be earned on the additional units is negligible, however by reducing the unit volumes, the business improves its cash flow.

Act NOW for EOFY

If your business sells stock or a combination of stock and services, like the air conditioning business does above, start looking at your inventory now. Markdown any slow-moving stock at the end of Q3, to give your business time to move the remainder of it. If it doesn’t sell, write it off at EOFY.

***

Our MYOB and Xero training courses have recently been updated to include a workbook on how to write off inventory. Learn more about our MYOB BAS Reporting and GST or Xero GST, Reporting and BAS training courses at our website.

find a local bookkeeper

We feature our own online directory of local bookkeepers looking to add to their customers. Visit National Bookkeeping to find a suitable and experienced person available to work in your area, or able to work anywhere in the cloud. Alternatively, if you are a bookkeeper looking to expand your client list or find contract work, you can register and become part of our network for free. 

 

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Making PowerPoint “Speak” with Audio

When Should I Use PowerPoint Audio?

using audio in powerpoint
You can get beyond the birds cheeping and insert your choice of quality audio into PowerPoint.

BEING THAT MOST PowerPoint presentations are created as a visual aid to accompany a speech — although there is just so much more you can do with PowerPoint — you may find yourself wondering when it’s ever appropriate to use audio in your PowerPoint presentation, and if it is appropriate, what kind of audio?  

First off, there are two kinds of audio you can use in a PowerPoint presentation: pre-recorded audio and audio you record yourself. You’ll learn how to record and insert your own audio files into PowerPoint in our PowerPoint Training Course.

When you might use pre-recorded audio

using audio in powerpointIf you’ve ever fiddled around with PowerPoint, you’d notice there are a few audio sounds you can use insert into your slides. They’re mostly generic sound effects, like the sound of waves or a bird chirping. To be honest with you, none of these are ever appropriate in a PowerPoint presentation, except in some really obscure instances. Or less obscure ones, like a training course teaching you how to insert pre-recorded audio into PowerPoint!

You can also add pre-recorded audio that you have on your computer, like a song from your music library. Again, there are few instances when this is necessary, but it’s another option nonetheless.

Adding audio you record yourself

And here is where the answer to using audio in PowerPoint really lies. You can record your own audio, using QuickTime if you’re an Apple user, or Sounds Recorder if you’re using an older version of Windows; otherwise you can also record it on your mobile or digital recorder and import it onto your computer.

You would use this audio if you were going to upload your presentation to your website for a webinar, or for people to watch online afterwards. EzyLearn uses it in some of of online training courses. You could use audio in your induction training courses, too.

learn PowerPoint online training course

Brush up on your PowerPoint skills, or learn how you can use PowerPoint to create your own online induction training courses with our PowerPoint training courses.

Xero online training course

At EzyLearn we offer an abundance of online training courses to help you up-skill and find employment.

Choose from our wide range of:

Enrol today!

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How to Make a Capital Purchase That Won’t Affect Your Cash Flow

A Chattel Mortgage Can Help Keep Your Business Cashflow Under Control

chattel mortgage learn xero online training course
A chattel mortgage can tide your business over without having to dip into savings.

In our Xero Daily Reconciliations Course, you’ll learn how to set up a chart of accounts, among other things such as running balance sheets and Profit and Loss (P&L) statements. For the most part, daily transaction reconciliation is pretty straightforward, until you get to a capital purchase, which, if it’s over $20,000 or was purchased prior to May 2015, needs to be dealt with differently.

In most cases, when a business purchases major assets, such as a motor vehicles, it’s known as a capital purchase, which is made via a loan. There are two types of loans the business can take out: a hire purchase loan or a chattel mortgage.

Buying assets on hire purchase

This is an agreement between you and the lender to acquire a motor vehicle. During the hire period, the lender legally owns the car and you pay regular instalments to the finance company. For tax purposes you can claim depreciation, running costs and interest paid against your business income. When you pay off the loan in full, legal ownership is then transferred to you.

Buying assets on chattel mortgage

Chattel mortgage is essentially a mortgage over goods to be financed. Chattel mortgage is classed as a cash sale in that the goods automatically become your property on purchase and the finance company takes a mortgage over the chattels.

Just as a hire purchase you can claim depreciation, running costs and interest paid, against your business income. The chattel mortgage allows businesses to claim the full input tax credit from GST incurred expenses immediately (next BAS statement).

Chattel mortgages are more popular

Chattel mortgages became popular when BAS and GST was introduced, because businesses could claim the GST at the time of purchase, whether they ran a cash system or an accrual accounting system. Plus, under a chattel mortgage, the allowable depreciation and interest payment are also tax deductible.

How capital purchases affect cash flow

If a business doesn’t take out a loan to make a capital purchase, it will have to dip into its savings, which can adversely affect cash flow, especially on big ticket items. Taking out a chattel mortgage, however, helps to keep cash flow under control because the business can borrow the funds (and claim the interest back as a tax deduction) without any major impact on cash flow. You will also then be able to factor the repayments into your monthly forecast projection.

***

You’ll learn how to record an capital purchase, whether it’s been bought on hire purchase or a chattel mortgage, in our Xero Daily Reconciliations Course. You can find out more or enrol today.

Xero online training course

At EzyLearn we offer many online training courses to help you up-skill and find employment.

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

 

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Hiring Someone New? Why You Need to Personally Check their References

Why It Pays to Call the Switchboard When Doing a Reference Check

reference checking
How do you really know the mobile numbers provided for references truly belong to who they say they are?

I recently had a conversation with a colleague who said she’d never once been asked to produce a copy of her university degree or her transcripts, despite stating on her resume that she’d graduated with a high distinction average.

Gee, I thought, not once? Not a single recruiter or employer had ever requested a copy of her degree? I found this fact astonishing, particularly since more professions require, by law, certain qualifications — as BAS agents are, for example. So how people know my friend wasn’t fibbing in her credentials? Fact is, they didn’t.

Check, even if you use a recruiter

I wrote a blog some time ago about recruiting on LinkedIn and why it’s so important to check references for yourself. People often underestimate the importance of checking a person’s credentials, so long as they get a reference from their last employer. Often, though, most people only provide a mobile number for their references, so whether you’re speaking to the candidate’s former employer, a co-worker, or their mum is sometimes anyone’s guess.

I was reminded of how important reference-checking is again, when I was reading a couple of articles on Longreads, and I found myself utterly fascinated by two of the biggest cases of journalistic fraud ever committed (though I admit to having never heard of them before the weekend, despite one occurring more than 30 years ago).

Sometimes people don’t just lie on their resume

In the first instance, a journalist named Janet Cooke fabricated a story for The Washington Post about an 8-year-old heroin addict. She won a Pulitzer Prize for it in 1981, and then had to give it back when it came out that there was no such 8-year-old. In the second case, Jayson Blair, a journalist for The New York Times, was found to have fabricated or plagiarised 36 out of 73 stories written over a 6-month period, in what turned out to be the biggest scandal in the newspaper’s hundred-plus year history.

What I found most intriguing, though, was that neither Cooke nor Blair had been properly vetted before their employers hired them. In fact, it was Cooke’s falsified resume that was ultimately her undoing when, after receiving the highest honour in the field of writing, a former employer noticed something was amiss with her Pulitzer biography — her education and professional achievements had been grossly overstated. (Rather ironically it was Bob Woodward, of Woodward and Bernstein — the journalists who uncovered the Watergate Scandal — who signed off on hiring Cooke.)

The same would prove true for Blair, who, it turned out, never graduated from university, and had a murky work history with the Times’ sister publication, The Boston Globe, where his superiors had been less than impressed with his less-than-high standard of work.

(Of course, the equally interesting case of Australian author, Helen Demidenko, who won the Miles Franklin Award in the early 1990s, only to later be dubbed by the Sydney Morning Herald as a ‘literary hoax’ also springs to mind.)

Benders-of-truth almost always get caught

Plenty of people lie or embellish on their resumes, and while a good majority of them go unnoticed, others are caught out — sometimes very publicly, and often only after the organisation has been very publicly embarrassed, as in the case of Cooke and Blair.

My advice, then, is to always check the references of new hires meticulously. Rather than calling the mobile numbers or direct lines of the candidate’s references, call the main switchboard and ask to speak to that person’s manager or superior.

And always ensure to ask for a copy of any credentials, like university degrees. If you’re employing someone where, by law, they’re required to hold a certain qualification — as is the case for BAS agents, for instance — it’s imperative you can verify the person’s credentials.

***

Xero online training course

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

 

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There’s So Much Cool Stuff You Can Do With PowerPoint

PowerPoint: The Great Visual Aid to What You’re Saying

PowerPoint online training course
Save densely-worded slides for university lecture rooms: keep PowerPoint slides concise and use your presentation as a way of illustrating or highlighting what you’re saying.

Many people don’t realise what an excellent design tool PowerPoint is. It can be used for a lot more than just creating slideshows and presentations and is a great marketing and design tool for all kinds of business functions.

Generally speaking, when using PowerPoint, you should feature only one idea to a slide. A PowerPoint presentation is not an essay. It shouldn’t be filled with verbose text (unless perhaps you’re in a university lecture). In fact, as you will learn in our updated PowerPoint Training Course, sometimes a PowerPoint slide shouldn’t contain any text at all, or at least, very little. Continue reading There’s So Much Cool Stuff You Can Do With PowerPoint

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Bet You Didn’t Know the Many Wonders of PowerPoint!

PowerPoint: The Great Untapped Design Tool

learn PowerPoint online training course
Wow – this PowerPoint presentation really is AMAAAZING!!

You know what PowerPoint is. It was installed on your computer when you bought Microsoft Office. You hate it. But have you thought that the reason you hate it is because a) you’ve never learned how to use it properly, and b) you associate it with boring corporate meetings and seminars?

If you answered YES to one or both of those questions, read on. If you answered NO, still read on! Continue reading Bet You Didn’t Know the Many Wonders of PowerPoint!

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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

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What Bookkeepers Can Learn From Real Estate Agents: Using Video and Images

Focusing on Education Rather than Sales

how bookkeepers can use videoTHE INTERNET HAS CHANGED the way businesses market their services to prospects, from a simple sales message to an educational one.

Real estate agents caught onto this shift in buyer trends early and started creating online content to cater to these buyers.

Visit the website of any real estate agent and you’ll find lots of images and videos educating potential buyers about their services, previous sales and the local area they represent.

Continue reading What Bookkeepers Can Learn From Real Estate Agents: Using Video and Images

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What Bookkeepers Can Learn From Real Estate Agents: Sales Pitches

Never Fear: A “Sales” Pitch Can Really Just Be a Conversation

bookkeeping sales pitch
You actually don’t need to be ‘salesy’ at all; just find out how your services match another person’s needs.

After you’ve set the correct prices for your bookkeeping services, it’s time to perfect your sales pitch. It’s good to think about the way real estate agents sell a property to prospective buyers: Good sales agents don’t pitch to the buyer at all. Instead, they get to know the buyer and their needs.

If that happens to suit the property they’re selling, they tell them so. If it doesn’t they tell them that too. Often, they’ll mention another listing they have that might better suit the buyer.

Continue reading What Bookkeepers Can Learn From Real Estate Agents: Sales Pitches

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What Bookkeepers Can Learn From Real Estate Agents: Setting Prices

Don’t Reinvent the Wheel: Glean Relevant Info from the Property Industry

how much to charge as a bookkeeper
As a bookkeeper you can learn much from the humble, or not so humble, real estate agent!

As a bookkeeper, or someone thinking about becoming a bookkeeper, you may be surprised how much you can learn from real estate agents. For an example, take the way a real estate agent has to price a property for sale.

The key to selling a property quickly and efficiently, is setting the right price. A real estate agent who sets a price that’s too high for the market, isn’t doing her or his job properly. In such cases, the property will sit around for many weeks, or possibly even months, until the price is eventually reduced to one the market will bear, sometimes to well below market value.

Continue reading What Bookkeepers Can Learn From Real Estate Agents: Setting Prices

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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 coursesA 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.

Nationally Accredited-Certificate-IVin-Bookkeeping-online-training-course

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-MYOB-training-workbooksEzyLearn 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

Satisfaction and Labour marketing information for bookeeping jobs if you have a Cert IV in BookkeepingSee 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

Online bookkeeping cloud accounting services using MYOB, Quickbooks and XeroAnother 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

Accredited online MYOB training course and support institute of certified bookkeepersThere 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 guaranteeFinally, 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:

 

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Running Your Business from Your Mobile Phone

Millennials Driving SmartPhone Usage

Can you send an invoice using sms text message from Quickbooks, Xero or MYOBI WAS TALKING to a tradesperson in his mid twenties and how he wants to start his own business.

The more we spoke, the more I realised that this bloke runs his life almost entirely from his mobile phone — and doesn’t have a computer or laptop!

After having spoken to a few tradies in the last 6 months, I realise that this is the case for many of them. In large part, it’s because the nature of their work is outdoors and requires them to focus on what they’re doing there and then on a work site.

What this guy is very good at doing is replying to SMS text messages and using Facebook Messenger. This made me think about how much of your business you can actually do with a smart phone and via text messaging.

(It also made me think about how much business we might all be doing via Facebook whether we like it or not, but that is a topic for another blog post!)

How do you use your SmartPhone?

I am an Android / Google person through and through because I like their open source model and low priced (OK, cheap) solutions. Way back in 2012 I wrote about how the smartphone could replace your computer.

What I didn’t realise at the time is that most people want to run their business while they are doing it — ON THE GO — rather than have to plug it into a big screen and keyboard when they got home or to the office.

If you are interested in ways of using your SmartPhone as your office computer check out these sites!

I use my smartphone for:

  • emails
  • texting
  • calendar scheduling
  • checking online support and chat activity
  • reading the news
  • checking website analytics
  • taking photographs
  • internet banking (using CBA Netbank)
  • a street directory
  • real estate property searches
  • research on any of the projects I’m working on
  • making and receiving phone calls.

The things I don’t do on my phone are:

  1. writing and publishing blog posts
  2. transferring funds using NAB (because their Internet banking is sad)
  3. accounts and bookkeeping (interesting, huh?)

Thoughts of what we do with our smartphones made me explore a little deeper into something very simple that I think most tradies would like to do — “Send invoices by SMS”

This is what I found out:

 

It seems like much of the functionality that people are starting to want is available as a paid extra. However, what doesn’t make sense is the fact that I can send an unlimited number of text messages as part of my mobile plan.

Can’t these modern accounting programs just take advantage of that feature?

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I’m very interested in hearing back if you have a real world experience where you’re using a smart phone to do something you would normally do from a desktop or laptop computer. Drop me a line at sales@ezylearn.com.au! I’d love to talk about you and your business in the blog.

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Reckon One or MYOB?

Just What Do We Reckon?

find-a-good-bookkeeper
Reckon One was the original distributor of QuickBooks.

Not so long ago, we looked at the major differences between MYOB and QuickBooks. We also explored some of the other benefits of Quickbook more generally over MYOB, but Reckon One, which used to distribute QuickBooks in Australia before striking out on their own with their cloud accounting software, is also becoming a major player in the cloud accounting space for small businesses.

We thought we would take a look at how Reckon One stacks up compared with MYOB, which is still the market leader in Australia and the mostly widely used account software application among accountants.   

Reports

The reporting functions in Reckon One are extremely powerful. This is true of MYOB, as well, but with one major difference: Reckon One has the ability to customise and save the reports you’d like to run. This is a big time-saver, as it renders all your reports just one click away, rather than several. If you’re using a bookkeeper, they’ll be able to run your reports for you the first time, and then you’ll be able to go in and generate them as often as you like afterwards.

Payroll

Both products offer a very good payroll system for businesses that need it (Reckon One, at the time of writing, charges an additional $3/month to turn this feature on), while unlimited payroll comes standard with the MYOB Essentials Unlimited Payroll plan. Both products are also SuperStream Compliant, so if you’re looking for a stable, yet flexible, payroll system, either products are a good choice. Of course, depending on your business’s other needs, you may lean more toward the cheaper Reckon One option.

User Experience

MYOB AccountRight, even to this day, looks dated. The MYOB Essentials platform, however, has a much cleaner interface, as does Reckon One. The product you choose will depend on the size and needs of your business, the features you require, and who will, primarily, be using the software. MYOB is famously more difficult to use compared with Xero, QuickBooks or virtually any other accounting software. Indeed, everything you can do in Reckon One takes about three or four more clicks to perform in MYOB, so, again, it’s a matter of personal choice. There are many Apple users who can’t understand why people still use IBM computers, just as there are many IBM users who can’t understand why people use Apple products.

In selecting a cloud accounting package for your business, remember not to choose solely based on price. Make a list of the needs of your business and the functions you’ll require, and then select the accounting package that suits your needs the most. It’s also a good idea to speak with your bookkeeper before making a choice. 

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Right now, for a limited time, we’re offering over $300 off a number of our online courses — we also have new great courses in QuickBooks online daily transactions and, if you’ve ever struggled with filling in a timeline of posts on social media, or you want to start promoting yourself or your business in social media, try our Digital Business and Social Media Marketing Courses.

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Start Your Business NOW!

The Christmas Holidays is a Terrific Time to Start a New Business

start-your-own-small-business-this-christmasIF YOU’VE DECIDED THAT this will be the year you start your new business, don’t wait until January to begin your journey to becoming the head honcho.

Right now is the best time of the year to begin — because while everyone else (businesses included) has gone on on holidays, you’ll be ready to take on your first client or customer by the time January 2017 rolls around. Continue reading Start Your Business NOW!