Who doesn’t love a free trial? The great thing about some of the popular accounting software like Xero, QuickBooks, and MYOB is that they provide 30-day free trials where you can use the software at no cost.
It’s great for businesses and contractors wanting to find the right accounting software for them, or for students looking to get experience as they study.
MYOB didn’t used to require any credit card details when signing up for the trial subscription…but now they do. Whilst Xero and QuickBooks continue to offer trials with no credit card required, MYOB has diverted from the pack to deliver this unexpected and unwanted change.
We show you how to write off stock and inventory before the EOFY
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:
Selling air conditioning units
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.
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.
When it Comes to Your Career, Hopping Around is OK
Those who hop may be the most successful, career speaking.
For many years, young people, particularly Generation Y, were cautioned about changing their jobs too often — or being a “job hopper”. It would give the impression they were flaky or disloyal or unable to commit, they were told,
You want to find a job where you can stay there for at least 10 years, where you can grow and progress through the company.
What To Do So You Don’t Lose Money When Doing Your BAS – 6 steps
If your business is registered for GST, it means you have to file regular activity statements with the ATO, usually each quarter. A lot of business owners export their Business Activity Statement (BAS) data straight from their accounting software, like MYOB or QuickBooks, and quickly prepare their BAS’ that way. But this is an imprecise method, and one that could be costing you money.
Having a bookkeeper induction program will add value to your business.
Having accurate business records is vitally important for any business — and most of that hinges on accurate account keeping. If you’re a small business looking to hire a bookkeeper, you want someone who’ll be able to manage all of the data entry and coding for your company accurately and efficiently.
With EzyLearn, in addition to the videos, you get over 200 pages of training information in our workbook.
When you’re selecting a training course provider, it’s important to consider the training material and resources you will need in order to complete the course.
Waving a job goodbye through a redundancy can often be a positive step for your career.
There was once a time when saying the word “redundancy” in a workplace stirred much the same feelings as saying “Bomb!” in an airport. But today, as workplaces adapt and change to suit an ever-evolving marketplace, redundancies have become much more commonplace.
Adapt or Die.
Adapt or die. It’s true for businesses, and it’s certainly true for workers. That’s why we find many of our students come to EzyLearn to following a redundancy, taking our MYOB courses and Small Business Management courses to add to their knowledge base — and indeed, add an extra accomplishment under the “education” section of their CVs.
For more on CVs, see our post where we interview a recruiter to find out what makes a fabulous CV. Indeed, when we spoke to Fiona Neumann, recruitment specialist and director of Sydney-based recruitment agency, Skills Savvy, she told us that employees today could expect to be made redundant at least once in their career, if not twice. One young job seeker she interviewed for a position had been made redundant three times in almost as many years.
There was a time when to be made redundant reflected poorly on your skills, capabilities and desirability as an employee. Today, however, that’s no longer the case. In fact, there are many positive sides to being made redundant; we’re going to take a look at just some of them here:
1. Firstly, no one makes you redundant: this is an important thing to remember: you weren’t made redundant; your position was. It’s not personal, it’s just business. Accept that and go forth into the world of employment.
2. Why did you leave?: now when you’re asked that question during an interview with a prospective employer, you don’t have to try and romanticize or find the silver lining in the fact that you couldn’t stand working for your former employer a minute longer. Your position was made redundant. The business was restructuring, and there was cutback in your department. It happens. Employers get that.
3. It gives you the opportunity to do something new: it could be a new job, a new experience, or a new business startup, but with a redundancy payout comes the financial opportunity to do something new. In fact, it’s often after a redundancy that many people decide to go into business for themselves, as an article on the Sydney Morning Herald website last year found.
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So if you’ve been made redundant, it’s time to polish up your skill set — and your CV — by taking course with us. You may also be interested in starting a home-based business as an independent contractor so you can work your own hours close to home. And remember: there’s nothing dirty about a redundancy.
Does your resume really reflect you? Remember, it’s important to be specific and provide examples.
We’re always trying to help people who have done our online MYOB course get work, so it’s time to emphasise again the message that overselling yourself in your resume stands out a mile — for all the wrong reasons!
What to Ditch
We’ve written previous posts with tips on how to make your resume stand out. Whether it’s a bookkeeper, office admin, virtual assistant or executive-level role you’re after, we’ve selected a few commonly used phrases that you should be leaving out of your resume and what you might include to replace them. Here goes:
“Highly qualified” – instead of using this generic and largely meaningless term, describe what you will bring to the role. Highlight specific accomplishments in previous positions and any awards or certifications you’ve earned.
“Hard worker” – explain just how it is you’ve gone the extra mile. Perhaps you frequently met tough deadlines, handled a high volume of projects or tackled tasks outside your job description?
“Team player” – well, it’s a bit of a problem if you don’t work well with others, so this tends to be assumed these days. Talk about a specific objective you achieved by partnering with colleagues or individuals in other departments?
“Problem solver” – again, be specific; highlight a tricky situation you encountered and how you solved the problem exactly.
“Flexible” – adaptability is a must in most organisations. Demonstrate your flexibility by describing how you responded to a major change at work or dealt with unpredictable aspects of your role.
“People person” – here it might be an idea to provide an instance of how you won over a challenging customer or co-worker.
“Self-starter” – yes, companies need people with initiative – show how you took the initiative when you saw an issue that needed to be addressed.
Remember, It’s the Little Things
We spoke to a couple of head hunters we know about what can make your resume stand out amongst the hundreds a prospective employer might receive. They were unanimous in their view that what piqued their interest were details and specifics about such things as what changes you contributed to your last position; in other words, some aspect that they could delve into and explore a little more. Real examples and instances of where you’ve contributed to a company in a positive way could then spark a conversation in a job interview.
Specifics for Bookkeepers
If you’re looking for bookkeeping work, we suggest ensuring you demonstrate some sound information about the evolving legislation around BAS agents and information about Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for bookkeeping professionals. Keep subscribing to our blog to receive other job seeking tips and tricks in your Inbox.
Get certified with our EzyLearn online MYOB training course.
Hi, my name’s Michelle Stone and I’m an existing EzyLearn MYOB student. I’ve been asked to write a blog about why I chose Ezylearn for MYOB. Well, it didn’t take me much time to decide at all.
Last year, I was put in a situation at home that required me to take over my late father’s business. In taking over this business I needed to reorganise everything, including the accounting software they used. I was introduced to a chartered accountant who became a mentor and he runs his whole chartered accounting firm using MYOB. So I went into his office one day and his assistant director tried to teach me MYOB in one day. At the end of the day I was so confused!
I knew I needed to find something fast to help me with MYOB. It’s complicated software that can’t be trained / taught in one day, unless you are a genius (which I’m not!)
I went home to my trusty computer and looked up MYOB courses on Google and really looked at the different courses on offer. I had a few criteria of my own that had to be matched:
I wanted:
To study when I wanted to — mornings, night, and weekends, anytime suitable/available.
To study where I wanted to — café, work or more relaxing environment at home.
To study and learn at my own pace, not someone else’s pace; be it the teacher or other students.
To have visual examples with step-by-step instructions, then be able to practise the same thing in MYOB.
To have assistance when I needed it, not just when I’m learning but when I’ve completed the course as well.
To have a certificate or certification at the end. This made me feel good once I completed the course and I felt it would assist me in acquiring work afterwards.
To be able to use the course materials in real-time situations.
EzyLearn met all those criteria and more. The EzyLearn online MYOB course helped me to learn the ins and outs of running a small business from an accounting point of view. It made learning MYOB easy because all the learning material and guidance was at my fingertips with a push of a few buttons on my own computer.
So for me it’s not so much why choose Ezylearn for MYOB — it’s why not?
Sometimes we use the EzyLearn Blog to inform readers about who uses our online MYOB training courses. We received an email from a New Zealand student and we have had many New Zealanders enrol into our MYOB Training Courses.
MYOB is an international business that started humbly many years ago in Australia but sold recently to a private equity firm, valuing the business at over $1 Billion dollars. You can see from a recent Bloomberg article that the value of MYOB has grown significantly in recent years.
Online accounting appears to be the domain of online workers like website developers and we have had very little demand for MYOB Live Accounts (online accounting competitor to Xero) so as yet we don’t cover MYOB Live Accounts. We wrote an article about cloud based software and it’s importance in the rise of remote contractors (Virtual Assistants) back in August 2010 so feel free to learn a bit more about cloud based software services.
We can help New Zealanders
Until then, we just wanted to say that if you are from New Zealand and you want to learn about MYOB accounting software, we can help you. I also want to add that if you are an existing EzyLearn student and you want to highlight some of the difference between the Australian training videos and the New Zealand version of the software, send us an email to sales@ezylearn.com.au, we’ll get Jacci (our resident BAS Agent) to write something up and include it in our course.
To see the full list of topics included in our online MYOB training course visit our website and REMEMBER, we offer all our MYOB Courses (including updated and new content) for one price AND you receive LIFETIME access.
Full access to myobcourse.com.au for 12 months is now available at the reduced price of $116 (paid off over 4 months). This is made possible by the new Installment Payment feature available on PayPal and you don’t need to have a PayPal account, you can use your credit card (even though PayPal make this process a little confusing to find).
The pricing has changed because we realised that not everyone wants a certificate at the end of their course, they simply want the skills on how to use MYOB on a day to day basis. Rather than simply give every attendee of the MYOB course a certificate just because they paid their enrolment fee EzyLearn students perform a bank reconciliation (and all the entries to make that possible) and email their datafile for assessment. This process of handling the datafile is time consuming and requires an experienced user to assess whether the tasks were performed correctly.
Our new pricing and installment plan is designed to make our course more accessible to a wider range of potential students who might not have the means to pay for it all up front. Visit the website www.myobcourse.com.au/elearning and look for the enrolment links at the right side of the website.
I think about the times when I have been to countries like Egypt and Vietnam where there seem to be so many people willing to help travellers who’ve just arrived in the new town. I quickly got to learn that they are doing it for the money. This is why tourism is so important in these countries… It’s how locals can get paid by tourists who need help. Continue reading Affiliate marketing – how easy!
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Xero is a great bookkeeping program for tradies who are on the go and using their phones (or a tablet) all the time. From receipts scanning to creating quotes and invoices, receiving payments and keeping track of project costs.
bookkeepercourse.com.au/produ…
