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.
If you’ve been following our recent posts about payroll, you know it’s the payroll professional’s responsibility to make sure any mandatory changes are carried out, so we’ve put together a cheat sheet on the changes to the PPP.
Expansion of the Paid Parental Leave Scheme
On 1 January 2013, the Australian Government expanded the Paid Parental Leave scheme to include a two-week payment for working dads or partners called Dad and Partner Pay.
The Paid Parental Leave scheme, which provides a maximum of 18 weeks pay at the national minimum wage, applies to eligible primary carers of newborn or adopted children born on or after 1 January 2011.
From 1 July this year, the Paid Parental Leave scheme has also increased from $606.50 to $622.10 per week before tax, while the daily rate increases to $124.42 per day.
Because of the way paid parental leave works (the government pays the employer who then pays the employee) you need to keep thorough records of any paid parental leave in addition to your usual record-keeping requirements, such as:
The amounts of parental leave funding received from the Government for each employee and the period these amounts cover.
The date of each parental leave installment made to their employee.
The period the payment covers.
The gross amount of the payment (before tax).
A statement identifying that the payments are parental leave under the Australian Government Paid Parental Leave scheme.
If no other payments are made for the period, the net amount of the parental leave and the amount of income tax withheld from the payment.
If other payments (such as annual leave or employer-funded parental leave) are made for the period, the total net amount paid for the period (after tax) and total income tax withheld for the pay period.
The total amount of any deductions made from each parental leave installment.
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.
The people who want to use MYOB on a day to day basis don’t necessarily want to learn how to set it up from scratch or customise MYOB forms. This task is commonly performed by a bookkeeper or accountant and perhaps in the case of a micro business (or a sub contractor) by the business owner themselves. To accommodate the specific needs for business owners and employees alike, EzyLearn has changed the enrolment options for its online MYOB courses.
Late in May 2010 we introduced an Installment Payment option using PayPal for students who wanted to learn how to use the program but didn’t require a certificate, which reduced the cost considerably. Now you can enrol in each of the individual courses separately and for an amount that is very affordable.
It’s coming close to end of financial year and this is the best time for small business owners to learn how to use and eventually implement MYOB as their accounting software. It’s the best time to do the MYOB Setup Course that provides you with the software skills to create a new company from scratch and set it up for daily use. Click here to visit the online elearning website and see the outline of topics included in the course. This link also provides you with a Pay Now option to get started straight away.
Emailing invoices is commonplace today and the benefits are numerous: The arrive quicker, recipients can print them if they choose to or save them as a file and there is more certainty that they get delivered and not “lost in the mail” http://bit.ly/a6aDTG
You may be aware that the ability to email invoices from MYOB has been available for years and what an empowering experience that was, the first time we did it at EzyLearn. You may also know that there are default email subjects and messages for the quotes, orders, purchases and sales invoices that you create and send to your clients. We’ve created a new video to show you how to change and manage these default email message preferences.
The great feature about default messages is that they make your business look professional and show consistency while providing important information to your customers with each invoice.
We’ve included this video as part of our Day to Day course and it is available for no extra charge for existing students who’ve enrolled within the last 12 months.
Check it out. You can follow the link below (then use your student account login details to gain access to it), or browse through the contents of the Day to Day course and locate video number 502307!
Proof of training and evidence of completion of a course are two significant ways to prove that a person has the skills to perform selected tasks when they are in the workplace. How is this achieved with online training?
A certificate in the hand of a potential employee might seem like the answer to everyone’s hopes. Companies are looking for staff with the skills and prospective employees want to be employed. So, what does a certificate mean? The most structured form of vocational training is a Certificate or Diploma course, these courses are operated by RTO’s (Registered Training Organisations) who adhere to strict guidelines in assessing students skills level, running the courses and assessing the students skills at the end of the course. Under these strict guidelines you can be confident that if someone has a certificate that they have reached a certain level of competency.
EzyLearn is a computer training content provider, in other words, we create training videos, workbooks and exercise files that are used by private individuals, companies and training companies (including RTO’s). Some of these companies have qualified assessors who are able to provide a Nationally recognised Certificate, regardless of the training materials used.
At our www.myobcourse.com.au website we provide a Certificate of Completion. Our assessment of a students skills are based on their ability to take an MYOB data file, make changes to it like enter inventory items, create customer cards, create invoices, apply payments to those invoices and perform a bank reconciliation. If they can send the data file to us, there is good evidence that they have the skills required for most every bookkeeping tasks.
Why did we single out the letter B? Well, because it is a combination of Business and book (as in Book keeper). The real reason is we wanted to have a catchy heading to make you read this BLOG post. But if you are serious about becoming a bookkeeper then you may want to take a look at the Wikipedia definition of a bookkeeper (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bookkeeper)…. Sounds pretty boring doesn’t it?? Still, a necessary evil in our modern capitalist world, and a great way to earn a living as an independent contractor. Yay!!
The real reason for this blog is to let you know that we have started a social networking site for people who are learning, know how to use or want to know how to use MYOB Accounting software (the best selling accounting software in Australia).
To join the network, get to meet other bookkeepers and improve your knowledge please feel free to join and build a ‘sphere of influence’ that will help you provide a better service to your customers and build a level of confidence to perform at your peak (great marketing words aren’t they). Apart from the humour it is important for upcoming MYOB users to get to know other users, build a community and improve their skills in an ever changing taxation environment.
The website address is myobtraining.ning.com I hope you can join us 🙂 and share your wisdom.
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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…
