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.
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.
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.
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.
There are many finance professionals — who does your business need?
Does your business need a bookkeeper, accountant or perhaps just a BAS agent – or a little bit of everyone?
WE’VE MENTIONED PREVIOUSLY THAT finding a bookkeeper, when you may not know much about bookkeeping, can be a difficult task.
In fact, a lot of new business owners assume their accountant will take care of everything for them, which may be costly if their accountant has to perform a year’s worth of bookkeeping in order to file the business’s tax return. But bookkeepers and accountants can work harmoniously in your business.
As a general rule, every business needs at least two finance professionals working on their business accounts, but which two professionals you’ll need to hire depends on your business needs. If you’re not sure who you need to hire for your business, here’s a cheat sheet to help you out.
Bookkeepers (not registered with the TPB)
An independent bookkeeper not employed by an accountant and not registered with the Tax Practitioner’s Board (TPB) may only perform basic bookkeeping services, such as the
entering of receipts,
coding financial transactions,
generating invoices and purchase orders
accounts receivable and accounts payable
If you hire this type of bookkeeper, you’ll still need an accountant.
BAS agents
BAS agents must, by law, register with the Tax Practitioner’s Board (TPB), which certifies that they are qualified and have completed the necessary continuing education requirements to perform the tasks of a BAS agent, which involves carrying out most of the bookkeeping tasks mentioned above, in addition to preparing and lodging business activity statements on a business’s behalf.
If your business is registered for GST, you will need to file regular activity statements. If you hire a BAS agent, you’ll also need an accountant. In some instances, you may find a BAS agent who’s also a registered tax agent and vice versa, who may be able to take care of all your taxation needs.
Tax agents
Although tax agents, like BAS agents, must also register with the Tax Practitioner’s Board (TPB), a tax agent is focused on income tax — how much income you have to declare, how much you can claim back, etc.
This is distinct from a BAS agent who is concerned with the day-to-day financial tasks of your business (bookkeeping and BAS lodgements). That said, some tax agents will also perform some the basic bookkeeping tasks on a regular basis, though they primarily specialise in lodging tax returns.
If you’re not registered for GST, and your tax agent will also perform regular bookkeeping tasks (or you can do it yourself), you may not need to hire an accountant. In some instances, you may find a tax agent who’s also a registered BAS agent and vice versa, who may be able to take care of all your taxation needs.
Accountants
An accountant is mostly concerned with planning and strategy. Unlike bookkeepers and BAS or tax agents, an accountant will assess and advise you on what actions you should take to maximise your income. Great accountants will get involved with planning the direction of your business and ensure it’s been structured properly and that you’re meeting any additional tax obligations.
They’ll also help you to make strategic purchases for equipment and machinery, and work with your BAS agent or bookkeeper to ensure these decisions are reflected in your daily financial records. An accountant is also able to prepare and lodge tax returns on your behalf.
How much should I pay a bookkeeper?
Check out the National Bookkeeping Directory, which features the details of bookkeepers, capable of doing data entry and clerical tasks, through to high-level accounting work as undertaken by BAS agents, accountants and CFOs.
You can also see the National Bookkeeping rates page to find out what level bookkeeper your business needs.
All the marketing messages I hear is how much better Xero is than MYOB but that isn’t always the case.
MYOB and QuickBooks both had more in-build inventory features than Xero but Xero has always promoted their integrations to fill gaps in their core software. I wrote about this several times:
Are you earning $50 per hour at the moment? If you aren’t it can seem almost impossible to believe that you could, particularly when you look at your boss and imagine yourself asking them for a pay rise.
I searched online to see who earns $50 per hour and most of the search results in Seek and Indeed showed up saying you have to be a doctor, pharmacist or HR Manager but bookkeepers earning this much regularly.
Many Xero beginners think that they only have 30 days to use the trial version of Xero but that isn’t actually correct. Xero, just like MYOB Business and QuickBooks online need you to create a “user” account and authenticate yourself using SMS or an authenticator app.
Once you’ve got your user account you are able to access dozens of different “company” files when you need to. This is how bookkeepers manage the company files for dozens of their own clients.
I’ve been getting up at 5.15am for the last 2 years – am I crazy?!
I’ve been getting up early because I work out with some friends and prefer early mornings to late nights. This means that I’m going to bed earlier and not working as much at night.
In the past I preferred to work late into the night and pushed myself to get as much work done as I possibly could. Sometimes this meant working until midnight but I noticed that the quality of the work wasn’t always the best.
The sun rises pretty early and I’d rather work with the natural light of the day than the artificial light of the night. I dug a little deeper into this and discovered that there are studies that explains how we perform at various times of the day and how that is affected by when we get up and go to bed – Circadian Rhythms.
Circadian Rhythms can affect how well you perform when studying too..
Business owners can now get a discount on our MYOB & Xero and Microsoft Office COMPLETE courses if they don’t need a Certificate of Completion.
I recently wrote about the value of Certificates and who really needs one and we’ve discovered that most business owners prefer to focus on getting the knowledge to use their software better AND saving money – that’s why we introduced NoCert discounts.
If you are looking for computerised, online accounting software now is a great time. Just doing a Google search for comparisons between MYOB and Xero will reveal a flurry of ads to capture your attention.
Many micro businesses with one main worker/contractor etc just want to keep track of quotes, invoices, purchases and payments and there are some pretty cheap options available – cue… BillCue.
Someone made contact with us to find out which data entry and office admin courses they need to do to get a job using MYOB. It’s logical to want to know which courses will give you the skills for specific jobs so we put these guides together.
You can get a further discount off the Corporate Training prices if you don’t need a Certificate at the end of your training. This option is great for business owners or small businesses who just want to get their team trained up but don’t need the evidence of a Certificate of Completion.
If you have enrolled into a course with EzyLearn be sure to check out these FREE student inclusions.
We’re creating and updating our online courses every month and we’re listening to feedback from students to understand what they need. We’re even paying EzyLearn graduates for their expertise in the work they do. If you want to see how you can earn money using your expertise check out the LIFELONG Learning Hub in the Learning Site or reach out to our support team.
When I first took EzyLearn online in 2007 I was concerned at how much phone support students would need. What I learnt was the better the user experience and course design for our students the less calls we’d get.
Our team have been exploring ways of bringing the cost of our courses down even further in this tough economic environment and one of the biggest cost savings is to focus on SMS, Email and Website Chat support.
We have a number of graduates who are available as tutors and perhaps this could be an option, what do you think?
The end of the calendar year, school holidays, summer and Christmas all combine to give us all a break from what we’ve been doing all year. It’s also a time for reflection about what we’ve done during the year and of things we would change in the new year.
One of the challenges we faced this year was trying to explain the differences between our training courses and those provided by dozens of new training options which are now available – even Youtube!
Udemy is a particularly interesting challenge because they are not a training company but a Learning Management System that also spends money advertising some of the courses on their platform.
Xero have just announced their financial and performance results and the headline figures show strong subscriber growth all over the world, including UK and US where they are trying very hard to get market share like they have in Australia.
It’s now more evident than ever that if you get certified in Xero that you could work for a business in most modern countries around the world. Is that what they called Internationally Accredited?
Xero wrote about their AI achievements using machine learning to predict the name and account code for your transactions when performing a bank reconciliation. Bank feeds have been a constant and regular theme in Xero’s marketing and this reinforces how they are using technology to reduce the time it takes to reconcile.
It makes sense that a bank like NAB or CBA buys MYOB because if you could automatically make sure that your finances in your MYOB or Xero software reflected exactly what your bank statements say you’d eliminate half the work that junior bookkeepers do.
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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…
