We’re lucky to be working with some great small business owners and I was speaking with a pool shop owner the other day who uses Xero accounting software and the Hubdoc receipt capture app.
One made him happy, the other frustrated, and here’s why.
Category: Online training courses
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Fortnite publisher Epic Games decided to pick a fight with Apple over the fees that Apple earn from apps in their Appstore. MYOB recently made a decision to discontinue their Mac version of accounting software called MYOB AccountEdge because of a change in the iOS software that runs most Apple PC’s. It’s interesting to see the effect that Apple is having on lots of different software companies but for bookkeepers it means one less software program to learn!
Our course design team were exploring recent job ads for accounting and office administration support and we distilled it down to an alarming fact – most of these jobs want all rounders!
Accounting knowledge in Xero or MYOB is important (mandatory), good skills in Data Entry and Microsoft Office (Word & Excel) is important (mandatory) and communicating via email and the phone is important (mandatory). This job ad in particular for a Sydney based property services business seemed to demonstrate that they were looking for an all rounder.
If you’ve never had a website before, it can be easy to get excited — or overwhelmed; pick your emotion! — by the prospect of all the exciting features you can add to it. So you’d better get cracking, adding all those features in to your website, right?
Wrong.
NEWSFLASH: Online Business Course included with MYOB & Xero Bookkeeping PLUS and PRO training course packages
A swell of interest in starting and online business has motivated us to include the affiliate training course with our popular MYOB & Xero training course packages. Affiliate marketing was pioneered in 1994 by William J Tobin who launched a beta version of PC Flowers & Gifts on the Internet in cooperation with IBM, however most people associate affiliate marketing with Amazon. This online business course enables you to promote our online courses and earn an income from anyone who you refer who enrols – we teach and demonstrate how it works.
There are dozens of different website builders available from TELSTRA Online Essentials to Wix and they all promise ease of use, powerful features and the promise of more traffic, more conversions and more MONEY. One problem with these website builders is that most website designers don’t take them seriously but what I don’t like about them is they tie you to Telstra, Wix or the website builders owner.
I started using a website builder when I worked on our very first website and I loved it so much I couldn’t change – until the developer decided to stop supporting it and my hosting company stopped offering it. That was a scary time because I was starting to rely on my website. It’s even scarier to depend on average website design software these days! See how we helped an electrician migrate away from Telstra Online Essentials and onto a WordPress website hosted with Crazy Domains.
I’ve written about CRM’s for real estate agents in the past because they started popping up several years ago and all of a sudden you just need to inquire about a property for sale and you’d be on the “keep warm” segment of the agents mailing list!
I’ve since found a great CRM that is available on a Freemium model and it is built to work right in your email program!
It’s almost summer and most households are planning their festive season activities. There’ll be family catch-ups, BBQ’s, parties and quiet romantic nights and NONE of these work well indoors in summer without good air conditioning!
Earley’s Electrical, Air Conditioning and Refrigeration are experts in air conditioning from install to service and repair and Neville has started using educational marketing to help home owners prepare for summer.
How to win business on the spot!
THERE ARE REWARDS AS WELL AS RISKS to providing people with a quote for work, but one of the bigger risks is offering a free measure and quote, only to have the quote knocked back in favour of a competitor’s cheaper one.
This said, despite the risks attached to offering to come out for free and quote a job, it’s still a good way to operate your business.
Why a free measure and quote is good
There are a lot of benefits to visiting a client to provide a free measure and quote, even if you run the risk of wasting your time and money should the quote not be accepted. We take a look at some of these:
You’ll better understand the client and scope of works
Quoting for a job will help you to understand the client and the scope of the project at the same time. People are put more at ease when they know they’re not obligated to pay you just to come out and prepare a quote, so you’ll have better luck getting prospects. You’ll also be able to discern the kind of client the prospect is likely to be, so you can weigh up how to proceed.
Helps you evaluate potential risks
Remember risks can involve both the physical risk of injury but also other more nebulous risks, like a client who doesn’t pay on time or is unrealistic about timeframes, costs or the types of materials required. With experience, you’ll become better at seeing the warning signs early on, but if you’re new to being self-employed, these are things you should pay particular attention to.
How to make a sale there and then
As we said in our previous post about the risks and rewards of quoting, if you make it easy for people to do business with you, you’re more likely to get quick or even immediate acceptance of your quotes. This is really important as a business, because it keeps in a steady stream of work, which is good for your cash flow, and ultimately, costs you less money — because you’re not following up on unaccepted quotes — in the long run.
Show you’re reliable and keen
In many of our blogs we’ve strongly suggested that using a cloud-based accounting application like Xero, MYOB or QuickBooks makes it really easy for prospects to accept estimates and to pay you. Better still if you can produce estimates for prospects while you’re still at their home or business. This shows you’re reliable, well organised and keen.
Demonstrating efficiency, organisation and enthusiasm are clearly attractive qualities in any builder, tradesperson or other small business person who provides on-site quotes (they’re attractive qualities in anybody!) because it shows that you care about the work you do and that you’ll do it in a timely manner.
For help creating sales and marketing messages that will deliver more leads to your business or determining the right places to advertise your business online, contact the team at Virion for more information about our content marketing services.
How you know what’s working and what’s not
MARKETING AND ACCOUNTING ARE CLOSELY linked if you look at accounting as dealing with the money that’s going in and out of your business, usually as a consequence of your marketing activities.
Recording your marketing activities
In our new online training course, Cash Flow Reporting, Budgets and ROI for Xero, you’ll learn how to enter all of your business’s expenses, including the money you spend on marketing. Anything to do with making your business “discoverable” by a potential customer is considered a marketing activity.
Anything to do with making your business “discoverable” by a potential customer is considered a marketing activity.
That includes business cards, website costs, domain names, Google AdWords, etc, and should be recorded in Xero as a marketing expense.
Determine marketing ROI
To determine your Return on Investment (ROI), you should use Excel or a marketing platform like Hubspot to record where your business comes from so you can assign each activity an income stream.
It’s important to monitor how your marketing spend is performing for your business. Otherwise how will you know what’s working and what’s not?
In our Cash Flow Reporting, Budgets and ROI course for Xero, you’ll go through the steps required to determine the ROI for certain areas of a business. If you refer to the Excel spreadsheet showing the income generated by particular marketing activities — print ads, hipages subscriptions, Google AdWords, etc, you’ll be able to work out the ROI.
Monitoring how your marketing spend performs for your business is incredibly important. It’ll help you to see what’s working, what’s not working, and what needs to be changed to make it perform better.
Learn how to determine the ROI of many of your business’s activities in our Cash Flow Reporting, Budgets and ROI course for Xero. To learn more about, or enrol in, our new Cash Flow Reporting, Budgets and ROI course for Xero, visit our website.
