MYOB Tips – Memorise Regular Transactions / Tell Suppliers where to Go

Memorise your Regular Transactions

Most businesses have a number of transactions that happen every week or every month. Regular lease payments, loan repayments, employee pays, rent payments and repeating sales are common examples of transactions that are made over and over.

Tip:
If you have stuff like this in your business, then don’t put yourself through the agony  of writing the details afresh each time. Instead, save these transactions as recurring. the
recurring buttons sit at the bottom of most transactions: the Save Recurring button memorises regular transactions, and the Use Recurring button lets you can call up these regular transactions, ready to record them again.

For transactions that are the same every month, tell MYOB software to record each transaction automatically and notify you when it’s done the deed. For transactions that vary, ask MYOB software to pop up a reminder to tell you that this transaction is due.
Tell Suppliers Where to Go

Tip: Did you know you can set up your supplier cards so that every time you record a payment to a supplier, the correct expense account pops up automatically? This simply little trick can save you hours of time when it comes to recording payments, and as an extra bonus, makes for more reliable data entry as well.

Here’s how it works:
Go to your Cards List and double-click on a supplier card. Pick any old card for the moment. I just want to show you how the whole idea works.

1. Click the Buying Details tab.
2. In the Expense Account field, enter the expense account that payments for this supplier would normally go to. For example, if you pick Telstra as your supplier card, the Expense Account is likely to be Telephone
   Expense. If you choose AMP as your supplier card, the Expense Account is probably Insurance Expense.
   Click OK to save your changes.
3. Go to Spend Money and experiment, entering a payment to this supplier. In the Spend Money window, enter the supplier’s name as normal, then tab through the payment as you normally would. When you get to the Allocation Account, instead of entering an account number, simply press the Tab key and marvel as the allocation account pops up automatically.

Email Etiquette or Sensible Rules #3

11. Don’t leave out the message thread.

When you reply to an email, you must include the original mail in your reply, in other words click ‘Reply’, instead of ‘New Mail’. Some people say that you must remove the previous message since this has already been sent and is therefore unnecessary. However, We could not agree less. If you receive many emails you obviously cannot remember each individual email. This means that a ‘threadless email’ will not provide enough information and you will have to spend a frustratingly long time to find out the context of the email in order to deal with it. Leaving the thread might take a fraction longer in download time, but it will save the recipient much more time and frustration in looking for the related emails in their in box!

12. Add disclaimers to your emails.

It is important to add disclaimers to your internal and external mails, since this can help protect your company from liability. Consider the following scenario: an employee accidentally forwards a virus to a customer by email. The customer decides to sue your company for damages. If you add a disclaimer at the bottom of every external mail, saying that the recipient must check each email for viruses and that it cannot be held liable for any transmitted viruses, this will surely be of help to you in court (read more about email disclaimers). Another example: an employee sues the company for allowing a racist email to circulate the office. If your company has an email policy in place and adds an email disclaimer to every mail that states that employees are expressly required not to make defamatory statements, you have a good case of proving that the company did everything it could to prevent offensive emails.

13. Read the email before you send it.

A lot of people don’t bother to read an email before they send it out, as can be seen from the many spelling and grammar mistakes contained in emails. Apart from this, reading your email through the eyes of the recipient will help you send a more effective message and avoid misunderstandings and inappropriate comments.

14. Do not overuse Reply to All.

Only use Reply to All if you really need your message to be seen by each person who received the original message.

15. Mailings > use the Bcc: field or do a mail merge.

When sending an email mailing, some people place all the email addresses in the To: field. There are two drawbacks to this practice: (1) the recipient knows that you have sent the same message to a large number of recipients, and (2) you are publicizing someone else’s email address without their permission. One way to get round this is to place all addresses in the Bcc: field. However, the recipient will only see the address from the To: field in their email, so if this was empty, the To: field will be blank and this might look like spamming. You could include the mailing list email address in the To: field, or even better, if you have Microsoft Outlook and Word you can do a mail merge and create one message for each recipient. A mail merge also allows you to use fields in the message so that you can for instance address each recipient personally. For more information on how to do a Word mail merge, consult the Help in Word.

What’s a SilverSurfer???

Over 50′s and Seniors  surfing the internet are spending more time online than their younger counterparts.

So-called “silver surfers” dedicate an average of 42 hours a month to the internet, compared with 37.9 hours among 18 to 24-year-olds.

A greater interest in hobbies, news and local issues among the elderly is believed to be driving the trend, which sees over-65s account for nine per cent of all time spent online in and many of them are very early adopters of new technology.

For several years we have been supporting this port of the market providing services by way of one on one “hand-holding sessions”  through our associated business and many of the enquiries are initiated by a family member and this can include simple things such as where do I start, how do I send photographs. can I use Skype ………. and many more.

It is not unusual for us to go to a customers home and find they have a laptop still in the box and it may have been there for several years. Hc ow many of us have a parent, uncle aunt etc who need some assistance with the new technology, they are likely to be lost in the technology if they are not given assistance.

We support them with hands on assistance including a nominal subscription service available to them by way of phone / email  as often as they need it.

We have lots of experience and patience in dealing with these customers see our website http://www.silversurf.com.au

Email Etiquette or Sensible Rules #2

6. Answer swiftly.

Customers send an e-mail because they wish to receive a quick
response. If they did not want a quick response they would send a letter or afax. Therefore, each e-mail should be replied to within at least 24 hours, andpreferably within the same working day. If the email is complicated, just send an email back saying that you have received it and that you will get back to them. This will put the customer’s mind at rest and usually customers will then be very patient!

7. Do not attach unnecessary files.

By sending large attachments you can annoy customers and even
bring down their e-mail system. Wherever possible try to compress attachments and only send attachments when they are productive. Moreover, you need to have a good virus scanner in place since your customers will not be very happy if you send them documents full of viruses!

8. Use proper structure & layout.

Since reading from a screen is more difficult than reading from paper, the structure and lay out is very important for e-mail messages.
Use short paragraphs and blank lines between each paragraph. When making points, number them or mark each point as separate to keep the overview.

9. Do not overuse the high priority option.

We all know the story of the boy who cried wolf. If you overuse the high priority option, it will lose its function when you really need it. Moreover, even if a mail has high priority, your message will come
across as slightly aggressive if you flag it as ‘high priority’.

10. Do not write in CAPITALS.

IF YOU WRITE IN CAPITALS IT SEEMS AS IF YOU ARE SHOUTING.
This can be highly annoying and might trigger an unwanted response. Therefore, try not to send any email text in capitals.

MYOB Tip:Move On to Advanced Searches

MYOB Accounting Speed Tip #6:Move On to Advanced Searches

When looking for a transaction, instead of browsing through endless transaction journals, take a shortcut and perform an advanced inquiry.
Imagine you’re looking for a payment for $85.50. You can’t remember the exact date of the payment, nor which account you allocated it to. What you need to do is search for every transaction in your company file for this amount.
Here’s how:

1. Go to Find Transactions and click the Account tab. The Find Transactions menu is on the bottom of every command centre.

2. Click the Advanced button. This button is in the top-right corner and has a magnifying glass next to it. I hope you’re feeling clever already — the word Advanced alone makes me feel smart.

3. Ask to search by All Accounts. You can choose to search through one specific account or through All Accounts. All Accounts may take a couple of seconds longer, but it’s usually your best bet.

4. Enter a date range in the Dated From and To fields. When you’re not sure of the date, pick an enormously wide range, for example 1/7/2005 to 30/6/2050. Remember, the more specific your settings, the more limited your search will be.

5. Enter the amount you’re looking for in the Amount From and To fields. Type the amount you’re looking for twice, both in the Amount From and Amount To fields. (See screenshot below for an example.)

6. Click OK. In the blink of an eye (well, almost), up pops every transaction that has the dollar amount you’re searching for. It’s so cool.

Email Etiquette or Sensible Rules #1

Do You or your organization find the way different people use email, there are many different so called rules.Some rules will differ according to the nature of your business and the corporate culture.

We have compiled a  list what we consider as the  most important email rules that apply to most users.

We will list them in a series of blogs over the next week or so.

1. Be concise and to the point.

Do not make an e-mail longer than it needs to be. Remember that reading an e-mail is harder than reading printed communications and a long e-mail can be very discouraging to read.

2. Answer all questions, and pre-empt further questions.

An email reply must answer all questions, and pre-empt further questions – If you do not answer all the questions in the original email, you will receive further e-mails regarding the unanswered questions, which will not only waste your time and your customer’s time but also cause considerable frustration. Moreover, if you are able to pre-empt relevant questions, your customer will be grateful and impressed with your efficient and thoughtful customer service. Imagine for instance that a customer sends you an email asking which credit cards you accept. Instead of just listing the credit card types, you can guess that their next question will be about how they can order, so you also include some order information and a URL to your order page. Customers will definitely appreciate this.

3. Use proper spelling, grammar & punctuation.

This is not only important because improper spelling, grammar and punctuation give a bad impression of your company, it is also important for conveying the message properly. E-mails with no full stops or commas are difficult to read and can sometimes even change the meaning of the text. And, if your program has a spell checking option, why not use it?

4. Make it personal.

Not only should the e-mail be personally addressed, it should also include personal i.e. customised content. For this reason auto replies are usually not very effective. However, templates can be used effectively in this way, see next tip.

5. Use templates for frequently used responses.

Some questions you get over and over again, such as directions to your office or how to subscribe to your newsletter. Save these texts as response templates and paste these into your message when you need them. You can save your templates in a Word document, or use pre-formatted emails.