Employee education and training is an investment that every business owner should make. As a business owner, your company policies should include employee education and training requirements.
Whether you are a business owner or an employee, education and training is part of your daily life – like it or not. We need it in order to deal with new complexities that we face at work, for career advancement, and to obtain certification.
Being a business owner myself, I find myself learning new things on a daily basis in order to make my job easier and more efficient. For example, right now as I prepare this blog post, I’m working with a new piece of software called Dragon Naturally Speaking. Dragon allows me to dictate my blog post instead of physically having to type it. Needless to say, this is a learning experience. But once I master it, creating a blog post is going to be a much faster and more efficient process. I will also then be able to apply this knowledge to other tasks, such as writing or updating our software manuals.
My own background is bookkeeping. Over the years I’ve transitioned from being just a bookkeeper to becoming a software developer. I’ve learned a whole bunch in this job! Performing bookkeeping tasks or providing QuickBooks training to clients did not prepare me for becoming a software developer, writing manuals, creating and maintaining a website, or any of the thousands of other things that I do on a daily basis.
Let’s take support for an example. I find that there is a very, very fine line between how people view support and training. In general, support is defined as helping a user solve a specific problem with the product, perhaps resolving an error message. However, I find that most people define or expect that support includes (or is also) training – not only for our software but for QuickBooks, Microsoft Office, and basic computer tasks such as how to create a new folder or add an attachment to an email.
Whether you are a contractor, a bookkeeper working for contractor, or certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor you need to make a commitment to yourself, to your employees, to your business, and to your clients to obtain the training necessary to perform daily tasks quickly and efficiently and then take what you have learned an apply it. This requires a commitment of your time and sometimes money as well
Training can be obtained in multiple ways. The internet provides some great training opportunities, you can Google something specific and find an overwhelming amount of information for free. Many companies, our own included, provide great training videos for learning their software – free of charge. You can take a class on-line or go to your local community college.
The possibilities are endless for learning, if you just make the commitment.
I hope you found this article to be helpful, if so, please take a moment to leave a comment or share it on your favorite social media site.
Freebie Friday! The work week is just about over (for some of us, that is).
This week’s Freebie is an AIA (G-702/G-703) Billing Training exercise.
Have you ever been asked to complete a G-702 and G-703 billing form and don’t know where to even start? If so, than this training exercise is just what the doctor ordered!
Most anyone will tell you that completing the AIA G-702 and G-703 forms by hand is frustrating and difficult. To fill out one correctly, you pretty much have to:
- forget about any basic accounting principals you’ve ever learned
- ignore change orders that have been submitted or approved, but not processed
- ignore money that is still outstanding from previously submitted applications for payment
You need to realize that the payment applications that you submit are an important piece of your overall cash flow management. When your payment applications get screwed up — bad things happen; none of which put you in “good standing” with the General Contractor or Project Owner, and can ultimately damage your company’s overall cash position.
The point is – you have NO choice except to learn how to fill out the AIA forms correctly!
This training file (zip file) is to be used in conjunction with the “What Is AIA Billing” page on our website, so you’ll want to go and print that page before you request the training exercise. Print What Is AIA Billing now, opens in a new window for your convenience.
IMPORTANT NOTE: To avoid confusion the instructions contained in this articles are instructions for MANUALLY completing an AIA Billing form and HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THE USE OF OUR AIA BILLING SOFTWARE.
In order to obtain our free AIA Billing form, we’ll ask you to complete a short request form and then you will have instant access to download the zip file that contains the training exercise.
Request your training exercise here.
Have a great weekend everyone 
P.S. If you’d like to automate your AIA Billing task AND you use QuickBooks; click the green “Free 30 day trial” button on the left menu. Take our Construction Application for Payment Solution (CAPS) program for a test drive — it sure the heck beats filling these out by hand!
Well it’s Freebie Friday again here on the QuickBooks for Contractors blog. With the new year, we have a whole bunch of NEW ebook lined up to offer you. We hope you enjoy them and that you’ll take the time to leave us a brief comment as to what you think about them.
And now, with no further delay………….this week’s ebook is………..
Lesson 1 – Getting Started; Introducing QuickBooks Premier Contractor Edition.
Lesson 1 – Getting Started is intended for new QuickBooks users or users who feel that they would like a “refresher” course and will:
- Discuss why you need to keep books for your business.
- Discuss why you need to keep books from the IRS’s point of view.
- Using Forms and Registers to record transactions.
- Teach you how to navigate the program.
- Introduce and discuss the various “Lists” that QuickBooks has available and what their purpose is.
- Discuss how much “bookkeeping and accounting” knowledge you must have.
- Moving between QuickBooks Company data files.
- Exiting the program and backing up your data.
This eBook is an introduction on how to use QuickBooks in the commercial/government construction industry. Its main objective is to introduce you to the basic features in QuickBooks. You’ll learn about the types of information you need to track in your business, and you’ll see how to enter that information and track it in QuickBooks. By the time you complete the eBook, you’ll have a good idea of all that QuickBooks offers, you’ll be familiar with the most common tasks, and you’ll know where to find information about more advanced features.
Sound interesting? If so, request your own copy by clicking here.
Beginning in June, Sunburst will be offering a monthly, live and on-line, certified payroll training class.
For more information, click here.
With all of the enhancements (new features, forms, functionality) that we’ve made to Certified Payroll Solution in the last 1/2 years – not to mention the release of the new Federal WH-347 Certified payroll report and reporting requirements…..I decided it was time to get off my duff and update some of our training videos.
After nearly 4 days of screen capture, audio recording, and editing I’m happy to announce that two of the video’s (totally a little over 1 hour of viewing time) are now available in the Certified Payroll Solution Training, Support & Resource Center – in the Free Training Category.
The video’s that have been updated are the “Certified Payroll Solution Initial Setup Video” and the “Running Certified Payroll Solution Video“.
Updated videos are available in their original Windows Media Player format – because everybody has Windows Media Player installed on their computer.
New Video Format Available:
Table of Contents
We’ve also added a new format for these videos – Flash based with a Table of Contents on the left, so you can easily replay certain sections of the video. The Table of Contents from the Initial Setup Video is shown to the left.
So what do these video’s cover? I’m glad you asked!
The Certified Payroll Solution Initial Setup Video covers entering your Certified Payroll Solution License, granting permission in QuickBooks for CPS to access and read information from your QuickBooks Company file, setting up certified payroll reporting preferences, that are specific to your company, that QuickBooks has no means of handling as well as setting up “default” employee and job information.
The Running Certified Payroll Solution Video covers running your first set of certified payroll reports (start to finish), offers a review of granting permission in QuickBooks for CPS to access and read information from your QuickBooks company file, walks you through the one-time setup of linked records (back to QuickBooks) for employees, jobs, payroll wage items and deductions – explaining and demonstrating the various pieces of information that QuickBooks has no mechanism of holding. Lastly it covers previewing, printing and troubleshooting your first set of certified payroll reports.
We will be adding Flash videos for the remaining two videos here shortly – those videos are the Certified Payroll Solution Download and Installation Video and the Certified Payroll Solution – QuickBooks Setup Video.
I’d welcome any feedback about the videos that you might have.
Nancy
