5 Legit Reasons Foreign CEOs Should Start a Business in the Philippines

Posted on October 10, 2015 by

5 Legit Reasons Foreign CEOs Should Start a Business in the Philippines Two weeks ago, Presidential Spokesperson Edwin Lacierda announced that the Philippines jumped five notches higher in the World Economic Forum (WEF) Global Competitiveness Report for 2015. Lacierda attributed the economic boost to innovation, institutions, and macroeconomic environment.

Meanwhile, a Bloomberg report earlier this year indicated that the country’s economy in 2014 grew by 6.1 percent, making it the world’s second fastest growing economy, next to China’s who went up by 7 percent. These recent figures are proof that the country has tremendous potential for both foreign and local businesses who are looking into opening or expanding their operations.

In 2013, we asked David Elefant, owner of Dayanan Business Consultancy to share his thoughts about doing business in the Philippines. His contribution was a gem for foreign CEOs who wanted to do business in the country but found themselves at ground zero.

Why Choose the Philippines for Your Next Business Venture

This year, we compile a solid list of reasons why foreign CEOs should choose the Philippines for their next business venture!

Business registration is a breeze

Horror stories of bureaucratic red tape are fortunately dwindling in number! For non-locals, registration approval roughly takes fifteen (15) working days from acceptance of your documents. We suggest you bookmark this helpful list of requirements before you march your way into the appropriate offices. Or you can enlist the help of experienced business consultancy firms.

Locals speak excellent business English

In 2012, the Philippines was the world’s top country in business English proficiency. This is a result of reinforcing English as medium of instruction for both public and private schools in the the country. Furthermore, the newly-implemented Enhanced K to 12 Basic Education Program (K-12 Program) underlines the country’s commitment in advancing the nation’s education system. Additionally, the country’s literacy rate is currently at 97.5 percent.

A liberalized, trade-oriented economy

The Philippines allows for a Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) investment scheme which most of its neighboring countries emulate. This guide by the Philippine Embassy in Netherlands explains the BOT scheme succinctly:

Government corporations are being privatized and the banking, insurance, shipping telecommunications and power industries have been deregulated. Incentive packages include the corporate income tax, reduced to a current 32%, with companies in the Special Economic Zones are subject to only 5% overall tax rates. Multinationals looking for regional headquarters are entitled to incentives such as tax exemptions and tax and duty-free importation of specific equipment and materials.

Young, educated, and globally competitive workforce

While Japan, Germany, and Italy are worried about their aging working class, the Philippines’ young workforce sustains the country’s attractiveness to foreign investors.

National Competitiveness Council private sector co-chair Guillermo M. Luz considers this as a sign that the country will become, in his words, a very good investment site well beyond 2030. On the other hand, neighboring Asian countries such as China, South Korea, and Hong Kong, this report noted, will soon face a greying workforce which could potentially slow down the nations’ economic growth.

Last August, Oliver Segovia also pointed out in this Harvard Business Review article that a profound shift in the mindset of the younger workforce has pushed the country into steady economic growth.

“Traditionally, business process outsourcing was associated with high-volume, low-price work. Today, the mainstream appeal of Silicon Valley is turning young Filipino workers who might have been satisfied with a call center job a decade ago into a creative and entrepreneurial class seeking a deeper connection with innovation-driven and mission-focused companies. Working for a venture-backed start-up is the new status symbol,” Segovia wrote. “As a startup founder, my biggest competitors in the talent market are no longer the local family conglomerates. They’re tech companies from the U.S., Germany, Singapore, and Japan coming to the Philippines.”

Low costs of living

Data collected between July 1, 2013 to Jan. 2, 2015 revealed that the Philippines is one of the world’s cheapest countries to live in. The living costs for the countries surveyed were measured against that of New York City, touted as one of the most expensive in the world.

After Manila was recently considered as a costlier city for expats by Mercer’s 2015 Cost of Living Survey, several foreign entrepreneurs have opened operations outside the nation’s capital.

Here’s an excerpt from a Tech in Asia article:

While Makati City, which is home to startup cluster Area 55, was identified as the most economically competitive region in the Philippines, cities outside Metro Manila had a very good showing. The CMCI ranked their economic competitiveness according to three equally weighted pillars, including economic dynamism, government efficiency, and infrastructure.

By these measures, five of the cities in the top ten most economically competitive were located outside the National Capital Region. These were Cagayan de Oro City in Northern Mindanao, Naga City in Bicol, Davao City in Davao, Iloilo City in Western Visayas, and Cebu City in Central Visayas.

Warm, Hospitable Locals

The country is globally known for its abundant supply of sun, sand, and sea! The warmth of the tropics also extends to its people who are equally open and hospitable to foreigners! As one of the happiest nations worldwide, foreign CEOs will find themselves working with accommodating, resilient, and endearingly kind locals. And who wouldn’t want a happy workforce? Happy employees are in fact more productive!

In conclusion, the Philippines has a perfect balance of happy, hardworking locals, low costs of living, and a competitive economy. All these elements can work to your favor as a foreign CEO who is looking into starting a business in the country.

Still curious about what it’s like to set up a business in the Philippines? Get in touch with the PayrollHero team for more insider info.

And if you’re looking into setting up a restaurant in the Philippines, this FREE starter kit was put together to give you high level information about the Philippines, share some thoughts from restaurant owners, and present relevant statistics from our market research.

You’re welcome!

Get Everything Done as a Small Business Owner (And Still Appear Calm and Cool)

Posted on October 8, 2015 by

Not having enough time is a struggle that many small business owners deal with.

It’s that overwhelming feeling of trying to tackle everything in your to-do list but you feel like time is racing against you too. Before you know it, dusk has settled in (or dawn if you’re a night owl) but you have nothing tangible to show for it.

Where did all the time go?!

Working long hours to accomplish each task you’ve set yourself for the day is not the solution. We outline three science-backed, actionable steps to leverage the 168 hours you’re given in a workweek.

With this, you can stop feeling you don’t have enough time, and eventually get things done. NO SUPER POWERS REQUIRED!

Forget about managing time. Focus on your energy instead.

This may sound counterintuitive at first. Yet there’s actually a science to it. Tony Schwartz, CEO and founder of The Energy Project and co-author of The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy Not Time suggested a different approach to productivity in this Harvard Business Review article.

“The core problem with working longer hours is that time is a finite resource. Energy is a different story,” Schwartz pointed out.

Working on The Energy Project, Schwartz and his team consulted with business leaders and owners, and evaluated their time-management efforts in parallel with their productivity. In their findings, they found out two fine points that are actually hurting one’s productivity:

Multitasking
Infrequent breaks within the day

Multitasking, according to Schwartz, slows you down. “A temporary shift in attention from one task to another—stopping to answer an e-mail or take a phone call, for instance—increases the amount of time necessary to finish the primary task by as much as 25%.”

Instead, he recommends taking ultradian sprints – being fully focused for a specified amount of time and taking breaks in between these specified time blocks.

This approach is grounded on human physiology. Psychophysiologist Peretz Lavie referred to it as “ultradian rhythms,” or natural cycles that take place within the 24-hour sleep wake cycle. In a nutshell, humans have 90 to 120-minute cycles during which we gradually shift from a high-energy state into feeling burned out. This is why taking frequent breaks are crucial.

In another Harvard Business Review post last year, author Ron Friedman examined why foregoing breaks at work is a recipe for disaster:

Studies show we have a limited capacity for concentrating over extended time periods, and though we may not be practiced at recognizing the symptoms of fatigue, they unavoidably derail our work. No matter how engaged we are in an activity, our brains inevitably tire.

Still not convinced? Ferris Jabr of The Scientific American laid out several studies in this in-depth look of how frequent breaks can actually help you regain attention, be more creative, and improve your decision-making skills.

The Action Plan

Devote all your attention and focus to a specific task for a certain time block such as responding to emails or crunching out your team’s current payroll. Figure out what works for you – experiment on 30, 60, or 90 minute intervals – and ride the waves of your own ultradian rhythm rather than go against the flow.

Next, step away from your work to do non-work related tasks for a specific period of time too. Logging in to Facebook doesn’t count! Why not have a short chat with one of your employees? Or play foosball with the team?

In hindsight, not all hours were created equal. Therefore, it is best to schedule your tasks based on when you are feeling the most energetic and engaged!

Sketch out your ideal work week.

As a small business owner, planning things ahead is most likely second nature to you. Yet apart from scheduling meetings or outlining what needs to be done for the entire work week, have you thought about designing your ideal week?

Michael Hyatt, author of the New York Times bestseller Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World wrote in this short yet succinct post:

Sure, you can’t plan for everything. Things happen that you can’t anticipate. But it is a whole lot easier to accomplish what matters most when you are proactive and begin with the end in mind.One of the ways I do this is by creating a document, I call “My Ideal Week.

The Action Plan

Hyatt suggested that it’s like drafting your weekly budget, but instead of allocating your finances, you are planning out how you will spend those 168 hours you have in a week.

But structures are supposed to hinder creativity, right? Well, it turns out that small business owners like you need a system in place to empower yourself into regaining focus.

Georgetown University professor Cal Newport who runs a blog on productivity has this response:

Sometimes people ask if controlling time will stifle creativity. I understand this concern, but it’s fundamentally misguided. If you control your schedule: (1) you can ensure that you consistently dedicate time to the deep efforts that matter for creative pursuits; and (2) the stress relief that comes from this sense of organization allows you to go deeper in your creative blocks and produce more value.

Newport further explained:

A 40 hour time-blocked work week, I estimate, produces the same amount of output as a 60+ hour work week pursued without structure.

By and large, you are less likely to get frazzled once Monday kicks in because you have already made the decision by designing time blocks (including the breaks in between) in your calendar within the week

Delegate and automate.

You can be the most awesome small business owner in the world but this doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re also the most prolific blogger, most proficient accountant, or the most welcoming receptionist.

In a survey of small businesses, it turns out that “day-to-day store operations” is the most time-consuming task identified by the owners and managers.

So how do you go about your mission to gain new customers or forge meaningful relationships with your existing clientele if you’re busy with the day-to-day store operations? Impossible, right?

The Action Plan

Do more of the things that you are good at and quit wearing multiple hats. You can either delegate accounting functions to an independent contractor or start automating payroll and inventory management tasks.

It all boils down to embracing newer technologies to find more time for the things that truly matter to your small business.

The Bottom Line

The key takeaways to getting everything done in your small business are to manage your energy rather than time, sketch out an ideal week, and consider delegating and automating repetitive tasks.

What time management tips are currently working in your favor? Which ones didn’t work?

Share your thoughts in the comments or join the conversation on Twitter. We’d love to hear from you!

Be a Better Manager in 10 Minutes or Less

Posted on October 7, 2015 by

Many would like to believe that people quit jobs because of greener pastures such as better pay and greater benefits. In reality, employees leave because of their managers.

Not convinced? Survey results by the market research firm Gallup released last April revealed that half of the 7,200 respondents left jobs “to get away from their manager.”

As a manager, you may have failed to realize that your small yet talented team of employees are walking out the door not to pursue fatter paychecks, but because of management.

Put simply, it has to do with you.

Such sobering statistic should be treated as an opportunity for small business managers to build a team culture of supporting one another. Like most relationship issues, there is no one-size-fits-all formula to becoming an excellent manager.

The following tiny, yet meaningful gestures can certainly make a difference though. The best part is you can do them in 10 minutes or less!

Call everyone by their first name.

In this book How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie wrote:

Remember that a person’s name is, to that person, the sweetest and most important sound in any language.

Likewise, social experiments proved that calling people by their first name makes it more likely for them to comply to your requests.

Make an effort to get to know everyone in your team. Your employees are humans too. They have lives outside of work — they have a family that they deeply care about or hobbies and interests that keep them busy outside the office. Take the time to figure these things out and greet them by their first name the next time you are in the office. By doing so, you build rapport that will eventually lead to trust in the long run.

Dig deeper into each employee’s resentment.

Most employees have their own version of what they are currently bitter about in their jobs. For some, it’s working extra hours and not being able to spend dinner with their family. Or missing a few drinks with friends every Friday night. Perhaps, it’s the lack of flexible hours within the workweek.

It varies for everyone but the takeaway here is to check on these resentments regularly. Subsequently, ask your employees about an activity outside of work that they consider important and pry them for possible solutions (they can extend work hours the next day, shorten lunch breaks for a couple of days, or ask someone to cover for them temporarily).

Doing this quick exercise will prevent resentments from evolving into a full-blown mess of hatred and bitterness.

Ask your employees for advice.

Ha! Why would a manager do that? Isn’t it supposed to be the other way around?

Social psychologist and author of Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion Robert Cialdini offers one seemingly counterintuitive yet effective suggestion to making your employees like you: Ask them for advice. This could range from personal advice like book recommendations to professional advice such as asking their opinion about social media platforms that they deem are ideal for your digital marketing campaign.

By and large, this gives the impression that you, as a manager, value their opinions. Bonus points if you follow their advice and update them that you’ve done one of their suggestions!

Provide specific compliments and insert a negative comment in between.

The keyword here is specific. Sure, it’s easy to give out praise. “You’ve done a great job” or “Keep up the good work” are nothing but empty words of encouragement. Go out of your way to specifically determine the things that each employee has done well. Sincere forms of recognition are always appreciated.

Additionally, don’t be afraid to give out constructive feedback when an employee is obviously off track. In this Harvard Business Review article, the authors talk about the ideal praise-to-criticism ratio:

The average ratio for the highest-performing teams was 5.6 (that is, nearly six positive comments for every negative one). The medium-performance teams averaged 1.9 (almost twice as many positive comments than negative ones.) But the average for the low-performing teams, at 0.36 to 1, was almost three negative comments for every positive one.

The key point is to keep your negative comment as objective and rational as possible. Furthermore, consistently giving compliments ensures that you are within the ideal 5.6 to 1 praise-criticism ratio.

Offer one thing (no matter how small) to help an employee achieve a personal long-term goal.

Everyone has their own set of side-projects, long-term goals, and bucket lists. Say one of your web developers has been thinking about learning Python. Or someone from your sales team is keen about filling in one of the graphic designer posts.

Every so often, employees are interested in upgrading their arsenal of skills or learning things outside of their expertise. Why not do one thing to help them achieve these goals?

Offer to shoulder half of the paid online Python course to the web developer. Or ask the sales rep if he would like to shadow one of the designers for an hour each week? These little things will keep your employees motivated. The more they’re excited about their work, the greater the chance that they’ll work hard for you.

Final Thoughts

Tiny acts of appreciation and kindness are often overlooked, yet they have the biggest impact to becoming a better manager. Put them into action today and see what happens next.

Tell us about the results in the comments or join the conversation on Twitter!

Faster CI – Our Journey To Halving Our Test Runtimes

Posted on October 7, 2015 by Stephen Jagger

Warning, this post is a bit technical. 🙂

[Editors Notes] From time to time our engineers take a moment to write a post for our blog. From Adam our product manager writing about Scrum and Kaizen to Piotr writing about our Engineering Best Practices there is lots to read. Vince has written on the blog before, his last post was about Adventure Engineering in Da Nang, Vietnam. Today, Vince thought that what he has learned about reducing our test runtimes might be helpful to startup community. Enjoy.

One of my biggest challenges for the past few weeks was to get our tests to complete within 10 minutes.

That doesn’t sound so bad, does it? There’s just one tiny detail which would make this journey all the more exciting: Our code takes 25 minutes on average to complete on 25 parallel build servers and It takes about 4 hours if you run it in one.

I made a quick survey with our engineers and we lose roughly around 3 hours per day waiting for CI to finish.

The plan was to selectively run tests and have cucumbers run only on specific branches — epic, develop and master. This means that every time something gets merged to those branches, cucumbers will run after rspecs. And of course, all this will run in parallel on 25 build servers.

How our code tree looks like:

|- master
|- develop
   |- epic/adding-a-thing-with-stuff
      |- feature/with-things  
      |- feature/with-stuff
   |- epic/the-thing-you-do
      |- feature/bla-bla-bla

We didn’t have a way to execute this plan with our current CI solution at that time so we had to find alternatives. We tried quite a few but most of them were either had limited features or were just simply too hard to get started.

Enter Codeship. It took me no more than 3 minutes to get my first build up and running…and of course, failing. Getting started with their ParallelCI wasn’t that hard either. How you configure your builds opened up a ton of possibilities including selective test runs.

To make our tests parallelize (is that even a word?) I had to use this neat little gem called parallel_tests.

Getting started with the gem is simple. You can execute a group of rspecs like so:

bundle exec parallel_test spec/ —verbose -n $TEST_GROUPS —only-group $TEST_GROUP —group-by $TEST_GROUP_BY —type rspec

$TEST_GROUP is an ENV variable that I set on each pipeline. Basically just the number of the pipeline. $TEST_GROUPS is the total number of parallel pipelines. This is 25 for us. $TEST_GROUP_BY is how we group our tests and that would beruntime for us.

That is one other thing you can do with parallel_tests is group by runtime information. Using this grouping took 2 minutes off of our test runtimes. Getting logs from parallel pipelines was a little bit tricky so I had to do a little scripting magic to gather logs from multiple pipelines and concatenating them back together.

It’s simple really, in the setup section I have two scripts: one to upload each log slice to S3 and the other to download the logs and put them together.

Links for reference, apologies for the terrible naming: – Concatenate – Upload

Now that the runtime logs are covered, it’s time to make the tests work. I have this bash script in our code:

#!/bin/bash

bundle exec parallel_test spec/ —verbose -n $TEST_GROUPS —only-group $TEST_GROUP —group-by $TEST_GROUP_BY —type rspec

if [[ “$CI_BRANCH” =~ .*”$BRANCH_FOR_CUKES”.* ]] || [[ “$CI_BRANCH” =~ .*”master”.* ]] || [[ “$CI_BRANCH” =~ .*”develop”.* ]]
then
  echo “Running Cucumber…”
  bundle exec parallel_cucumber features/ —verbose -n $TEST_GROUPS —only-group $TEST_GROUP —group-by $TEST_GROUP_BY —type cucumber || true
else
  echo “Not running Cucumber”
fi

Conveniently, Codeship has a bunch of ENV variables set inside test instances and one of those is $CI_BRANCH. I just simply check if the current branch running in CI matches either master, develop or what I configured in the settings, it will run Cucumbers after RSpecs.

Finally, this is what our setup and pipeline configuration looks like:

codeship vince paca

This entire approach got our RSpec builds down to an average of 6 minutes and our entire suite to 13 minutes from 25 minutes.

Huge props to the Codeship team for helping out with the transition and thanks for the swag! 🙂

Editors note: This post was originally published here.

Watch Our Singapore Payroll In Action

Posted on October 2, 2015 by Stephen Jagger

Would you like to see our Singapore payroll platform run a payroll? Rohit in our Singapore office put together a quick video to show you how easy it is to run a payroll for your Singapore based business. Check it out below:

Want to learn more about our Singapore payroll platform? Reach out and one of our team would be pleased to get on a call with you to discuss your needs.

Restaurant Executive: Karla Campos, CEO of Dell’s Foodhall

Posted on October 1, 2015 by Stephen Jagger

As we continue our series of interviews with successful restaurant and retail executives from Singapore and the Philippines I’m pleased to introduce Karla Campos from Dell’s Foodhall in the Philippines. Karla was kind enough to share some of her experience about running a multi-location restaurant chain in the Philippines.

You are the CEO of Dell’s Foodhall, can you tell us a bit more about the brand?
We are a cafeteria chain with multiple locations all over Metro Manila, providing quality, home-style cooking to the country’s workforce, in a cool and hip atmosphere. While one would find most food chains inside malls, you will find Dell’s Foodhall in office buildings where we cater, primarily, to people at work — young professionals, executives, the BPOs and call center agents. Most of our locations are open 24 hours a day, 6 days a week.

Sounds exciting, can you tell us a bit more about how the brand came about, what you did to understand your customers needs, etc?
People often ask me, “Why Dell’s?” or “Are you Dell?” Uhm.. No. Haha! It’s actually my mom’s name, which is Adelfa.

I took over my mom’s single proprietorship business – then known as Dell’s Canteen & Catering Service, which made it big back in the 70’s and 80’s, catering to institutional accounts. By the time I took over the business in 1996, I had imagined something different.

After working and living in New York, where I dined in the office cafeteria every single day and witnessed how everything was nicely executed — I found myself not growing tired of dining in the office cafeteria since the food and service was great. This to me, was an eye opener. Then I came home and made my rounds in the office cafeterias here and discovered that we were behind — that there was something lacking in terms of the general approach and expectations. The cafeterias here were quite “old school” and sloppy, to be honest. So, I thought of creating something that was more upbeat, and probably more exciting in this segment of the food industry, with a desire to fill in the gap. I tried to duplicate the dining experience I had in New York, and didn’t realize I hit a home run. Now the general office crowd seems to know who we are and patronize us, Mondays thru Fridays. We have come to know who they are, the kind of food selections they are looking for, and the price points they are comfortable with.

dells foodhall philippines I didn’t change the name anymore since it was a bit late in the game, given that we had already become quite popular with our customers. So instead, we re-branded by naming it Dell’s Foodhall — Foodhall being 1 word, the same way they have it in Sydney, Bangkok, London etc. Then we just sort of modernized the logo to make it more acceptable and recognizable within our target market.

You operate in the Philippines, what challenges come with that? what benefits?
Well, the reality is that our country is still pretty much “third world”. The internet is slow, public transportation needs a lot of work, and don’t even get me started on the traffic situation… Bottom line is, we still have a long ways to go.

On the other hand, as a business owner, I believe I am in a great position to contribute to society, to be a part of the nation building process and simply help make things better. We have hundreds of people in our payroll and as the CEO, I take this responsibility very seriously. Running a business or your own company allows you to create jobs and opportunities for other people. There is the multiplier effect, that every growing economy desperately needs. We are able to create more wealth to go around and have a positive impact in the lives, not only of our employees, but also that of our suppliers, while keeping Manila’s work force — our customers, happy and well fed.

What technology do you use in your businesses?
We use POS, accounting systems that generally address the needs of our sales, inventory and payroll. We try to use systems that are more efficient, easy to understand and manage to be able to properly monitor the business flow.

How do you decide on a location? (mall? street level? stand alone business?)
We study the location by taking into account the general population in the area, the foot traffic, accessibility, and of course, rental rates.

At what point did the number of locations change how the business is run? I have been told, 1 or 2 locations is ok, but 3+ requires a different management approach, systems, procedures, etc. What was the tipping point for you?
I guess you grow to a certain size, get to a certain level and realize you can’t do everything by yourself anymore. That the “mom and pop” approach is no longer going to cut it. Too many things are happening at the same time — the stakes are higher, your market reach is wider, the public is now aware of your presence — including your competitors. As the leader of our organization, I had to change my management style or the business was not going to survive. In order for us to create the best all around product and be able to compete, I had to read up, studied and observed how other successful organizations conducted business, and was inspired at the thought of what we could become.

I remember going to the opening day of a new location and seeing the long lines.. And then it hit me — we had a brand that the public — at least our target market – was now very familiar with and were patronizing. That same week, I visited a food expo, gave out my business card to every potential supplier, and was surprised they knew exactly who we were and were very excited to do business with us. At that point, it became clear to me that Dell’s Foodhall had a name and reputation to protect, and that it was time to shift into high gear. It was time to professionalize. And so, I started hiring professionals to run our company. Now I have an executive committee, a team of experts, who help me in running and monitoring all areas of the business. It is still a lot of work, but I am not complaining.

What is next for Dell’s Foodhall?
We will continue to expand and open in new locations. As the owner, I am extremely pleased and grateful with what we’ve achieved, thus far, and will only persist in finding new ways of improving our systems and the quality of our food products and services. What can I say — it’s a never ending process. We are always a work in progress.

anything else to add?
To survive in the food business, one must be ready for the hard work that comes with it. You need to be ready to put in the hours and monitor every stage of the process very closely and diligently. You can make a lot of money here — but you can also lose a lot of money.

I always tell people who ask me about the food business that it is far from glamorous and that it is a very demanding industry. You deal with all kinds of people every day. I sometimes start the day meeting with a supplier from whom we order tons of meat items from, trying to agree on a locked in price and then end the day meeting with the a building owner whose rent I am also trying to negotiate — not to mention the managers who go in and out of my office for decisions that need to be made. It is a very tedious, very detail oriented business, with lots of moving pieces. Then again, it is also very rewarding and quite fulfilling. As in any business, you just have to stay the course, stay committed and passionate — as you grow in wisdom as an entrepreneur and as a human being. Be prepared to come to work every single day. I tell you, nothing comes easy in this business. Still, I cannot imagine doing anything else.

Continue reading →

Quickbooks Philippines

Posted on September 30, 2015 by Stephen Jagger

quickbooks philippines manila We have added a new tool to PayrollHero that enables companies in the Philippines to export a QuickBooks journal entry for easy use within your Quickbooks account. This is a formatted QuickBooks Journal Entry report for a specified period that can be imported into the QuickBooks accounting software.

The end result looks like this:

quickbooks philippines

Check out the complete details on how PayrollHero and Quickbooks can work together.

If you are interesting in learning more about PayrollHero’s Philippine product, visit us at PayrollHero.ph. One of our team would be pleased to speak one on one to learn more about your needs.

Do you use Xero? Let us know how we can help with your Xero integration.

Deepavali | Singapore Holiday

Posted on September 23, 2015 by Stephen Jagger

Singapore Holidays

“Diwali or Divali (also known as Deepavali, Tihar and the “festival of lights“) is an ancient Hindu festival celebrated in autumn every year.^[5]^[6] The festival spiritually signifies the victory of light over darkness.^[7]^[8]^[9] The festival preparations and rituals typically extend over a five-day period, but the main festival night of Diwali coincides with the darkest, new moon night of the Hindu Lunisolar month Kartika. In the Gregorian calendar, Diwali falls between mid-October and mid-November.” *wikipedia

Hari Raya Haji | Singapore Holiday

Posted on September 23, 2015 by Stephen Jagger

Singapore Holiday

“Eid al-Adha (Arabic: عيد الأضحى‎ ʿīd al-aḍḥā [ʕiːd ælˈʔɑdˤħæ] meaning “Festival of the sacrifice”), also called the Feast of the Sacrifice (Turkish: Kurban Bayramı; Bosnian: Kurban Bajram; Persian: عید قربان‎, Eid-e qorban), the “Major Festival”,^[1] the “Greater Eid“, Baqr’Eid (Urdu: بقر عید‎), or Tabaski (West Africa), is the second of two religious holidays celebrated by Muslimsworldwide each year. It honors the willingness of Abraham (Ibrahim) to sacrifice his promised son, Ishmael (Ismail)^a, as an act of submission to God’s command, before God then intervened, through His angel Gabriel (Jibra’il) and informs him that his sacrifice has already been accepted. The meat from the sacrificed animal is preferred to be divided into three parts. The family retains one third of the share; another third is given to relatives, friends and neighbors; and the remaining third is given to the poor and needy.” *wikipedia

Here’s One Cebu Restaurant Who Is Nailing It On Social Media

Posted on September 7, 2015 by Stephen Jagger

Editors Note: This post was written by Kyjean Tomboc. She will be contributing to the PayrollHero blog from time to time.

Whether you own a small diner or manage a large chain of restaurants, social media presence these days is the norm rather than an exception. This should not be a surprise, given that recent figures by Forbes reveal that a whopping 81 percent of the people they surveyed indicated that social media posts by family and peers influenced their purchase decisions.

Restaurants who opt not to embrace social media marketing will be surprised to find out that they still have a social media presence after all. Diners will inevitably tweet, post photos on Facebook or Instagram, and talk about their experience on Yelp.

To get ahead of the pack, a restaurant’s marketing team should do more than just create a Facebook account and wait for people to like their page. For social media to work on a restaurant’s favor, these two components are crucial – creating a unique brand voice and using this voice to create a dialogue, rather than a monologue, with your customers.

It’s all about engagement and being consistent with it!

Brique’s Modern Kitchen, a newcomer in Cebu’s dining scene, is one restaurant whose social media presence is a perfect example of what it means to be truly social in social media.

Distinct Brand Voice

Brique’s Modern Kitchen is not difficult to miss if you pass by Salinas Drive in Lahug. The same could be said of its social media presence. On its Instagram, the restaurant describes itself as a:

A Cebu based restaurant offering modern cuisine with a rustic touch. Brique is the perfect place to have good food in a relaxing atmosphere.

See what the folks at Brique’s did? In the first sentence, they identified what Brique aims to offer. Next, they highlighted what diners can expect when they visit the restaurant. This is a brilliant example of using social media as a medium to not just talk about what you do but also showcase what your customers can expect from your restaurant.

Exclusive Offers

Brique’s recently celebrated their first year milestone through a free entree of your choice if you share a photo with the #BriqueTurns1 hashtag on Instagram. Offers that are limited to certain social media platforms is one good way to sustain engagement with your followers.

Responsive to Customer Comments

Did we mention that Brique’s replies to each customer comment on their Facebook page? Whether it’s a positive or negative review from a diner, a quick response from the staff sends the message that a restaurant is genuinely concern of its patrons and the quality of the food they serve.

Kick-Ass Multimedia

Aside from high-quality photographs of items in their menu, real diners (not stock photos), and restaurant interiors, Brique’s has a chock-full of kick-ass videos in their Facebook page.

With storytelling as one of the core principles of digital marketing, Brique’s multimedia content are tools that help the brand show its human side and capture its audience’s attention. Stunning visual content elicits emotions and these emotions, in turn, influence purchasing decisions.

Brique’s Modern Kitchen is just one of the restaurants in Cebu who is optimizing social media for their benefit. What other restaurants are using similar social media strategies? Your opinions matter to us and we’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!

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