Find out the top 10 core skills you need to master as an accounting assistant and what hard skills you need to know to succeed in this job.
An accounting Assistant is the right man helper of accountants that have particular tasks assigned to them that include: administrative support and clerical duties such as typing, filing, making phone calls, handling emails and basic book keeping while maintaining the office and keep it running smoothly.
More of the duties include: Reconciling finance accounts plus direct debits, managing office petty cash transactions, controlling credits and chasing debts owed to the company, working with spreadsheets to prepare sales, purchase ledgers and journals, preparing statutory accounts, sorting out both incoming and outgoing daily posts while answering any queries that may come up as well as ensuring all payments, amounts, and records are all correct.
Core Skills Required to be an Accounting Assistant
Core skills describe a set of non-technical abilities, knowledge, and understanding that form the basis for successful participation in the workplace. Core skills enable employees to efficiently and professionally navigate the world of work and interact with others, as well as adapt and think critically to solve problems.
Core skills are often tagged onto job descriptions to find or attract employees with specific essential core values that enable the company to remain competitive, build relationships, and improve productivity.
An accounting assistant should master the following 10 core skills to fulfill her job properly.
Organized Workplace:
Organized Workplace is a vital characteristic that helps the business to thrive for long term due to the sense of structure and order which efficiently promotes the team spirit.
An Accounting Assistant must be organized in the general organizing, planning, communication, time management, scheduling, coordinating resources and meeting deadlines to support the staff in being well structured and run the company successfully.
Phone Skills:
Phone Skills are useful to present a professional company image through the telephone to the customers while making them feel well informed and appreciated without necessarily seeing their faces.
An Accounting Assistant is required to master and project an enthusiastic natural tone to make both the customers and staff feel comfortable during the conversation while creating room for a productive and friendly exchange.
Presentation Skills:
Presentation Skills are useful in getting your message or opinion out there in many aspects of life and work, though they are mostly used in businesses, sales, teaching, lecturing, and training.
An Accounting Assistant must develop the confidence and capability to offer excellent presentations and captivate the audience when the need arises; it requires a lot of preparation to stand out from the crowd, and a manager should be willing to invest in it.
Critical Thinking:
Critical Thinking is the ability to think clearly and rationally while understanding the logical connection between ideas in a reflective and independent thinking.
An Accounting Assistant will always seek to determine whether the ideas, arguments and findings do represent the entire picture while identifying, analyzing and solving problems by deducing consequences from what he knows and making use of the information gathered.
Managing Expenses:
Managing Expenses refers to the systems deployed by a business to process, pay and audit the employee-initiated expenses that may include travel, entertainment, telephone, etc.
An Accounting Assistant ought to be clear about the policies and procedures that govern spending as well as review the organization's finances to determine if the company is incurring losses or just barely making a profit as well as make the reasonable effort to improve the business productivity.
Conceptual Thinking:
Conceptual Thinking is the ability to recognize a situation or problem by identifying patterns or connections while addressing the underlying issues.
An Accounting Assistant must be a conceptual thinker who has a keen understanding of why things have to be done the way they are; he has to think at an abstract level and apply his insights to the situation across all facets to compete in the diverse and growing economy.
Enjoyment of the Job:
Enjoyment of the Job is the ability to enjoy what you do rather than enjoying what you earn from it.
An Accounting Assistant needs to creatively learn of ways to motivate his employees to benefit from the workplace by matching their personality to the culture of the organization where they fit best and allowing them to explore their hidden talents to grow and mature with the team.
Problem/Situation Analysis:
Problem/Situation Analysis is the ability to solve problems and assess situations to know what kind of solution is required to calm it down.
An Accounting Assistant should learn how to identify and analyze problems and situations as well as use available resources to resolve them constructively by reaching a consensus through looking at an issue in a professional, not personal way.
Financial Management:
Financial Management is the skill of learning how to handle accounting, finance, and organizational management through providing daily data on the operations that take place every day.
An Accounting Assistant ought to be highly effective in planning and organization, controlling and management of the financial resources to achieve the company's organizational objectives that are laid down to see the growth of the enterprise.
Project Management:
Project Management is structuring a to-do list for your project or company containing tasks and responsibilities as well as creating a roadmap for the execution of those duties promptly.
An Accounting Assistant must place emphasis on the application of the project management methodologies and principles by the staff in the daily functions and responsibilities to foster efficiently as well as create a competitive advantage in the heavily competitive business space.
Hard Skills Required to be an Accounting Assistant
Hard skills are job-specific skill sets, or expertise, that are teachable and whose presence can be tested through exams. While core skills are more difficult to quantify and less tangible, hard skills are quantifiable and more defined.
Hard skills are usually listed on an applicant's resume to help recruiters know the applicant's qualifications for the applied position. A recruiter, therefore, needs to review the applicant's resume and education to find out if he/she has the knowledge necessary to get the job done.
An accounting assistant should have a good command of the following hard skills to succeed in her job.