Find out the top 10 core skills you need to master as a bookkeeping clerk and what hard skills you need to know to succeed in this job.
Bookkeeping is the art of understanding math and figuring out numbers while keeping track of every single expense in the entire company. A bookkeeper is responsible for making sure every transaction, deposit or income is recorded daily in the company's ledger. Using either cash or checks books or software to track the numbers, it is mandatory to produce precise data that enterprises can rely on.
Other responsibilities includes, developing accounting systems to account for any financial transaction through an establishment of auditors charts, maintaining general ledger by transferring subsidiary account summaries, balancing subsidiary accounts through reconciling entries, ensuring the company's legal requirements compliance
Core Skills Required to be a Bookkeeping Clerk
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.
A bookkeeping clerk should master the following 10 core skills to fulfill her job properly.
Teamwork Skills:
Teamwork is the process of collaboratively working with a group of people with an aim to achieve a set goal within a business ensuring that the staff and management cooperate using their skills and provide constructive feedback.
A Bookkeeping Clerk needs to exercise effectiveness and understanding in creating teamwork using the right techniques in an environment of trust and cooperation with the aim of increasing productivity, higher morale, and a fulfilled workforce.
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.
A Bookkeeping Clerk 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.
Innovation:
Innovation is the process of translating new invention into a service that creates value or brings better solutions that meet the requirements.
A Bookkeeping Clerk ought to introduce innovation in their business to help save time and money giving a competitive advantage to grow and adapt the business in today's marketplace as well as creating more efficient processes and ideas with a likelihood for your business to succeed.
Administrative Skills:
Administrative Skills are all the services related to the running of a business or keeping an office organized while supporting the efforts of the management team.
A Bookkeeping Clerk must develop these skills and emphasize the administrative skills to ensure high-level responsibilities that range from planning large scale events to creating presentations and analyzing financial data are handled carefully and efficiently.
Orientation to Work:
Orientation to Work is the introduction that is given to a new worker whereby he is introduced to coworkers and given relevant information like schedules, performance standards, benefits and facilities, names of the supervisors, etc.
A Bookkeeping Clerk must ensure that all new employees go through an orientation process to assimilate into the workplace and become familiar with what is expected of them.
Self Confidence:
Self Confidence is the ability to know who you are and what you are capable of doing which shows in your behavior, your body language, how you speak, etc.
A Bookkeeping Clerk must be confident enough to inspire confidence in others while encouraging them to handle daily tasks and their personal lives with self-confidence that will, in turn, produce a well-rounded individual.
Personal Accountability:
Personal Accountability is the feeling that you are entirely responsible for your actions and consequences taking ownership without blaming others.
A Bookkeeping Clerk should provide a list of duties and responsibilities that every employee is expected to perform and define timelines and supervisors who oversee the work to ensure each knows what she /he should do and remain accountable without passing blame.
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.
A Bookkeeping Clerk 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.
Deadlines - On time:
Deadlines - On time is the ability to prioritize the important tasks and setting up a plan on how to work on them first to deliver within the set period.
A Bookkeeping Clerk must have the art of managing deadlines by being able to prioritize the work that is set for scheduling to the workers according to how vital the projects are and how soon they need to be executed and submitted.
Quantity of Work:
The quantity of Work is the amount of work accomplished by an employee against the expectations set by the employer.
A Bookkeeping Clerk should be keen to monitor an employee's job performance by comparing it to the standard work measurements that are often given at various intervals while evaluating the production to tell when to refresh a worker's skills or address any behavioral factors.
Hard Skills Required to be a Bookkeeping Clerk
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.
A bookkeeping clerk should have a good command of the following hard skills to succeed in her job.