Top 15 Accounting Assistant Skills for Career Success

This post provides major accounting assistant skills to have to be effective in your job and succeed in your accounting career.

If you are looking on how to build a successful accounting assistant career, this post provides important skills and qualities you can develop.

These skills and qualities will help you to be effective on your accounting assistant job and be a favorite of employers.

Who is Accounting Assistant?

An accounting assistant is simply an entry level accountant or financial professional who undertakes basic accounting duties, like preparing financial records, carrying out office administration, and handling of cash.

He/she is an entry level financial expert.

Here are important skills and qualities you need to have to be effective and successful in your accounting assistant career:

Attention to details
Good communication skills
Accuracy in financial reports
Computer literacy
Administrative skills
Business interest
Good attitude
Independence
Honesty
Active learning
Time management
Multitasking
Quick adaptation
Knowledge of job description
Service oriented.

Attention to details

This is one of the ways to test for your ability to work effectively as an accounting assistant.

Nothing impresses your boss other than to know that you consider the minutest of details to be important in your job just as the most noticeable details.

This is very important in your job as the accounting assistant of your organization.

The essence of having this skill is to help you avoid mistakes. This is because, as you are exposed to playing around with numbers, misplacement of a figure can change the entire result of a financial transaction and it could be frustrating to deal with.

So, to avoid making embarrassing mistakes in your work, you need to have strong attention to details.

Two things this can help you achieve in your job: one is to detect errors and two is to help you correct those errors on detection.

2. Good communication skills

Keeping the flow of information to and from you is always one of the reasons to maintain a good communication skill in your job.

You need information to handle your job and you need information to collaborate with other stakeholders in the organization where you work.

So, there is no way you can do without having a good communication skill as a basic tool to succeed in your job.

This is simple in the sense that you are a direct beneficiary of this skill, not just the organization.

Now that you know the essence of communication, the next thing to know is the two dimensions of communication you should be efficient at.

The first is the oral form of communication, which has to do with what you say, and the second being the written form of communication. Get them into your arsenal.

3. Accuracy in financial reports

An inaccurate report does no one any good, not the employee and certainly not the employer.

So, the focus is on you to ensure that you work on your accuracy when dealing with financial reports you are delegated to produce. You just have to work on your accuracy.

Though errors can happen but let it be minimal and far in between.

You shouldn’t be known to be someone whose report is always littered with errors that might not be easy to correct or are too many to correct.

It could cost you your cherished job.

So, paying attention to details will definitely play out in this scenario. This is because, it is impossible for you to talk about having a satisfactory accuracy record if you are not well drilled on paying attention to some little details you might think are insignificant.

4. Computer literacy

If you are conversant with the direction the world is moving right now, you would notice that technology has the biggest influence on the outcome of some jobs in today’s world.

Therefore, the best you can do for yourself is to sit up technologically and embrace it.

By this we mean, acquiring some relevant and contemporary computer knowledge, which will be key to your advancement in your job.

If you make your research, you will discover that many jobs today have computer literacy as one of the most interesting and attractive skills to have.

This is to show you that attention has shifted a bit from physical abilities to computer abilities and only those who know this and become computer literate can leverage on it.

5. Administrative skills

Administrative skills are what you will need to make a good arrangement of your activities and achieve a lot of results within the limited time you have to work with daily.

This is what administrative skills help you accomplish in your job.

It is not something to deliberate upon as to whether there are many activities to battle or deal with every day in the organization in respect to your job or not.

The most important thing is what could be done to make sure that everything is given due consideration for maximum result.

Administrative skills help you put things in order and line up your activities according to their level of productivity and priority.

These include arranging of files in the office, fixing up appointments and many other things that characterize your day to day activities.

6. Business interest

Business is not limited to what happens in a typical marketplace. It is not just what happens in the shopping malls, large markets and all that.

Business occurs when there is exchange of goods and/or services for money.

The job of an accounting assistant exposes you to playing around with the financial transactions of your organization.

Your job is enhanced with interest and knowledge of business.

7. Good attitude

There is the saying that bad attitude is like a flat tyre, you can’t go anywhere with it.

No one really wants to have a taste of your bad attitude because no one wants it at all. So you have to work on your attitude in your job.

First is your attitude towards your employer.

They deserve the best of attitude from you. Sometimes your boss can be annoying no doubt, but that should not be the basis for exuding some repugnant attitude. Remember it could cost you your job.

Also, you need to display good attitude for the people working with you in the organization, likewise the customers or clients of your organization.

You should be approachable, friendly, and give people reasons to come around you and feel at home.

If people don’t feel at ease staying with you, then it is time to look towards amending your attitude.

8. Independence

Nobody wants to babysit anybody at the workplace, not your colleagues, and certainly not your boss.

Your boss will definitely see it as a bad thing to have someone that they have to help all the time to do their job.

So, you have to prove to your boss that you are capable of making sound decisions when the need arises without having to disturb them all the time.

This is what every boss out there wants, someone who is able to carry out their job with little or no supervision.

9. Honesty

Who doesn’t value honesty in the business world? If there is one person that will definitely be glad to have an honest person in the organization, it is certainly going to be your boss.

Your honesty could pave way for greater responsibilities in the future.

What is expected of you is to make sure that the reports you are presenting represents the true position of things.

Just as stated earlier, it could pave way for greater responsibilities in the future.

So, if you so desire to remain a relevant figure in your job or aspiring to have another job related to accounting assistant, you will need to be honest in your dealings in the organization where you work.

10. Active learning

Active learning is simply improving on what you already know.

Every day in your job, you should see the need to be an active learner, someone who is ever hungry and willing to learn new ideas and methodologies.

That is one of the most potent ways to keep pace with the ever changing world.

If you must be relevant in your job as accounting assistant, then you should be able to actively and deliberately go out of your way to learn new things.

It could cost you some money but remember that ignorance is more costly than knowledge.

11. Time management

This is another skill that your boss will definitely be keen to observe if you have it or not.

Sometimes, your boss may give you a task to accomplish and give you a very limited time to do so.

One of the things they are keen to observe is how much you could achieve within that short period of time.

That is where the principle of time management comes to play. As you know that the business world is a fast paced one, everyone is trying to get the most out of every minute of the day.

You just have to find a better way to do things.

For example, if you know you have to work with a computer, then one of the things you should greatly improving on is your typing speed.

The faster you are in typing, the less time you will need to complete a job.

12. Multitasking

Though you are majorly to do accounting functions, yet it is expedient for you to reinvent yourself to be able to carry out tasks outside your core area.

It is not something new today to know that versatility is one of the skills that will help you survive in your job.

You should be skilled enough to handle other responsibilities that might not be exactly what is written in your job description.

You just have to stand up to it, challenge yourself, take a deep breath and get down to work.

Also, to be multitasking could mean the ability to handle more than one job simultaneously.

This means that you should be able to oversee the operation of more than one activity at a time. It can be stressful but with time, you should be fine with it.

13. Quick adaptation

Change as you know is the only thing that is constant; therefore you can only adapt to it and not run away from it.

The best way to prepare and adapt to change is to anticipate changes.

Activities, structures, and other factors in the organization can never remain the same after many years. Change is bound to come.

So, what do you do when this change comes?

The answer is simple, adapt. Adaptation is repositioning and reinventing yourself to meet the current demands of your job.

This is where a lot of people really struggle in their job due to the fact they wish things remain the way they have being.

But if you are able to adapt quickly to the changes in the organization, you are proving to your boss that you are quite a valuable asset to have in the organization.

Also, it goes a long way to show that you are an active learner who is ever willing to learn.

14. Knowledge of job description

This is constantly reminding yourself of why you were employed in the first place.

There is no argument of the fact that your employer had a reason for hiring you and that is contained in your job description.

Your job description is what guides your operation on daily basis in the organization.

It is what makes you different and distinguishes your job from that of other accounting assistants in the organization.

So, stay within the limits of our job except otherwise altered by a superior officer in the organization.

It is possible to get little additions to the job you already have, of course that is the essence of having multitasking skills.

However, no matter what happens, always bear in mind that the basis of your salary is your job description.

That is what you are paid to do in the organization.

15. Service oriented

This is willingness to render services for which you are paid for. Meaning that you should be willing to do the job that you were hired to do.

It is unprofessional to abscond from a job you are paid for without cogent or acceptable reasons which your boss is aware of.

You should render your services with utmost professionalism and not be forced or pushed around to do what you are supposed to do.

So from the time you wake up from your bed in the morning, make up your mind to render exceptional services to your organization.

Someone once said, “If you want to change your world, start by dressing your bed in the morning”.

The mindset starts from the time you get out of your bed, not necessarily when you enter the workplace.

Accounting Assistant Skills for Resume

If you are writing a resume or CV for an accounting assistant position, it is important to know that the quality of the Skills Section can greatly influence the employer/recruiter to invite you to an interview.

You can create a highly impressive Skills Section for your resume by applying some of the qualities and skills presented above that accounting assistants should have to succeed on the job.

When the recruiter/employer sees that you have the skills and qualities usually required to be effective on the accounting assistant job, they will be more likely to call you up for an interview because you have shown to have the ability to succeed on the job.

Conclusion

This post has provided important skills and qualities you need to have if you are working as an accounting assistant and looking to build a successful career.

Who is Accounting Assistant?