Top 15 Accounting Supervisor Skills for Career Success

This post presents some of the important accounting supervisor skills and qualities that you need to have or improve upon to make a successful career.

If you are looking to build a successful career as an accounting supervisor, you will need to have certain skills and qualities to help you to be effective in carrying out the duties and responsibilities in your job description.

Who is an Accounting Supervisor?

An accounting supervisor is a senior accountant who is put in charge of the financial accounting department of the organization.

He/she is to supervise, monitor, and control the activities in the accounting department.

The following are major skills and qualities to develop to be successful in your career as an accounting supervisor:

Good leadership skills

Being an accounting supervisor puts you in the capacity to tell some people what to do and what not to do.

This means that there are people you are placed over to tell what to do, but most importantly, how to do whatever you are asking them to do.

It is more like being a role model or a key figure that can be used as a reference to what to expect in other accounting capacities in the organization.

This implies that you have to show yourself a worthy personality to be called a leader in this capacity.

So, the first thing is to know what to be done and how it should be done, and then having the ability to lead your team into the right path.

That is what leadership entails in this capacity. Some other people in your team should be able to look up to you for inspiration in their different capacities.

2. Professionalism

Whatever you do at your workplace should be a representation of your professionalism.

That is to say that you don’t do anything based on what you think but rather what your profession demands, or what your job description demands.

Your job has descriptions and some attributes that should be seen in anyone who occupies the accounting supervisor position.

Do you know some of those attributes?

If no, then go back to your job description for a proper enlightenment on this.

What sets you apart in whatever job you do is your level of professionalism regardless of your position in the organization.

The workplace is not a place where feelings are pampered and given preference ahead of professionalism.

3. Good communication skills

Communication is as important as the mode of communication. It is a tool needed by anybody in the workplace.

This is because it is the basis for the relay of information from one person to another within and outside the organization.

In relation to the two modes of communication, it is important that you as the accounting supervisor of your organization are well grounded on the two modes of communication, which are: the written and the oral modes of communication.

Remember that the essence of communication is for easy dissemination of information, as well as relationship building among team members in the organization, and also for the smooth running of activities in the organization.

4. Management skills

An accounting supervisor will need some good management skills to excel in this job. How does this happen? A supervisor is to an extent expected to be a good manager of people and tools used in carrying out his/her job in the organization.

So, first is the people you are working with. How far you can go with your team as one of the leaders in the accounting department of the organization is largely dependent on your ability to manage the different people that make up your team.

The second thing to have at the back of your mind when discussing this point is: apart from the people you are working with, which other tools do you have at your disposal to work with?

Identifying these tools is the first step towards management of non-human factors in your job as an accounting supervisor.

5. Accuracy

One of the major reasons some people are not promoted or are ultimately sacked from their job in relation to accounting is lack of accuracy when dealing with figures.

As you know, every figure is important in every financial report. This is to say that no matter how minute or little a figure is, it is capable of making some difference in a financial report.

So, in your workings with figures, you need to check and double check before putting forth your financial report.

To assist you in this regard, it is advisable that you make use of financial packages to help you avoid some mathematical errors.

6. Honesty

Honesty pays in business and every other facet of life. It is an attribute that every employer out there appreciates because it gives him the impression that his/her business is in safe hands.

It is appreciated and in most cases rewarded. Not having honesty is a red flag, which your employer will not hesitate to deal with.

Honesty is a must for you if you intend excelling in the job of an accounting supervisor.

Your records and reports must not just be accurate, but also a representation of what honesty is all about.

There is no need to manipulate figures for any reason.

Work with the figures available to you and ensure that whatever you put forth as your financial report is true and is verifiable to produce the same result as you have.

7. Stress management

Stress is one of the things you will always deal with in this job. It comes from your various involvements in both personal and organizational activities.

It comes with fatigue and sometimes can cause some physical breakdown of the body.

So, this is more of a skill you need to manage yourself and not necessarily geared towards what your organization gains directly from you.

Managing stress is one thing you should learn how to do if you want to perform at optimum capacity.

Stress management starts with proper planning of activities and making sure that you don’t spend your energy on what is not really productive.

After that, you should consider giving yourself rest at intervals to help you recuperate and get back to work.

8. IT skills

If you are an accountant in any capacity (in this case an accounting supervisor), then you will need some good doze of IT skills to work on your speed and effectiveness on your job.

There is no way you can expect to manage or save time without employing the goodness of information technology.

Though your skills are important, however, leveraging on information technology could be a good way to make your job quite easier than you think.

It is sure to be one of the ways you can be efficient in your job.

You can look at information technology as more than one person doing what one person can do, and you know what happens?

You do so much within a short period of time. That is what information technology helps you accomplish in your job as an accounting supervisor.

9. Teamwork

One way to suffer in your job is to depend solely on what you know or what you can do.

Though ability to work independently is a good skill, yet it is important for you to know that it is just one of the skills to have and not the entire skillset.

Let’s look at it this way: you have a lot of job to do and you decide to employ the manpower and intelligence of other people in the organization, the result is predictable and that is, you will do much within a short time to a great effect.

That is what teamwork does; it allows the input of many people to help get the job done.

You have to know that no matter how much you know or how strong you are, you are limited in many ways and these limitations can be overcome through the input of others in the team.

10. Analytical skills

Supervision is just not complete without analysis. It is one of the things embedded in the accounting process.

Analysis has to be done to ascertain the progress of your job and the job of the other members of your team.

So, it is a skill you need to boost your accounting supervisor career.

The first thing you have to analyze is how your job is going. It is not a bad idea to make some personal evaluation of your job from time to time.

It will help you know if you are really making progress in your accounting supervisor job or not.

This will guide you into what your next line of action should be.

The next thing to put under consideration should be the activities and productivity of the members of your team.

You are a supervisor and should be mindful of what other people in your team are doing.

11. Control skills

Part of the things you are expected to do as an accounting supervisor is to control the accounting activities of other people in the department.

Though this is not a call to impose yourself or your ideologies in the department, but you are to exercise some control on the activities that take place in the accounting department of your organization.

Exercising control is not to forcefully demand compliance from some other accountants working with you but rather putting some policies and measures in place to help curtail the excesses in the department.

This should be strictly professional with no strings attached.

The essence of putting these measures and policies in place is to make sure that members of your accounting team stay professional in all they do in the department and the organization at large.

Remember that professionalism should come into play at all times.

12. Efficiency

We can look at efficiency as being able to match expectations.

That is to say that there are some level of expectations and problems you are expected to solve using your capacity as the accounting supervisor of the organization.

Your efficiency is your ability to match those expectations.

First is for you to understand that these expectations can be in the short or long run.

The short term expectations are the day to day problems you are expected to help the organization solve.

So, efficiency comes into play on daily and weekly basis.

Then is the expectation of the organization in the long run.

As an accounting supervisor of the organization, you are part of the long term plans of the organization.

The organization views you as one of the leading figures to help it accomplish its long term goals.

So, you must be efficient in whatever you do if you really want to match up to these expectations.

13. Reporting skills

Reporting skills are needed by the accounting supervisor in their quest to supervise and give their opinion about the financial habit and engagements of the organization.

Through financial reports, you are able to make recommendations to help curtail some negative financial habits of the organization.

Of course you know that is one of the things your job entails; therefore, you must know what you are doing in the aspect of report writing.

To make a good report demands that you are good at making researches and observations.

The researches and observations are mostly your personal thing as your employer may give you a free hand to do what you think is best for your job as long as you produce the desired result.

14. Administrative skills

Being one of the leading accountants in the organization puts you in a position where you are allowed or tasked with the duty of organizing the flow of activities in the department and to some extent the organization at large in relation to accounting matters.

That is what administration is all about, to ensure the smooth running of activities in the accounting department.

You have to be sure you are able to put together some activities in relation to their importance and timeliness.

This may be a big nightmare if you don’t have administrative skills to help you carry out some administrative jobs in the organization or department.

So, you have to learn the art of arrangement, preparing duty roasters and all other stuffs that constitute administration in the department.

15. Great planning skills

One thing to note about a good administrator (accounting supervisor) is impressive planning skills.

It is a skill you will need to help you deal with a lot of uncertainties and manage time.

Great planning skills should be geared towards getting the job done in a short time while maintaining the excellence of the job.

So, effectively, success in this job is based on how good you are with planning.

You don’t have to just get out of your bed and engage in any activity without having planned it out.

You should not work that way else, you will make a shipwreck of your job.

Accounting Supervisor Skills for Resume

If you are writing a resume or CV for an accounting supervisor’s position, you need to show to the recruiter/employer that you have the qualities and skills to be effective on the job to get their attention.

Therefore, if you have developed some or all of the skills and qualities discussed above needed to achieve a successful accounting supervisor career, then you can highlight them in the Skills Section of your resume.

This will enhance the impact of your resume/CV on the recruiter/employer and increase your chances of getting invited to an interview and hired for the accounting supervisor position.

Conclusion

To succeed in effectively carrying out the duties and responsibilities of the accounting supervisor role and be successful in your career, you sure need to have certain skills and qualities, which have been presented in this post.

Who is an Accounting Supervisor?