
This post provides some of the important skills and qualities you need to have as an accounts payable team leader to be successful in your career.
You can also apply these skills in making your resumes, showing to the recruiter/employer that you have the needed skills and qualities to be effective in your job as an accounts payable team leader.
Before we go into them, let’s find out who an accounts payable team leader is:
Who is an Accounts Payable Team Leader?
An accounts payable team leader is one who provides support for the accounts payable department with the following duties: reviewing financial transactions, preparing invoices for cash transactions, and liaising between customers and vendors.
The functions are many and that is why the accounts payable team leader is an important person in the organization.
15 Accounts Payable Team Leader Skills
- Excellent numerical skills
Account payable functions have a lot to do with numeracy.
You are to play around and manipulate figures to present a more accurate and logically correct reports and presentations that the organization should be able to work with in the future.
What does this mean to you as the accounts payable team leader?
It means that you should know how to work with figures to produce a more accurate and reliable information to the organization.
It is very important because your job needs it.
If there is anyone in the accounts payable team that should not be found wanting in this area, that person should be you.
You should know your manipulative skills of numbers through good mathematical skills.
This is required of you at every point in this job.
2. Accounting expertise
The next thing you should be able to do is know your basic and advanced accounting principles or practices.
This is as important as knowing your mathematical/numeracy skills.
This is because accounting helps you know where to apply your mathematical skills.
Your accounting skills should be telling in the sense that it should help you achieve more efficient and accurate results in this job.
You don’t have to basically rely on the accounting skills you learnt probably when you passed through the four walls of school but also apply current/contemporary accounting skills to your job.
Getting the current or contemporary accounting knowledge might boil down to your ability to learn and develop new skills on the job in the accounting field.
Just as you know that there are some knowledge you can acquire that may not be taught in school but are very necessary for your success in any job that you are doing.
3. Leadership skills
There is no doubt whatever that this skill is relevant and plays a key role in this job.
There is no possibility of achieving any form of success in this job when there is an obvious lack of leadership in the team.
Someone has to show the way and go the way he/she wants the group to go and that should be the accounts payable team leader.
This means that being an accounts payable team leader might have been given to you as a position, but for you to excel in it you must have some essential leadership skills that should play out daily in your activities and relationship with other team members.
So as a leader, the members of your team should be able to look up to you for inspiration and direction.
You should serve as a pointer to them as to what to expect in the job and also being a pacesetter to teach the members what they ought to know about the job, particularly the new entrants.
4. IT skills
First thing you should know about the issue of being technologically inclined in your job as the accounts payable team leader of your organization is that it is a major factor that can make a difference in any kind of job you find yourself in this century, except it’s an unskilled job role.
One of the ways you can make an inroad in your job as the accounts payable team leader of your organization is to employ the best technology in this job and increase your efficiency in the workplace.
When you are technologically inclined, one thing is sure and that is distance is not a barrier for you to organize your team.
Also, information can be disseminated without necessarily requiring the physical presence of the team members.
This is seen in the use of some social media platforms to create groups where information is passed and discussions are held in respect to the job of the team.
5. Time management
A good accounts payable team leader should be adept with the principles of time management with the understanding that it is not just important to complete a task but also to complete it at the time required or stipulated.
It is important that as a team leader you should be known to be someone that is conscious of time and does all he/she can to make use of the little time afforded to the team to make more impacts in the accounts payable department of the organization.
Not just this, you should also supervise and work on your team to ensure that each and every one of the team members imbibes that habit of time management.
This is very important because if you ignore your inability to manage time, it could yield some undesired team output.
6. Strong analytical skills
Analysis remains one of the things you must do as long as you are the accounts payable team leader of the organization.
You are saddled with the basic analytical needs of the organization in regards to what happens in the accounts payable department of the organization.
This means that by reason of your role in the organization, you should analyze critically what happens in the department and ensure that you take action where necessary and do not hesitate to make recommendations if need be.
So, analyzing the activities of the department demands that you are highly observant and can sense some unsolicited change in the activities of the department.
You are to be the chief analyst of the department and can also partake in some auditing exercises when called upon.
7. Research skills
Research in this aspect could come in two ways: personal research and team research, which is more like project management.
At some point in time in this job, you should sense the need to embark on some meaningful research to help make things work in the department or organization.
If you must talk about developing your problem solving skills in this job, then you should not neglect the importance of embarking on meaningful and purposeful researches.
This will afford you access to some priceless information that could mark a turning point in your career.
The reason why you should occasionally engage in a meaningful research is to help broaden your knowledge in this job and also help make some meaningful contributions to the organization when called upon.
This is part of your usefulness to the organization.
8. Problem solving skills
This is one thing that underlines how useful or otherwise you are to the organization.
Every organization has one or two things they battle with on daily basis or occasionally which always demand the input of some experts, both inside and outside the organization.
One of those experts is you the accounts payable team leader.
As a team leader, you should be able to bring solutions to the table when called upon or whenever the team or the organization is faced with some sort of challenge that may need your attention.
You can’t afford to be passive in this job, neither are you expected to turn deaf ears to pressing issues in the organization.
However, you should know that you can only solve some problems as much as you know and that is the reason why you should broaden and expand your knowledge base to help you become more useful to the organization.
9. Conflict resolution
Conflict is one nightmare that practically every head of department, departmental manager, and the hierarchies of every organization try to avoid due to the impact it has in the unity of the organization, both in the short and long term.
However, it is not something to get scared of in any way.
First thing you should do as the team leader is this:
Whenever you are caught up in the middle of a conflict involving two or more team members, you should investigate to know the root of the conflict and try to start the reconciliation or resolution from that point.
Then the next thing you are expected to do is to find a common ground to start up the peace making process.
It is necessary for you to know that you don’t need to apply bias in the peace making process.
Let your actions be driven towards making peace, nothing short of that should come to play.
10. Good work ethics
What you do as a team leader is bound to reflect on the behavior of the team members.
For example, imagine a team leader that comes to work late always.
What impression will you create in the minds of the other team members?
What the team members will assume is that the job is not one to be taken seriously since the team leader doesn’t take it serious.
To avoid giving your employer a reason to look for your replacement, you should watch what you say or do in the organization.
Also, for the interest of the members of your team, try not to give any negative impression through carelessness of any sort.
11. Excellent communication skills
To lead a team demands that you do a lot of talking without which you will not be able to relay some important information to the members of the team.
It is important that as the team leader, you should learn the art of communication for the benefit of all in the team.
Firstly, you need good communication skills for you to be able to relay what you have in mind to other members of your team.
Secondly, it is for the benefit of the team. This mean that without effective and good communication skills on your side, it will be difficult for the members of your team to understand your vision and the direction you are going in the job and this could be a major stumbling block in your job.
12. Coaching skills
You need no prophet to remind you that part of your job as an accounts payable team leader is coaching.
This is because a leader is not just by position or title but also the ability of the team leader to impart some good knowledge to the members of his team.
As the leader of your team, you should not just be knowledgeable in this job but also you should have the ability to teach, mentor, and coach your team members until they come up to a satisfactory level where they can work on their own and produce the desired result.
Not to forget that there might be new entrants who might still need time to adjust to the demands of their job in this department.
It is your job to ease them into this job and give them a leverage to succeed through efficient coaching and mentoring.
13. Decision making
Though you have the members of your team to make contributions or inputs depending on their job descriptions, yet the majority of the decisions to be made in the department depend on you and other senior figures in the department.
One thing you should know when considering making decisions in the department is that your decisions should not be based on assumptions or sentiments.
It is sure to backfire and be counterproductive because no meaningful decision is ever made out of sentiments.
One of the basic decisions you should be able to make on daily basis is to determine what other members of the team or department should do and not to do.
This is important because apart from your inputs, the inputs of others in the team also combine with yours to bring about a reasonable output.
14. Self-awareness
One thing is certain in this life and that is the uniqueness of every human being.
God blessed every man with different level of strength while we can still point out some weaknesses inherent in all humans and that forms the basis of this point.
When you are carrying out this job, one thing you should take into consideration is your abilities and your inabilities.
This is important because that will help you to know where you work on to make sure that your weaknesses don’t hinder the progress of the team.
Looking at it from another angle, it is also important to learn the art of delegation, especially when you know you cannot do everything at the same time.
This is not to tolerate laziness but a way of preserving your strength while bringing out the best in others through delegation.
15. People management
When you are able to manage yourself, the next thing you should put into consideration is the management of the members of your team.
Remember that the members of your team can be your backbone and the major pillars of the success you anticipate in this job.
People management is being interested in bringing out the best in the people you are working with in the department with the view of using their expertise and physical abilities to enhance the growth of the organization.
This is important because you just can’t do it all alone.
There are many ways you can achieve this feat and that includes motivation, empathy, delegation, and healthy competition.
All of these have the ability to bring out the best among the different individuals in the group.
Lastly, don’t forget to commend anyone that does something special in the group.
It is worth doing and can propel one to do better.
Accounts Payable Team Leader Skills for Resume
If you are making a resume or CV for the accounts payable team leader position, you can apply the skills and qualities in this post in making the core competence part of your resume
This will show to the employer/recruiter that you have the skills and qualities to be successful as an accounts payable team leader, which will enhance your chances of being hired.
Conclusion
The role of the accounts payable team leader comes with a lot of responsibilities, which someone who is not hardworking may not be suited for.
However, by developing the skills and qualities provided in this post you will be able to excel in your job as an accounts payable team leader.