Top 15 Accounts Receivable Specialist Skills to Excel in your Career

If you are desirous of excelling in your accounts receivable specialist career, this post provides important skills and qualities to develop.

You can also highlight these skills in your resume or CV to show that you have what it takes to perform the duties of an accounts receivable specialist effectively.

Before we continue with these skills, let’s look at what accounts receivable specialists do:

What Does an Accounts Receivable Specialist Do?

What comes into an organization in the form of cash and other forms of cash flow is very important to the survival of the organization.

That’s why organizations are very careful not to allow any form of incompetence in regards to who oversees the inflow of cash into the coffers of the organization.

This is the duty of an accounts receivable specialist.

They are in charge of collecting payments for an organization or a company.

They track payments and make banking deposits for the organization.

An accounts receivable specialist could use knowledge from other related fields to work in this capacity.

Top 15 Accounts Receivable Specialist Skills

Here are some of the vital skills and qualities to have as an accounts receivable specialist to be successful in your job and career:

1. Necessary experience

There is a minimum level of working experience associated with this job.

This is not general as there could be variations in standards depending on the organization you intend working for.

The necessary experience you need will be determined by the organization.

Whichever standard set by the organization, one thing is sure and that is that the minimum experience needed to land the job must be met for you to be considered for the job.

If you are not able to meet with the minimum requirement, then you stand a little chance of landing the job.

The experience needed could take the side of how long you work in that position in the past or any other related job in the same field.

Also, your certification is taken into consideration to add to the practical knowledge needed by the organization.

2. Efficient application of Microsoft suite

Microsoft suite remains one of the most potent collections of office software tools which anyone can use for various kinds of jobs, ranging from word related jobs to mathematical/accounting jobs, not forgetting the presentation and design software.

The Microsoft suite contains software that you will definitely need for different tasks in your office.

The software tools are professionally designed to cater for your word, database, presentation, and design works on daily basis.

You just have to get them and work with them as much as you can.

However, knowledge of how to use these tools don’t come by default.

You have to undergo basic computer trainings with them in view to help you get acquainted with how they work.

3. Good organizational skills

The accounts receivable specialist job requires someone that is coolheaded and calculative in their actions.

This is what having organizational skills entail.

Though the job you have can be tasking and sometimes difficult, yet you have to be organized in whatever you do.

The first level of organization is to organize yourself and your activities in the department.

In regards to your role in the department as the accounts receivable specialist, it is important you do not act most times out of impulse.

This could lead to too many mistakes in your job.

You are expected to have a plan on how to carry out your activities and stick to your plan, except when it becomes utterly necessary for you to chart a new course of action.

Otherwise, stick to your plan and avoid impulsive actions.

4. Active learning

This is surely one of the important skills an accounts receivable specialist should have to be effective in their job.

When you want to do better in your job, the first thing is to know what it takes to achieve the feat you are aspiring for, else you might just be daydreaming without knowing it.

The major prerequisite for achieving success in your job is your ability to learn.

There are various ways to learn, including reading books, magazines, newspaper columns, and attending seminars and workshops etc.

Through these means, you are able to get some relevant information which might be of help to you in your accounts receivable specialist job.

Active learning is more concerned with acquiring information and applying the most needed ones to your job.

You just don’t have to work only with what you know from your past. Add more knowledge to yourself and renew and transform your mindset always.

5. Communication skills

One basic requirement for your success as an accounts receivable specialist is your effectiveness in communication.

If you really want to establish and maintain a sound relationship with people then you should be an excellent communicator.

As we continue to find ourselves embracing changes that always come, one thing you should know is that communication as a skill remains in demand even more.

Therefore, if you desire to make a good career in your job as the accounts receivable specialist of your organization, then you must develop a good communication skill.

As you know, effective communication is a potent way of relaying information and getting reactions/feedback, which shows that information has been passed successfully.

So, think about the aspects of your communication life that you need to work on and start the work of amendment immediately.

6. Problem solving skills

No matter how many certificates you possess as an individual, the true test of your competence and worth in the organization is circled around your ability to solve simple and complex problems.

This is what proves your worth and importance to your organization.

So, it is safe to say that your value in that organization depends on your ability to get round problems presented to you daily, weekly, and monthly.

Take the problems as they come and do your possible best to be clinical in handling them.

Problem solving is not really as easy as it is stated by some people (especially when you have some strict bosses).

However, that is what you agreed to undertake from the very first day you accepted the job offer.

So, the best you can do is to make yourself strong enough to handle the problems as they come.

7. Time management

No one loves to work with a time waster. Not in any field of life and never will be.

In the world of business and in the working place, there is little or no tolerance for time mismanagement.

This is to tell you how employers take seriously the issue of time management.

If you really want to impress your employer, then ensuring effective time management is one way to do that.

Give your employer the impression that you value time the way they do.

Nothing gives an employer joy like having an employee who knows the worth of time.

When you are given a task to handle, do not find yourself doing nothing with the hope that you have the whole time to yourself.

Unforeseen circumstances can hinder the progress of your job, but when you start off on time, you afford yourself time to recover from any hiccups that may disrupt your work.

8. Teamwork

Your ability to work with other members of your team should not just be down to your temperament, i.e. sanguine and all that stuff.

It should be as a result of your understanding of the importance of teamwork and the role it plays in the success of your accounts receivable specialist career.

Avoid the temptation of thinking that you are all you need to succeed in this job.

Don’t come to a point where all you think about is your personal interest and gain.

It could backfire and you might not like the end product of selfishness in this job.

One of the best ways of getting the best out of people is to make them believe that you are interested in their own progress.

This will give them a good reason to help you in different ways as they can.

So, teamwork abhors selfishness and pride.

9. Business acumen

The more business knowledge/acumen you have, the more you are likely to succeed in whatever you do for a living, including being an accounts receivable specialist.

The world has grown to a point that everything every human being does has a way of being linked to business.

Working in the office should not deny you the opportunity to acquire some good business knowledge.

You have to make out time and know how things are working in the marketplace, both at the local level and the international level.

With the knowledge you gather from your research and knowledge hunt, you should be able to know how all the knowledge you have gathered can work in your favor in regards to your job.

This is important because, once your employer sees that you have business acumen, they will not be in a haste to lay you off even in the toughest conditions.

10. Self-motivation

This is a personal skill your employer will appreciate so much. As much as self-motivation is a personal skill, yet it has some spillover and contagious effects.

Meaning that self-motivation has the ability to rub off on others as well as have a ripple effect on what happens with you and the organization at large.

It is a known fact that without self-motivation so many goals become almost impossible to achieve, not because the goals are difficult to achieve but because in your mind you see no reason to embark on such journey.

So, it is important that you stay motivated in your job all the time.

On the issue of self-motivation rubbing off on others, you need to understand the fact that your motivation can build both motivation and courage in other people in the organization, especially those who are relatively new in the department or organization.

11. Collaboration

As an accounts receivable specialist, you serve as a link between the accounts receivable department and other departments of the organizations, especially the accounting department.

The two departments have a lot of things in common.

Maintaining a cordial relationship between the accounts receivable department and the accounting department should be your first and major concern as an accounts receivable specialist.

Ensure that the records you have in the department is exactly the same with the records in the accounting department.

After that, you should think of collaborating with different individuals in your department and other departments to help make your work easier via first-hand information.

When you have different reliable sources of information, then you will never run out of ideas in this job.

12. Deadline management

When we discussed about time management, we were able to note the fact that no one wants to work with a time waster.

This of course means that a time waster has every tendency of missing deadlines at the detriment of the organization where they work.

Deadline management is what really defines time management.

When a job given to you is not delivered at the expected time, it is assumed that you do not have time management skills.

Just like you know, your boss or client might not be overly interested in the obstacles you have to overcome just to get the job done.

They just want you to get the job done.

So, when you have any job at hand, have the deadline in mind and plan yourself to beat it, no matter how difficult it might be for you to do so.

This is why you have to keep discovering new ways of doing things more efficiently.

13. Information management skills

Some people have challenges in generating the information they need to work with while some have information to work with but lack the management skills to effectively apply it.

This could pose a challenge both in the short and long run in this job.

The first stage of information management is to identify the type of information you need in your job.

Not every information is needful to you all the time.

The value of information is dependent on its timeliness and other factors in your job.

When you get the information you need, then work with it and ensure to get further information to make the first one more complete.

This is like using another information to authenticate the first one that you acquired.

14. Experience in accounting

When you are working in the position of an accounts receivable specialist, you should be able to understand basic accounting for some reasons.

You should not be entirely ignorant about accounting and other related subject matters like mathematics.

One of the reasons you should consider having experience in accounting is for you to be able to undertake basic accounting responsibilities when the need arises.

You should be versatile enough to take up some accounting responsibilities when required or called upon to do so.

Another reason why you should consider having some accounting skills is so that you will be able to have better understanding of what is happening in the accounts receivable department and most especially reports in financial documents.

15. Ability to work independently

As important as teamwork is, it is also vital that you do not lose your identity in the process of mingling with different people in the organization.

You should pay more attention to your strengths than to the strengths of others.

If you must mix with people within the support of a team, you should be careful that you don’t lose your skills just because you want to copy what other people are doing.

This could be counterproductive and shows that you lack confidence in your own abilities.

Also, working independently entails your ability to work with or without supervision from anyone in the organization.

You should be skilled enough to remain unperturbed about whether you are being monitored or not and give the job your best.

Accounts Receivable Specialist Skills for Resume

If you are making a resume or CV for the accounts receivable specialist position, you can craft a compelling skills section by highlighting some of the skills and qualities presented above.

This will help to convince the hiring manager that you will be able to perform the duties and responsibilities of an accounts receivable specialist effectively, which can greatly boost your chances of being called for an interview or hired for the accounts receivable specialist job.

Conclusion

The job of an accounts receivable specialist requires having certain skills and qualities to be effective on it, including experience, efficiency in the use of Microsoft suite, and good organizational skills.

This post has provided a long list of the important skills and qualities you will need to be successful in your job and career as an accounts receivable specialist.

You can also apply these skills in creating the skills section of your resume or CV to show to the employer that you have what is required to be effective in performing the role of an accounts receivable specialist.

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