Top 15 Payroll Accountant Skills and Qualities to Succeed in your Career

This post provides exhaustive list of payroll accountant skills and qualities you need to have to be effective in your duties and build a successful payroll career.

Who is a Payroll Accountant?

Simply put, a payroll accountant is someone hired into an organization saddled with the duty of preparing the salaries and paychecks of the employees of the organization.

He/she keeps record of the numerical strength of the staff of the organization too.

Top 15 Payroll Accountant Skills and Qualities to Succeed in your Career

Here are important skills and qualities you need to have to excel in your payroll accountant job:

1. Administrative skills

An aspect of versatility you will need in the payroll accountant job is the administrative skills. You should know your activities well and how to get around those activities without difficulties. This is what administrative skills entail.

You will be faced with the prospect of managing different activities almost the same day or a little time in-between.

You will need a good administrative skill to prioritize and know how to get around these activities all by yourself. This will definitely put to test your administrative skills.

Above all, administrative skills also entail your ability to meet with day to day activities, and most importantly find time to be with the relevant executives in the organization and discuss the outcome of your job from time to time.

2. Attention to details

As a payroll accountant, you are always meant to have the details of a lot of workers or employees in the organization.

You are given those details to work with and solve the problems for which you were hired. This requires that you should give yourself to taking note of vital details.

This entails you making sure that the information given to you are correct and not ambiguous in any way.

If you sense there are ambiguities or lack of clarity in the details you are provided with by the organization, waste no time to involve the relevant persons to implement corrections.

But this can only happen if you pay attention to details. This will help you detect irregularities and engage in the necessary procedures to ensure that those irregularities are sorted out.

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3. Proficiency in IT

Making a career in today’s world, including the payroll accountant career, involves relating with the Information Technology (IT) industry.

Information technology ensures that you leverage on the possibilities of the digital world to make the most out of your payroll accountant job.

It is quite simple to say that it is through this means that you get vast knowledge of the different possibilities and opportunities available in your payroll accountant career.

Though you can do your job manually, but for the purpose of speed and accuracy you will need to go technological.

You will do better in your job as a payroll accountant when you take advantage of what technology has to offer you.

You have software tools to learn and work with as well as some technological gadgets that are necessary for you to know and use working as a payroll accountant.

4. Good planning skills

In the payroll accounting job, you will need to be a good planner to be able to carry out your job without hiccups.

This is because of the sensitivity of the job, knowing well that a mistake or blunder can get the whole process messed up.

So, to avoid making some avoidable mistakes in payroll duties, you should ensure to engage yourself in clinical planning, bearing in mind what is expected of you by the organization you are working with.

Again, planning will help you do most of your jobs in your mind and paper before you venture into it.

This is like finishing the job in your mind before doing it. This will help you ensure that you have the blueprint in your mind to help guide your activities in the organization.

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5. Knowledge of compliance rules

When you consider the fact that there are rules in employer/employee engagement in the business world, it will spur you to know on what basis of employment.

Remember, it is not all about having a lot of staff in the organization, but also knowing how important each staff is to the organization.

This means that as the payroll accountant, you should be well knowledgeable in the affairs of employment compliance rules.

This deals with also the terms and conditions of employment of every employee in the organization.

This is necessary, especially when you are to find yourself in an advisory role to the organization.

You should be able to advise the organization on the effects of having a bloated number of employees in the organization and the financial implication to the organization.

6. Mathematical/numeracy skills

To make accurate predictions for the organization, which your position as a payroll accountant requires, you will need to have excellent math skills.

It is important to know that financial accounting of any type has its roots in mathematics.

This tells you that there wouldn’t be any form of accounting outside mathematics and this should give you a hint why you should prioritize having mathematical skills.

It is a good idea to get your mathematical skills up to standard for you to remain relevant in your payroll accountant job.

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7. Professional experience

Every other skill you may need as a payroll accountant is subjective skill, meaning that you may not work with it.

But for the aspect of professional experience, it is always important for employers to have employees with some years of experience under their belt.

This is because, the problem solving skills of an employee depends a lot on the years of experience they have on the job or in a related field.

This is why employers usually look out for people with payroll accounting experience to hire for a vacant position.

8. Problem solving skills

There wouldn’t be any need for you to be in a payroll accountant career if you are not capable of providing some good solutions to challenges in your organization.

Your job comes with a description, which details the tasks that you are expected to perform.

These tasks may come with certain challenges, which you will need to apply problem-solving skills to resolve to be able to successfully complete the tasks.

Also, there are issues that may come up on day to day basis which you are expected to handle without necessarily involving other executives of the organization.

You should be able to provide solutions to simple daily problems.

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9. Communication skills

The most important reason for communication is to disseminate information for the benefit of every stakeholder in the organization to digest.

Information is what keeps the focus of the organization intact and in check.

But how well the stakeholders in the organization are able to digest the information you disseminate will be dependent on how you are in communication.

In other words, you have information to share, you know the right channel to pass through and you know when to circulate the information you have.

So, how you disseminate information in the organization is as important as the information you are disseminating.

This is quite true because something can mean different things to different people, but through good communication skills you will be able to pass the right information without ambiguity. This concerns both oral and written forms of communication.

10. Customer service

The customer service comes into play because of the tendency of organizations asking for your services and advice over their payroll issues.

You will need a lot of customer service skills to be able to handle the requests as they come.

First, you should know the basic things to be aware of as someone acting in customer service capacity.

You should be patient to explain confusing issues to organizations that need your services, and also to be patient enough to put them through the whole process.

This entails that you should have the details of the payroll accountant job at your fingertips and ever willing and ready to serve organizations that need your skills to help them through their payroll issues.

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11. Flexibility

Organizations differ in location and mode of operation. This is why you should be able to work with different kinds of organizations regardless of their industries.

Sometimes, there might be difficulties in trying to adjust to the way things are done in a particular organization.

This shouldn’t scare you; rather you should see it as an opportunity to expand your knowledge and skills in this amazing job that you have.

So, you need flexibility to do exceptionally well in your payroll accountant job. Just like we saw earlier, this job may take you to different places and introduce you to organizations that have different ways of doing things.

No matter what the mode of operation is, stick to your job and do it well.

12. Decision making

Decision making is part of your job as a payroll accountant. You have a lot of decisions to make in this position because of the fact that it is assumed that you are knowledgeable in this field and can make meaningful contributions to the organization in the aspect of payroll issues.

Your decisions are mainly on the advisory side, not really on the side of sovereignty to undertake some actions unless you are given the freedom to do so.

You are to make your analysis of the staff quality of the organization in relation to the amount each staff earns.

With this analysis, you should enlighten the management of the organization on what their stand or position should be in regard to the quantity and quality of the staff they have in the organization.

This should be in the interest of financial stability of the organization.

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13. Dependability

When you are working as a payroll accountant for an organization, understand that the first notion they have about you is that you are dependable, i.e. you have what it takes to make a difference in the fortunes of the organization.

This puts a challenge to you to make sure that the trust and confidence the organization has in you should not be regretted by them.

So, you have to be professional and show some good work ethics to ensure that the organization you are working for does not have any reason to look for another payroll accountant.

14. Discretion

The details of the workers in your care are not for you to toil or play around with; you have to keep the sensitive information about each staff safe and discrete.

Make sure that no information about an employee gets leaked from you.

Discretion is what you will need to do this. You will need to treat every detail of every employee as secret and confidential.

You should be trusted with the fact that all details of employees in the organization are safe with you and cannot be shared with anyone except with the relevant persons in the organization.

So, be careful how you handle the details of the employees in the organization.

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15. Leadership skills

Working as a payroll accountant does not mean that you are to work for yourself and by yourself all alone.

You will need the services of other members of the organization to deliver an excellent job in the organization. But most importantly, you will need to guide them in the way.

You should be able to relate the nature of your job and the part each member of your team should be able to play to achieve what is needed by the organization.

This is both an act of teamwork and profound leadership quality.

Your leadership qualities should come to the limelight by reason of this role.

You should not forget that as a leading figure in the organization, you should be able to coach some other people in the organization with less experience than you.

Payroll Accountant Skills for Resume

If you are writing a resume/CV for a payroll accountant position, you can create a compelling skills section for the resume by applying some of the skills and qualities emphasized above for a successful payroll accounting career.

Your resume/CV will receive the desired attention from recruiters/employers if you showed that you have the right skills and qualities to be effective as a payroll accountant.

Conclusion

If you are looking to improve on your job and get to the top of your payroll accountant career, this post has provided the skills and qualities you need to develop and implement in your job.