The bookkeeper is considered a very key role in any company as, by recording transactions on time and therefore keeping the books of the company up-to-date, he gives timely reports. In doing so, finding the perfect fit requires great care in matching skills, as these become crucial to the financial health of the organization itself. This article will outline the key attributes of a bookkeeper: how to determine the degree of these skills in their recruitment and how to establish bookkeeping abilities online.
- What Are Essential Bookkeeping Skills for A Bookkeeper?
- How to Make a Bookkeeping Skills Assessment Online Using OnlineExamMaker?
- How to Develop Bookkeeping Skills Online for Bookkeepers?
What Are Essential Bookkeeping Skills for A Bookkeeper?
A good bookkeeper should possess technical, organizational, and basic communication skills. Here’s a rundown of the more important skills for a bookkeeper.
Attention to detail
Bookkeeping accuracy is very important; even small mistakes lead to huge differences. A bookkeeper needs to be keen such that all the transactions taking place must be correctly recorded.
Knowledge of accounting principles
They need to understand double-entry bookkeeping, accruals against cash accounting, and the concept of the general ledger so that books can be kept accordingly in light of the standards approved within an industry.
Proficiency with accounting software
Most of today’s bookkeeping is done on some kind of accounting software, whether that be QuickBooks, Xero, or FreshBooks. A good bookkeeper should be comfortable using these tools to enter data, track expenses, and generate financial reports.
Data entry and reconciliation
Accurate data entry is a core responsibility of bookkeepers. They must reconcile bank statements with the company’s records and ensure that all transactions are accounted for.
Financial reporting
Some of the responsibilities handed to the bookkeeper include the generation of financial statements, which include balance sheets, income statements, and cash flow reports. A good understanding of the creation and interpretation of such reports is crucial.
Time management
Bookkeepers are often multitasking, reconciling accounts and preparing monthly reports at the same time. Proper time management ensures deadlines are met and records remain organized.
Communication skills
Though it is somewhat behind-the-scenes, bookkeepers also must be able to communicate and relate well with others from other departments, sometimes the client, and even at times the vendors. Such instances where communication would obviously be clearly clear are those such as clearing discrepancies or when elaborating on financial data in the explanation.
How to Make a Bookkeeping Skills Assessment Online Using OnlineExamMaker?
To have a better judgment of bookkeeping skills, you can create an online skills assessment test on OnlineExamMaker. Here goes the process.
Create Your Next Quiz/Exam with OnlineExamMaker
Step 1: Edit questions about bookkeeping
OnlineExamMaker has several options of question types that include multiple-choice, true/false, and short answers. You can ask accounting principles questions, have the candidate work on a simple bookkeeping problem, or interpret financial statements. You might give the candidate a set of transactions to reconcile or ask them to compute the profit from a sample income statement.
Step 2: Include scenario-based questions
Important for evaluating the candidate’s approaches to real-world problems. How they will maintain discrepancies in the ledger, or how they would tackle late payments. These types of questions assess a person’s problem-solving capability in practical situations.
Step 3: Create a new assessment
After the assessment questions are ready, it is time to create a new assessment. You can fill title and description of the assessment in this step, then add questions to it.
Step 4: Adjust assessment settings
Set the number of attempts, time limits, and themes. Then select whether to grade automatically or manually. When you’re happy with your settings, click “Save and Publish”.
Step 5: Publish and share
When you feel that your test is ready, click “Publish”. In an instant, you get the shared link or the QR code for e-mail or social network usage.
When the test is submitted, OnlineExamMaker automatically grades the answers and produces detailed reports. That way, it will be easy to compare candidates’ performances and identify the strengths and weaknesses in their skills.
How to Develop Bookkeeping Skills Online for Bookkeepers?
The skills of bookkeeping can be developed online through various courses and tools. Here are but a few ways to help bookkeepers do better:
Take online courses
Several bookkeeping courses are on the web, including those on Coursera, LinkedIn Learning, and Udemy, among others. The classes are from the elementary levels to the complex and higher levels. Furthermore, this normally contains the respective certificates needed to enhance a bookkeeper’s qualification status.
Software training
A bookkeeper would require broad experience in utilizing various accounting software, like QuickBooks, Xero, and Microsoft Excel. Many free tutorials and webinars that the providers publish should help in gaining the most effectiveness from user-end tools.
Just so you know
With OnlineExamMaker assessment software, anyone can create & share professional skills assessments easily.
Practical simulations
Certain skills, like data entry, reconciliation, and reporting, can be practiced by bookkeepers through online simulations that contain simulated real-life bookkeeping exercises. These would provide hands-on experience with financial data, mock in nature, to help bookkeepers hone their skills.
Join online communities
The shared knowledge on forums, LinkedIn, and Facebook groups for bookkeepers is abounding. Well, this is very helpful because it enables communication in the form of asking questions, sharing tips, and best practices.
You need to hire an efficient bookkeeper to keep your business’s financial operations running smoothly. Key bookkeeping competencies assessed will include attention to detail in an online assessment, software proficiency, and financial reporting, which will go a long way in making informed hiring decisions. OnlineExamMaker is ideal for creating customized bookkeeping assessments that enable you to assess the skills of candidates with much ease. It therefore streamlines the recruitment process by way of its user-friendly interface, automated grading, and detailed reports to help you hire the best talent for your business. Be it knowledge related to technical areas or much-needed problem-solving skills in practice, OnlineExamMaker will make sure the perfect bookkeeper is selected to get into your team.
