What Makes a Good Bookkeeper | 5 Qualities of Bookkeeping

A bookkeeper is probably one of the most important individuals for your business. He handles all the financial aspects of your company as you focus on growing your business and expanding its potential. Hiring in a rush without giving much thought to what skills and whom exactly you want to hire can be risky as bookkeepers can make or break your business as you know it.

Good bookkeepers can bring with them positivity, and bad bookkeepers can ruin your financial records. And will leave you dealing with the consequences yourself.

Also read: Advantages of Outsourcing Your Bookkeeping

In this case, how can you find the right bookkeeper that is just about right for your firm? You can use the guide below as your aid in finding the perfect bookkeeper with the following qualities.

Qualities of Bookkeeping

Here are the 5 qualities of bookkeeping.

1. Skills
2. Knowledge of the Latest Technology
3. Professional Certificates
4. Relevant Experiences
5. Willingness to Learn

Skills

Before anything else, your candidate needs to know the basics of bookkeeping. Such as maintaining records of financial transactions, posting transactions, reconciling of accounts, etc. These things would just be some of the things that your applicant would do if he or she were hired for the position.
On the other hand, some skills can be handy as well, like the following:

• Being a team player: Having the ability to work with other people is not a skill that flows in the veins of everybody else. Sometimes it is learned. So, if you need someone who needs to communicate with people daily because you will put this person in a team, then it is important to consider that your bookkeeper should have no issues with people in general and has the capability of dealing with them, pinpointing the problem and creating a solution as a team.
• Having good organizational skills: A company always needs to be organized from one department to another, especially the financial side of the firm. Since they are handling an integral part of an organization, bookkeepers need to retain their focus on the tasks at hand so you will need someone who knows how to organize and is naturally organized with everything they do.
• Being aware of how your business works: People who have this kind of understanding are believed to have good judgment when dealing with any situation in your business. Business-savvy people are quick on their feet in deciding. Bookkeepers would need this in some areas of their job as they deal with their day-to-day activities.
• Possessing problem-solving skills: Bookkeepers can use this skill in times when they find out about any discrepancies in their financial records. They can simply think of ways to solve the issue that they encounter to make everything in the correct format or for the records to be fixed.

Knowledge of the Latest Technology

All bookkeepers are now expected to know online accounting software because these are the things that every company uses to lessen the amount of time in data entry.

Since there are always updates about software that are used in bookkeeping, your applicant needs to be familiar with the updated ones for this will save you and them some time in figuring out how to use the new versions.

Professional Certificates

Knowing that your potential bookkeeper has some certificates or even memberships in their ownership normally means that they have up-to-date knowledge and skills that you need when it comes to bookkeeping.

Relevant Experiences

Bookkeepers are all over the business industries, and they have different backgrounds and possess different practices and knowledge of economic activities. Also, some applicants have been bookkeepers before and applied for other kinds of jobs.

You’d like to have your bookkeeper be well experienced for the role you’d like for this person to fill, but training can also be provided if you deem them to be capable of handling the job you have laid out and as long as they possess the next quality.

Willingness to Learn

People who are willing to learn can easily pick up things that you want them to know and that is essential for them to store in their minds. If your candidate has this thirst to learn more than what their brains already retained from their previous experiences, then they can be a competitive candidate who is definitely in front of the race.

Skills are good but if a person does not want to go up from where they are, they can’t be a good addition to your company as an organization always wants to improve and achieve one level after another year by year.

Also read: Accounts and Bookkeeping Records to be maintained under VAT in UAE

When you have the right bookkeeper in your firm, the stress of handling the books will be placed in their hands and you can continue with the advancement of your business. One of the main reasons why a business is successful is because they have the latest and correct financial information that is operated by a good bookkeeper.

Farahat & Co offers bookkeeping services in Dubai, Sharjah, and Abu Dhabi, UAE. Contact us and book a consultation.