What to Expect from Accounting Clerk Jobs
If you are hoping to secure administration jobs and you like working with money/numbers, this could be the right position for you. Although there are a wide range of specific job titles that go along with these positions, your basic responsibility is to keep track of what your employer is earning and how much he or she is spending. You may also find yourself managing the accounts receivable department and dealing with customer bills which are outstanding. That, of course, can be a chore in and of itself because you may need to contact those customers and make arrangements to get the bills paid. In other cases, those holding accounting clerk jobs must also keep track of office supplies and place the orders when the need arises.
The number and type of responsibilities you might have would depend on the size of the organization for which you work and on the job title you are given. For example, if you are a payroll clerk you would be in charge of recording employee’s wages. You may have to check company records against the time cards to ensure accuracy as well. On the other hand, if you are considered a procurement clerk you would be in charge of purchase requests made from the rest of the staff.
In smaller offices, you might be faced with all of these responsibilities including full bookkeeping duties. In larger offices, these financial administration jobs would be handled by multiple people, usually with someone overseeing the department.
Regardless of the size of the office, most accounting clerk jobs are going to have similar working environments. You’ll probably either have an office or a cubicle in which you will work. Also, you can expect to do a great deal of your work on a computer because modern offices rely heavily on financial software for the tracking of their monetary expenditures. The good thing about this trend is that if you enter the information correctly the calculations should always come out accurately which was not the case with manual methods.
If you’re holding financial administration jobs like these, there are advantages. For one, you will typically work a standard 40 hour week. However, you may need to work longer hours during when an audit is done, when the fiscal year is closing, and around tax time. Otherwise, you can expect to work 9 to 5. Another advantage is that even though you spend most of your time with numbers, you will have chances to interact with people by answering employees’ questions, discussing order requests, and contacting clients about payments.
Unfortunately, since you will be spending almost all of your time at the computer, you would be at higher risk for eye strain, repetitive stress injuries to the wrists, and other physical discomfort caused by sitting for long periods of time.
Education & Training for Accounting Clerk Jobs
While you might imagine a financial position would require a great deal of training that is not always the case. Almost all of these jobs will require you to have a high school diploma at minimum. However, having some college background, especially in business, finance, or accounting, will be a huge advantage for you in the market. In fact, if you have a bachelor’s degree in one of those fields then you will be in good shape. Keep in mind that some recent graduates will take these types of low-level administration jobs to get into a company’s financial department either to gain work experience or to advance within the firm.
Although a solid education can be useful, experience is more highly desired. Both customer service and bookkeeping experience are highly desirable for these positions. You definitely want to have demonstrable computer skills, particularly with spreadsheet software such as Microsoft Excel and other types of financial programs. You do not necessarily need to be familiar with the particular program used in that company because most accounting clerk jobs do come with a period of on-the-job training.
Remember that you should also possess some basic personality traits, such as enjoying working with people, understand numbers well, being well-organized, and paying close attention to details.
Job Outlook & Pay Expectation
Unfortunately, the demand for people to fill these positions is expected to drop by 2010. That’s because so many of the job responsibilities are now being handled through automation or are being combined so one person handles them instead of several. However, the average pay for these positions is still reasonable at between $11 to $13 per hour which would equal $22,880 to $27,040 per year.
