Hiring an Accounting Assistant: the QuickBooks Skills to Test First
A practical guide to hiring an accounting assistant: the QuickBooks and Excel skills to test, a short trial task to set, and the controls to plan.
Hiring an accounting assistant is one of the cheapest ways to take routine work off a busy bookkeeper or owner. A job notice we reviewed for a hospitality business asked for invoice reconciliation, receivables tracking, deposit refunds, and hands-on QuickBooks and Excel.
The mix is typical, and it shows where small firms get the hire wrong: they screen for attitude and hope the software skills follow. This guide covers the skills to test, a trial task to set, and the controls to plan before day one.
What does an accounting assistant actually do?
The role sits between data entry and full bookkeeping. Typical duties include recording transactions from several sources, matching invoices to payments, chasing receivables, and keeping vendor records tidy. Many employers also ask for expense tracking, deposit refunds, and support during weekly or monthly reviews.
The assistant owns the routine work; the senior bookkeeper or accountant owns the judgment calls.
Which QuickBooks skills should you test?
Ask for hands-on QuickBooks Online experience rather than a certificate alone. Four skills predict success in this role:
- Bank reconciliation: clearing a small discrepancy without hand-holding.
- Accounts receivable: applying payments to the right invoices and running an ageing report.
- Accounts payable: entering bills, scheduling payments, and keeping vendor details consistent.
- Reporting: pulling a profit and loss statement and a balance sheet for a date range.
Test Excel alongside it. Sorting, filtering, and basic formulas cover most of what an assistant needs each day.
Set a short trial task before you offer the role
Give finalists a small, realistic exercise in a sample or test company, never your live books. One option: a folder of invoices, a bank statement extract, and a list of open customers. Ask the candidate to enter the bills, match the payments, and flag anything that does not add up. Twenty to thirty minutes is enough.
Watch for accuracy, for the questions they ask, and for how they document what they found. Pay for the time; it signals respect and tends to attract stronger candidates.
Which warning signs should you watch for?
Vague answers about past reconciliations are the biggest one. Ask what they did when the bank feed and the ledger disagreed, and listen for a method rather than a guess.
Be cautious with claims of deep expertise in every tool your business uses. QuickBooks skill does not transfer automatically to a property management or point of sale system, so budget training time for anything specialist.
Plan access and controls before day one
Decide permissions before the new hire logs in. QuickBooks Online lets you restrict a user to specific areas, such as sales only or expenses only. That restriction is worth using.
Keep banking, payroll, and user administration with a senior role. Agree on a simple rule: the assistant prepares, and you or your bookkeeper reviews and approves. A fixed weekly review slot keeps errors small and turns the role into a training pipeline.
Before you post the vacancy, write the ten tasks you would hand over in the first month. That single list becomes your job ad, your trial task, and your first performance review. Most hiring problems in small finance teams come from skipping exactly that step.