A finance accountant can either fortify your financial integrity or quietly expose it. That’s why hiring a financial accountant is less about credentials and more about the right accounting skills that uphold control, clarity, and compliance. 

A finance accountant usually works between operational accounting and financial reporting. They turn transactional data into useful financial information for both internal and external stakeholders. If your team’s accounting skills are weak, it can lead to misstatements, audit issues, and poor decisions.

To help you assess the right fitment, we have come up with this blog that covers the top 10 skills every recruiter should look for when hiring accountants for finance teams. It also includes all the practical ways of assessing technical abilities, soft skills, and system knowledge with confidence. 

Key Skills of a Good Finance Accountant

When hiring a finance accountant it’s important to see if the candidate can manage both the technical work and the bigger picture. This means preparing accurate reports, meeting compliance deadlines, using different systems, and working well with other teams.

Below, we break down the core accounting specialist skills and traits that you must prioritize. These encompass both technical knowledge and personal traits that affect day-to-day work in the role of finance accountant. 

Core Technical Skills of a Finance Accountant

A finance accountant’s job starts with a solid understanding of technical accounting. The financial accounting skills help keep reports accurate, consistent, and compliant. Tasks like preparing financial statements or managing the general ledger rely on these abilities. Recruiters should carefully assess the following finance accounting skills during recruitment: 

1. Financial Reporting & Preparing Statements

A strong grasp of financial reporting is non-negotiable in recruitment. Your hires must be able to compile accurate P&Ls, balance sheets, and cash flow statements in alignment with GAAP or IFRS. Errors here affect audits, investor trust, and management insights.

How to develop it in teams: Encourage monthly close simulations, shadowing during audits, and collaborative walkthroughs of past financial statements.

2. Budgeting, Forecasting & Variance Analysis

Finance accountants usually manage or help create budgets. When they can predict results accurately and explain any differences, it leads to better decisions about how to use resources.

How to develop it in teams: Use rolling forecasts. Pair junior staff with budget owners. Hold regular review meetings post-month-end to discuss variances.

3. Tax Compliance & Regulatory Knowledge

Missing deadlines or submitting inaccurate filings can trigger penalties and damage reputation. Accountants must understand the tax structure relevant to your operating region—corporate tax, GST, transfer pricing, etc.

How to develop it in teams: Create regulatory calendars. Encourage CPE programs. Run monthly compliance drills within the team.

4. Accounts Payable & Receivable Management

Managing accounts payable and receivable affects both working capital and relationships with suppliers. If these processes are handled poorly, it can strain vendor relationships and cause cash flow problems.

How to develop it in teams: Introduce aged receivable reviews, vendor SLA tracking, and hands-on invoice-to-payment workflow training.

5. General Ledger Management & Month-End Close

A finance accountant should keep the general ledger organized and accurate. Without this skill, later reporting and reconciliations can fail.

How to develop it in teams: Standardize chart of accounts usage. Assign ownership for each GL section. Audit journal entries monthly.

While technical accounting forms the backbone of a finance accountant’s role, success also depends on how well they handle data, systems, and insights. The next set of skills focuses on these tech-driven competencies.

Data, Systems & Analytical Skills Every Accountant Needs

Even the most technically skilled accountant will fall short without system fluency and the ability to analyze financial data effectively. Today’s jobs involve more than just keeping ledgers; they also call for interpretation, generating insights, and using the right tools. These are some specialized skills of an accountant that help translate numbers into decisions.

6. Excel & Spreadsheet Proficiency

Excel remains the universal accounting language. Whether it’s building pivot tables, running VLOOKUPs, or conducting scenario analysis, Excel proficiency is a baseline expectation.

How to develop it in teams: Offer internal Excel challenges. Encourage certifications. Use Excel audit tools to evaluate accuracy and efficiency.

7. Familiarity with Accounting Software & ERPs

Whether your company uses SAP, QuickBooks, Oracle, or Zoho, tool familiarity helps accountants navigate entries, approvals, and reconciliations faster.

How to develop it in teams: Rotate team members across modules (e.g., GL, AP, AR), provide guided ERP training, and simulate month-end processes.

8. Data Analysis & Business Insight

Accountants need to know how to analyze raw data and find useful financial stories, such as margin trends, cash burn, or unusual costs.

How to develop it in teams: Train on data visualization tools. Host biweekly sessions where team members present findings to non-finance stakeholders.

Being skilled with technical systems is important, but accountants also need to work well with others, communicate clearly, and make ethical choices. The soft skills below show how well a finance accountant works in teams and helps the business succeed beyond just handling numbers.

Soft Skills of an Accountant That Drive Real Impact

Technical knowledge helps accountants land a job, but soft skills shape how they work with others, handle stress, and share their ideas. Recruiters usually notice these qualities during interviews, not by reading resumes.

‍

Here are two critical soft skills of an accountant to assess:

9. Communication & Stakeholder Management

An accountant must explain numbers clearly to non-finance audiences such as those in operations, marketing, or investors. They should set expectations, respond to questions, and point out risks using simple language.

How to develop it in teams: Run presentation drills, assign finance-business interface roles, and coach on simplifying financial jargon.

10. Attention to Detail, Ethics & Professional Judgement

Inaccurate reconciliations, ignored deadlines, or unethical adjustments can lead to audits, penalties, and loss of trust. You want accountants who double-check their numbers and understand the ethical weight of financial data.

How to develop it in teams: Introduce peer audits, reward error-free closings, and hold monthly ethics roundtables to discuss real scenarios.

Many teams struggle to evaluate these skills accurately during hiring. The next section shares practical ways to assess finance accounting skills in a structured and consistent way.

How Recruiters Can Assess Financial Accounting Skills Fairly

Hiring a finance accountant without a clear evaluation process can lead to costly hiring mistakes. Simple screenings or standard interviews usually do not show how well a candidate can handle real job challenges. Hiring managers and recruiters can fairly assess financial accounting skills by using a structured approach that matches the role and combines objectivity with practical insights.

Map Each Role to Required Skills

Not every finance role requires the same level of skill. For example, a junior accountant should focus on accurate journal entries, while a finance accountant should understand financial reporting frameworks. This mapping helps identify exact skill sets needed and avoids overqualifying or under-hiring. You can use a skill-level matrix like this:

‍

Use a Mix of Tests, Tasks & Interviews

To fully assess a candidate, try using several methods together. Combine objective evaluation, behavioral insight, and practical tasks. Each of these helps you find the right Finance Accountant for your team.

• Pre-employment tests: Begin with role-specific assessments like situational judgment or compact finance tests. These evaluate accuracy in tasks such as correcting journal entries, identifying reporting errors, or interpreting cash flows. PMaps' Finance Accountant Test, for instance, benchmarks real-world competencies effectively.
• Structured interviews: Use standardized questioning styles like AI-driven interviews or Behavioral Event Interviewing (BEI). These help you dig into past behavior with prompts like, “Describe a time you spotted a reporting discrepancy. What did you do?” Responses highlight integrity, detail orientation, and corrective actions taken.
• Work samples: Assign realistic accounting tasks—such as drafting a variance analysis or auditing a trial balance—to gauge technical fluency, critical thinking, and familiarity with accounting software. The results reflect how candidates apply knowledge in practical contexts.

Quick Tip: Are you unsure how to ask the right questions or focus on what really matters? Check out our Finance Accountant Interview Questions guide to help you run your next hiring round with clarity and confidence.

Looking Out for Red Flags

A clear evaluation process helps you avoid uncertainty and find candidates who will add long-term value to your finance team. However, some candidates may seem qualified on paper but show warning signs during evaluation. Watch out for:

• Tool-name dropping without describing processes
• Vague responses about past contributions
• Inflated job titles or unclear scope of responsibility
• Overdependence on templates or guided systems

When you match job demands with practical tasks and provide clear ways to evaluate, recruiters can make confident, evidence-based hiring decisions. This careful process not only improves financial reporting and compliance but also helps you build a team that can support your company’s growth. 

Tip for HRs: Looking to make hiring easier? Try using our Finance Accountant Job Description to help set clear expectations from the beginning.

Conclusion

Hiring the right finance accountant means more than just looking at qualifications. You need to match a candidate’s real skills to your business's needs. Technical accounting, communication, software know-how, and good judgment all help keep your books accurate, your business compliant, and your finances clear. 

Using a clear, role-specific method to assess financial accounting skills during recruitment helps your organization avoid expensive mistakes and make better long-term decisions.

To ensure every hire meets your benchmarks, use PMaps custom made assessments for your organization or explore standardized advanced tools that evaluates relevant skills for accounting roles across all seniority levels. Connect with our team at assessment@pmaps.in or call 8591320212 to explore tailored assessments for finance accountants.