What Does an Accounting Assistant Do?
Clean books at month-end start with someone who checks each receipt, invoice and deposit as it comes in. As an accounting assistant you'll code transactions, enter them in the ledger and sort out small mismatches before they spread. This might involve department budgets, vendor bills, cash deposits or purchasing-card statements in a university business office, a hospital or a mid-sized company.
Also known as: Senior Accounting Assistant
Accounting Assistant Duties and Responsibilities
The primary responsibilities of an accounting assistant include:
- Code invoices, receipts and deposits to the correct account and fund before entering them in the ledger.
- Enter approved bills and payment requests in the accounting system with scanned backup attached.
- Prepare daily cash and check deposits and match them to the bank statement.
- Reconcile purchasing-card statements against receipts; flag missing documents and follow up with cardholders.
- Answer questions from vendors and staff about payment status, missing paperwork and account codes.
- Keep petty cash balanced and record every disbursement with a signed receipt.
- Pull spending-to-budget reports from Excel or the ledger system for department heads.
- File and scan supporting documents so auditors can trace each entry back to its source.
- Compare vendor statements with the ledger and ask for copies of any missing invoices.
- Gather schedules and backup for the month-end close and the year-end audit.
Required Skills and Qualifications
To succeed as an accounting assistant, you will need the following skills and qualifications:
- QuickBooks, or the ledger module of an ERP such as Oracle or Workday
- Excel sorting, filters and simple pivot tables
- Fast, accurate numeric data entry
- Working knowledge of debits, credits and account codes
- Persistence in chasing missing receipts and approvals
- Polite, clear email for vendors and busy department staff
- Discretion with payment and bank details
- Bookkeeping or accounting coursework
Education and Training
Most accounting assistants learn the work through several months of on-the-job training, but some start out by taking bookkeeping classes at a community college. Employers generally expect new hires to know Excel. For the wider group of bookkeeping, accounting and auditing clerks, BLS lists some college without a degree as the typical entry level.
Salary and Job Outlook
Typical pay: $43,520 - $61,470 per year, with a median of $50,670.
The range covers the middle half of earners nationwide. Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, Bookkeeping, Accounting, and Auditing Clerks.
BLS projects employment of bookkeeping, accounting and auditing clerks to decline about 6 percent from 2025 to 2035, as accounting software takes over more routine posting. Even so, BLS expects roughly 144,100 openings a year, mostly to replace clerks who retire or change careers. Simple keying is what shrinks first. And, as long as offices still close their books each month, assistants who can reconcile and report will be needed to make sure the numbers hold up.
Outlook source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment Projections, 2025 to 2035, Bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks.