Good bookkeeping leads to accurate financial records, effective business operations, and legal compliance. In the case of hiring new employees and entrusting them with bookkeeping tasks, getting your team up to speed as soon as possible is crucial for business continuity. Yet, when it comes to timing, the interruption, among other things, is a factor. In this blog, we discuss the key stages of when bookkeeping training should occur, taking into account factors such as employee onboarding time, company workflows, turnover rate, business strategy, and more.
During the Onboarding Process
When adding a new bookkeeper to the team, this is an ideal time for training. As such, this ensures that the correct financial procedures are communicated to new hires and they have a good understanding of their duties from the start.
Benefits of Training During Onboarding:
- Seamless integration: There is too much to learn during their first days, so they are very open to learning as they want to know what the company is about and where their seats fall in the grand scheme of things.
- Standard Procedures: The accounting department should have a uniform bookkeeping process, which can only happen if recruits are trained from day one to carry out financial activities through standard reporting processes.
- Fast Tracking to Competency Building: hiring solutions that provide employees with the right instruments to get started as soon as they are onboard lowers errors during vital operations.
However, the training at onboarding has to be planned with a proper strategy. Also, you do not want to drink from a firehose of information all at once for new employees. Studying one module at a time helps retention.
Ahead of financial periods or major deadlines.
Period of High Pressure: Many organizations have high-pressure periods, such as the quarterly financial closing season tax filing season, etc. Carrying out training before these important events will ensure that employees are fit to take spikes in workload with utmost confidence.
Pros of training before important times:
Prepare in time: Can help employees be more productive when things are stressful as they won’t make the common errors on recording transactions or report generation.
Your manufacturing environment could use an improved compliance boot camp to ensure that new staff are prepared to satisfy regulatory deadlines and standards while also learning best practices for layout.
The only time this methodology becomes successful is when incoming juniors are with the company long enough to understand basic processes and require content-rich training for specific tasks such as audits or even tax returns.
Even the best onboarding new employees will bring some knowledge gaps, special needs when it comes to working practices, or simply not efficiently functioning independently. Follow up with more bookkeeping training a few weeks or months after to continue building upon their skills and keep them learning.
Benefits of Post-Onboarding Training:
Addressing Practical Issues: Some challenges can only be known by the employees once they start taking over real tasks. But while onboarding training is your chance to catch up, post-onboarding allows for a measure of dealing with current issues.
Personalized Learning: This phase of training can be customized per employee, guaranteeing that the themes are pertinent to each staff member’s shortcomings or subjects for improvement.
This model encourages you to always be learning, and it requires that all bookkeepers stay current on the latest in bookkeeping standards, software updates, etc.
New software/regulations introduced
Moreover, many companies incorporate new accounting software to meet the constant change in rules and regulations that are being implemented by bodies like GST or IFRS. It therefore becomes important to train all those who are involved, including employees who have been newly hired.
Benefits from Training with Software and Regulatory Changes:
- Mistake-free: Training on new tools or rules helps avoid errors because of outdated practices.
- Increased Efficiency: Knowing the software well means employees could use it for better bookkeeping faster than before.
You should fine-tune your training times with these transitions to ensure minimal loss of service and productivity during operations; it must also be engaging for employees.
Periodically through refresher courses
Bookkeeping processes change, and employees can get lazy or forget key fundamentals that they need to adhere to over time. Refreshers are planned and followed from time to time so that every hired employee is kept aware of the current changes happening around them.
Pros of Regular Sessions:
- Continuous Learning: The updates are added on a timely basis so that employees update themselves and stay current with respect to the best practices.
- Reduction in turnover: Creating a culture of growth and inclusion through extensive learning opportunities has been proven to improve talent retention.
Repeat training makes sure that the bookkeeping staff is acquainted with new financial management trends and compliance updates, along with automation tools that one may be using on behalf of your business.
FAQ:
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What about brand-new bookkeepers? How do they learn?
It could be some external training—such as going to conferences, webinars, or bringing in an expert. This could involve assigning appropriate team members to a client project that helps them with the skills required for a gap displayed throughout your analysis.
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How do I learn bookkeeping fast?
Bookkeeping App: Learn by managing one on your own from an easy-to-understand bookkeeping app that you can practice within your free time. Formally, degree-less, unqualified. Your only task is to find one with features you can benefit from and not a plethora of them that eventually may go unused.
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What makes a training plan for new employees?
The primary constituents of a guideline that is to be written are:
- Identify training needs. Evaluate the current skills of your staff.
- Set clear objectives. Set a clear objective for the training. Use the correct training techniques.
- Develop training materials.
- Schedule training sessions.
- Establish evaluation metrics.
Conclusion
Training needs to start during the onboarding process so you can hit the ground running with follow-up sessions before major financial milestones. Post-onboarding, the follow-up training can be located to eliminate these skill gaps and keep all employees updated with constant updates wherever new software, standards, or regulations exist. But, as with everything soft-skills related, spot training should be supplemented by periodic refresher courses to better entrench the principles deep within employees’ psyches. By delivering better-timed bookkeeping training, businesses can achieve better overall efficiencies in their everyday operations as well as drastically reduce the number of mistakes made within that process while also building a more skilled and happier workforce.
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