Bookkeeper interview questions, with a practical exercise

How to run the interview

Plan 45 minutes on video: background, the questions below, and ten minutes for the candidate's questions. Then send the exercise as a short paid task. If you are not an accountant yourself, ask your accountant to join the call or review the exercise; it takes them little time and they know what to listen for.

Ask for examples from real work every time. “What did you do last month at your current client?” gets better answers than “How would you…?”

Reconciliation and accuracy

1. Walk me through how you reconcile a bank account at month end. Good: a clear sequence, starting balances, matching, investigating unmatched items, documenting. Warning: “the software does it”.
2. The reconciliation is off by a small amount and you cannot find why. What do you do? Good: checks transposed numbers, duplicates, timing differences, the starting balance; never forces it with an adjustment without telling anyone.
3. How do you make sure you do not miss transactions? Good: bank feeds plus statements, checklists per account, a monthly routine.
4. Tell me about an error you found in books you took over. Good: a concrete case and how they fixed it with the accountant.

Payables, receivables and the close

1. How do you handle supplier bills that arrive by email? Good: a single inbox or tool, entry with due dates, approval before payment.
2. A customer invoice is two months overdue. What do you do? Good: polite reminders on a schedule, telling you before it becomes a problem.
3. What does your month-end close include? Good: reconciliations, accruals or prepaid items if your accountant uses them, review of unusual items, a report.
4. How do you treat a transaction you are not sure how to categorise? Good: a holding account and a question to you or the accountant, not a guess.

Software and controls

1. Which accounting software have you used, for how long and for what size of client? Good: specifics.
2. How do you set up bank rules, and when do you not use them? Good: rules for repeating items, manual review for the rest.
3. What access do you need from us, and what do you not need? Good: asks for view-only bank access and their own user; does not ask for payment rights.
4. How do you keep client data safe working from home? Good: separate work accounts, password manager, two-factor authentication, no files on shared devices.

Clean-up and backlog work

1. You take over books that have not been reconciled for six months. Where do you start? Good: agrees the starting balance with the accountant, works month by month, documents assumptions, reports progress.
2. How do you handle transactions with no receipt? Good: asks the owner in batches, records what is known, flags what is missing rather than guessing.
3. How long would a clean-up like that take you? Good: asks about volume and accounts before estimating, gives a range with assumptions.

Communication

1. What would your monthly report to me contain? Good: a short summary, open questions, overdue items, anything unusual, in plain language.
2. How do you work with an outside accountant? Good: clear handovers, documents in agreed places, questions collected and sent together.
3. Tell me about a time you had to explain a number to a non-accountant. Good: simple words, no jargon.

A practical exercise

Send a short paid task with fictional data: one month of bank statement lines and the matching ledger entries, with three planted problems.

Good candidates find all three, explain them clearly and ask a sensible question about the duplicated payment. Our guide to hiring a remote bookkeeper covers the access and controls to set up once you hire.

Warning signs

• Forcing reconciliations with adjustments instead of finding the cause.
• Asking for payment rights or your personal login.
• Vague answers about software they list on the CV.
• Promising tax advice they are not qualified to give in your country.

More general warning signs are in our remote hiring red flags guide.