What Is Clerical Math?

Clerical math is used in administration.

Many job advertisements state that a candidate must have clerical math skills. Required skills range from completion of a clerical math class to taking and passing a clerical math test. Clerical math tests your skills in several basic competency areas like order of operations as well as job specific areas like basic accounting.

Significance

As a clerical assistant, administrative assistant or other support-related field of employment, you must have strong clerical math skills to handle the variety of math problems that cross your path in your daily work. For example, you may need to meet certain quotas each day, add up tallies of processed items, or make projections about how much workflow you can reasonably handle.

Types

Clerical math covers many basic competency areas, including: basic math (addition, subtraction, division, multiplication), order of operations (using basic math functions in the right order to reach the correct result), tallying and counting (for example, giving an accurate count of work completed or work to be completed) and using basic equations (for example, an equation to estimate the cost of production items).

Considerations

Clerical math skills are vital to the ongoing success of a company's operations. Small errors in calculations at the clerical level (like missing a "0" from a budget) can result in major problems at a later date.

Education

Clerical math is generally offered as part of a larger course, rather than being a course in of itself. For example, career schools that offer administrative assistant certificates will usually include clerical math as part of the coursework. You may also be able to find adult education classes at community colleges or private colleges that offer clerical math as part of a vocational program like programs where you learn to become a clerk-typist or receptionist.

Duration

Vocational and business related certificate programs that teach clerical math are usually short term in nature (less than a full year). Participants are usually expected to have basic math skills upon entry, so the clerical math aspect of the coursework serves as more of a review with a little additional job-specific information.

Tests

There are many tests that are administered to prospective employees to test their clerical math skills. One such test is the Support Service Test (SST), which tests for clerical math as well other administrative areas such as filing, proofreading and following directions.

References

• University of Maryland: Department of Budget and Management