Accountant Resume

What an accountant resume must include

• The credential, stated plainly and early. Whether you hold a CPA, CMA or EA, or are still sitting the exams, that line is the first thing most screens look for.
• Close performance in numbers: days to close, how many entities or accounts you owned, how many recurring journal entries you produced.
• The systems by name. NetSuite, SAP, Oracle, Workday, Sage Intacct, BlackLine, FloQast — a generic “ERP experience” tells the reader nothing they can act on.
• Scope: how many legal entities, currencies or cost centers your close covered.
• Standards you have applied rather than only studied: ASC 606, ASC 842, SOX 404 walkthroughs, IFRS if you have worked inside a group reporting function.
• Evidence of audit support — PBC schedules, sample selections, tie-outs — and whether your audits closed without material adjustments.

Accountant Resume Example

Recommended sections

• Header — name, city, and the credential after your name if you hold one, for example “Dana Whitfield, CPA.”
• Summary — years in the field, your track (general ledger, audit, tax, FP&A), and one close or audit outcome with a number in it.
• Certifications — credential, issuing body and status. If you are mid-exam, say which parts you have passed and when you expect to finish.
• Experience — reverse-chronological, each bullet leading with the outcome and then naming the system or method that produced it.
• Systems — the ERP, close management and reporting tools you would be comfortable being interviewed on.
• Education — degree, school, dates. Add the accounting concentration or credit hours that make you eligible to sit for the CPA exam when that is relevant to the role.
• Skills — grouped by area (close, reporting, controls, tax) rather than one flat list of every term you have heard.

Accountant skills and systems keywords

• Close — month-end and year-end close, journal entries, accruals, prepaids, fixed assets, intercompany eliminations, multi-entity and multi-currency consolidation
• Reconciliations — bank, general ledger, sub-ledger, inventory, payroll clearing, AR and AP aging
• Standards — US GAAP, IFRS, ASC 606 revenue recognition, ASC 842 leases, ASC 350 intangibles
• Controls and audit — SOX 404, COSO, control walkthroughs, PBC schedules, internal and external audit support
• Order to cash — billing, cash application, collections, DSO reporting, deferred revenue
• Procure to pay — three-way match, vendor master maintenance, expense reporting, 1099 preparation
• Tax support — sales and use tax filings, property tax schedules, nexus tracking, transfer pricing data requests
• Reporting and analysis — financial statement preparation, flux and variance commentary, budget versus actual, Power BI dashboards

ATS notes for accounting roles

• Keep the credential line as plain text. If “CPA” sits inside a text box, a graphic or a table cell, many parsers drop it entirely and your resume reads as uncertified.
• Write dates in one format and use it everywhere — MM/YYYY or Mon YYYY. Mixed formats can split a single job into two entries.
• Use the standard section labels: Experience, Education, Certifications, Skills. A creative heading gets parsed as unrecognised text, and the lines underneath lose their meaning.
• Spell a system out once and abbreviate it once, so both forms are present: “Sage Intacct” and “Intacct.” Parsers tokenise differently, and you want either version to match.
• Do not paste an Excel table into the document to show a reconciliation or a schedule. The cells either vanish or arrive as a column of meaningless numbers.
• Put the tools that matter for the requisition in the experience bullets as well as the systems list. A tool mentioned once, in context, reads as used rather than merely known.