Accounting Resume

About This Resume

As a staff accountant you'll close the books, reconcile accounts and explain unusual numbers to people outside finance. This might involve month-end journal entries, fixed assets, payroll accruals or requests from auditors. Controllers expect your resume to show the same care as that work, because a page with a wrong date or a vague claim looks like a close with errors in it. The sample below suits staff and senior accountants, and the tips cover bookkeepers moving up and graduates working toward the CPA.

Start with the close. Accounting managers usually look first for the closing work you own (which accounts, how many entities and how many days it takes), then for the software you use every day. CPA status matters in public accounting and in many corporate roles, so say where you stand in plain words: licensed in a named state, sections passed, or a date you plan to sit for the exam. Industry counts too, since nonprofit, construction and manufacturing accounting each follow their own rules.

What to Include

• Closing work you own: which accounts, how many entities and how many days the close takes
• Reconciliations, journal entries, accruals and audit support, with volumes
• Accounting software and company-wide finance systems (ERP) by name, such as QuickBooks, NetSuite, SAP or Sage Intacct
• Your Excel level, shown through named tools such as pivot tables, XLOOKUP or Power Query
• CPA status in plain words: licensed and where, exam sections passed, or your exam plan
• Process fixes that saved time or cut errors
• Industry experience, such as nonprofit, construction or manufacturing

Accounting Resume Sample

Tips for Your Accounting Resume

• Put a number on the close. A bullet such as "Cut the month-end close from 9 working days to 6" is the kind of line a controller still remembers at the bottom of a long stack of resumes.
• Name systems and Excel skills exactly. "Excel: pivot tables, XLOOKUP, Power Query" tells a controller far more than "advanced Excel" ever will.
• Check every figure twice. A wrong total on an accountant's resume does outsized damage, since it is the one error every reader here is trained to catch.
• If you are a recent graduate, lead with education, your CPA exam plan and any internship or tax work, such as preparing returns through the IRS Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program.
• Show judgment as well as tasks. A bullet about a reconciliation difference you traced to its source says more about you than a list of the accounts you touched.
• Use the posting's terms, such as account reconciliations, GAAP (the standard US accounting rules) or fixed assets. Screening software looks for matching words, and accounting postings tend to be specific.
• Keep it to one page for your first five years or so. Two pages make sense after that, as long as the extra space holds closing, audit or systems work.