You know what they say, money makes the world go round, and when you’re going to be handling financial matters for a business, you need to prove you’ve got what it takes.
You need to showcase your most relevant and impressive skills on your CV.
But how do you narrow it down?
Well, you can start with our guide below, outlining the top 40 accounting skills you need for your CV, complete with real-world examples.
Contents
Essential accounting skills
To get you started, there are some essential skills that can help you in any accounting or finance-related roles and these include:
- Bookkeeping – e.g. “Managed daily bookkeeping operations, including accounts payable and receivable, bank reconciliations and payroll processing”
- Invoicing – e.g. “Trained 10 new employees on how to conduct effective invoice processing”
- Accuracy – e.g. “Reviewed all monthly financial statements to ensure accuracy, reducing errors by 55% over a 12-month period”
- Communication – e.g. “Clearly and confidently communicated annual budget proposals to 15 senior staff and directors for review”
- Payroll – e.g. “Proactive accountant with 3 years experience in weekly payroll and accounts payable for a small independent retailer”
- Teamwork – e.g. “Worked closely with the digital marketing team to secure and sign a £2.5m advertising deal across premium digital screens throughout the UK”
- Organisation – e.g. “Organised and reliable accountant with 10 years of experience working for SMEs and independent businesses”
- Data security – e.g. “Introduced new password, authentication and data encryption processes to protect data as more accounting professionals adopted a hybrid working style”
- Accounting software – e.g. “Utilised QuickBooks to streamline data entry and manage business finances”
- Compliance – e.g. “Arranged and participated in quarterly compliance training sessions for the accounts team to ensure everyone was up to date on the latest procedures”
Bookkeeping skills
Bookkeeping skills help you to stay on top of financial records and understand what’s coming in and going out. These are some of the specific bookkeeping skills you might include on your CV:
- Numerical skills – e.g. “Performed up to 100 financial calculations every day to help the company monitor expenses and profits”
- Reconciliation – e.g. “Leveraged data entry techniques to reduce errors, achieving 99% accuracy on payroll reconciliations”
- Spreadsheets – e.g. “Investigated and corrected major errors with the supplier spreadsheet, saving the company £2,500”
- Bookkeeping software – e.g. “Assistant accountant proficient in Excel, Xero and FreshBooks”
- Auditing – e.g. “Continually maintained accurate and detailed financial records in preparation for conducting quarterly audits”
- Accounts payable – e.g. “Reduced manual processing by 50% for all accounts payable transactions”
- Accounts receivable – e.g. “Implemented a new task management system to prioritise accounts receivable tasks, increasing efficiency across the team by 25%”
- Financial statements – e.g. “Used digital accounting platforms to generate and analyse financial statements”
- Data entry – e.g. “Quickly but carefully entered data into forms, spreadsheets and software to ensure efficiency and accuracy”
- Admin skills – e.g. “Maintained records, invoices and receipts; scanning, saving and filing these accordingly”
Tax skills
No one wants to upset the tax man, and having in-depth knowledge and skills in this area can help businesses stay on top of regulations and make important business decisions. Some of those skills may be:
- Planning – e.g. “Attended financial planning meetings to discuss tax strategies and maximise future profits”
- Tax returns – e.g. “Submitted tax returns and relevant documents to HMRC promptly at the end of every tax year”
- Tax compliance – e.g. “Collaborated with the communication and HR teams to create up-to-date internal documents explaining tax regulations”
- Attention to detail – e.g. “Identified and highlighted data discrepancies on the company tax return for accurate reporting”
- Time management – e.g. “Worked closely with SME clients to ensure the timely filing of their tax returns”
- Record keeping – e.g. “Switched accounting software from Quickbooks to Xero to help cut record-keeping time by 25%”
- Reliability – e.g. “Reliable assistant tax manager with 8 years of experience, looking to take the next step in my accounting career”
- Discretion – e.g. “Named ‘Employee of the Month’ for showing integrity, discretion and flexibility when handling a challenging tax audit for a large corporation”
- Decision making – e.g. “Worked closely with the senior management team to decide on changing business models and which would be most beneficial for tax purposes”
- Leadership – e.g. “Managed a team of 18 tax specialists for one of the world’s largest manufacturers”
Management accounting skills
If you can help businesses make operational and budgeting decisions with your financial abilities, you should consider including the following management accounting skills:
- Reporting – e.g. “Senior accountant with 10+ years experience in creating detailed accounting reports for company management”
- Forecasting – e.g. “Reviewed company budgets and profitability from the last five years to forecast future trends within the business”
- Financial analysis – e.g. “Compared and analysed monthly budgets against actual reports to identify areas of under and over-spending
- Cash flow – e.g. “Passionate accounting assistant with 2 years experience preparing financial statements such as balance sheets and cash flow statements”
- Trend analysis – e.g. “Used financial figures to identify patterns and highlight trends in order to set more accurate budgets for the coming quarter”
- Interpersonal skills – e.g. “Liaising with managers across all 4 key departments and offering advice to ensure they make sound financial decisions”
- Risk management – e.g. “Advised private healthcare organisations on investment and risk management, leading to 19% increase in profits”
- Negotiation – e.g. “Collaborated with the senior project manager to negotiate and set budgets for major projects of up to £30,000”
- Goal setting – e.g. “Identified areas of overspending and set goals to cut back over the next calendar year, leading to a 23% increase in revenue”
What are accounting skills?
Accounting skills are those abilities that allow professionals to accurately manage financial data and transactions, generate reports and determine profitability. Although lots of accounting skills are hard skills, there are also some important transferable skills you can include too.
Some of the most common accounting skills include budgeting, bookkeeping, payroll and data analysis. These skills can be applied across a number of positions, not just accounting roles. Others positions could include administrative, sales, banking and marketing.
Why are accounting skills important?
Accounting skills are important because they help businesses to manage cash flow, meet tax deadlines and set budgets for the year. Essentially, they help to understand the profitability of a company and its financial strengths and weaknesses.
As finance is a critical part of every business, these skills can be applied to a huge number of roles, which is one of the key reasons they are so important for your CV.
How to include accounting skills on your CV
Your key skills section presents you with a chance to outline up to 10 of the most sought-after accounting skills. But in order to go into more detail about your impressive skills and achievements, we’ve put together some of our top tips below.
In your CV profile
Because it is located at the top of your CV, your personal profile gives you an opportunity to showcase the most relevant and important skills and quickly grab the recruiter’s attention. With that in mind, you should focus on highlighting your most impressive skills and achievements in this section.
You can use the job description to help you discover what the employer wants most from the right candidate. Then you can provide relevant examples, ideally using figures to quantify these and draw even more attention.
In your jobs
Your work experience section is understandably your biggest opportunity to highlight your skills and achievements.
Starting with your most recent and relevant employment, be sure to introduce your role within the company, before using bullet points to set out your responsibilities and achievements.
Again, you can use the job description to shape this section, including the skills that the employer is most interested in. Quantify your achievements whenever you can.
What to avoid
Knowing what and how to include these skills is all well and good, but it’s also important that you know what to avoid.
While we’ve outlined lots of great skills and examples above, it’s important that you avoid listing a whole bunch of irrelevant skills that aren’t on the job description.
It’s also vital that you never lie about your skills as you’re more than likely to get found out eventually. This includes exaggerating about your skills or achievements as your CV should always be completely honest.
Finally, be careful not to include any obsolete skills. For example, remove any outdated accounting software that businesses no longer use as this is just taking up valuable space.