Top 12 Accounts Payable Manager Skills to Put on Your Resume
In a noisy job market, an Accounts Payable Manager stands out by showing the right mix of systems savvy, control mindset, and speed. The skills below carry weight on a resume because they prove you can move invoices cleanly from receipt to payment while guarding cash, vendor trust, and compliance. Twelve tools and techniques that matter most, refreshed and ready.
Accounts Payable Manager Skills
1. QuickBooks
QuickBooks is accounting software used to manage bills, vendors, payments, and reporting. It keeps the payables engine humming with invoice capture, approvals, and payment runs in one place.
Why It's Important
It compresses manual work, improves accuracy, and offers live views of cash needs and aging. Faster closes, fewer surprises, better vendor relations.
How to Improve QuickBooks Skills
Make it work the way you do—tight and traceable:
Customize vendor master data with required fields (terms, remit-to, W‑9 status, default expense/PO settings). Bake in controls up front.
Automate recurring bills and approvals with rules, reminders, and scheduled payments. Use bill pay and ACH to cut checks less often.
Standardize 2‑ or 3‑way match for PO-backed invoices. Require attachments for non‑PO spend.
Integrate intake with document capture apps for OCR and audit trails. Reduce keying; keep source docs tied to every bill.
Build dashboards showing aging, discounts at risk, and cash requirements by week. Act early, not after month-end.
Dialing in settings, approvals, and integrations turns QuickBooks into a low-friction payables hub.
How to Display QuickBooks Skills on Your Resume
2. SAP
SAP is an ERP platform that unifies finance, procurement, and operations. For AP, it supports invoice capture, matching, approvals, payments, and compliance at scale.
Why It's Important
It brings control, speed, and auditability to high-volume environments. Strong matching rules, workflow, and reporting reduce leakage and late fees.
How to Improve SAP Skills
Push automation and visibility:
Automate invoice intake with OCR and RPA for high-volume vendors; route by company code, cost center, or tolerance.
Tighten vendor master governance via SAP Ariba/SAP Business Network to prevent duplicates and incomplete data.
Strengthen 3‑way match tolerances (price/quantity/variance) and exceptions routing to reduce manual touches.
Add analytics with embedded reporting or Analytics Cloud: DPO, early‑pay discount capture, blocked invoices, cycle times.
Integrate procurement and inventory so GR/IR clearing stays clean and period-end reconciles quickly.
How to Display SAP Skills on Your Resume
3. Oracle
Oracle (including Oracle Cloud ERP) delivers end‑to‑end payables: invoice imaging, workflow, payments, and controls across entities and currencies.
Why It's Important
It centralizes policy, strengthens approvals, and shrinks processing time, all while improving compliance and supplier outcomes.
How to Improve Oracle Skills
Lean into the platform’s control set:
Use Intelligent Document Recognition to capture header/line data and auto‑match to POs.
Design workflow by amount, category, and risk. Escalations keep invoices moving, not buried.
Harden supplier onboarding with the Supplier Portal, bank validation, and sanctioned-party checks.
Centralize disbursements with Oracle Payments, enabling payment formats, approvals, and positive pay.
Monitor with Advanced Controls for duplicate invoices, split payments, and unusual activity.
Keep the team current on new releases and features; small updates often unlock big time savings.
How to Display Oracle Skills on Your Resume
4. Excel
Excel is the everyday backbone for ad‑hoc analysis, reconciliations, vendor lists, and aging pivots. When systems can’t, Excel often can.
Why It's Important
It’s fast for slicing data, validating totals, and building quick reporting. Perfect for exception handling and cash planning.
How to Improve Excel Skills
Level up with a few high‑impact capabilities:
Functions that matter: SUMIFS, XLOOKUP (or INDEX/MATCH), FILTER, EOMONTH. Less manual, more reliable.
PivotTables + PivotCharts: Summarize by vendor, term, or GL. Drill down without breaking the file.
Power Query for repeat imports, cleanups, and merges—turn messy exports into tidy tables with refresh.
Data validation and conditional formatting to flag duplicates, overdue items, and missing fields.
Macros or Office Scripts for repetitive tasks (formatting, report builds). Keep them documented.
Shortcuts and templates so monthly processes run in minutes, not hours.
How to Display Excel Skills on Your Resume
5. Xero
Xero is cloud accounting for small and midsize teams, handling bills, approvals, bank feeds, and reporting anywhere you log in.
Why It's Important
It streamlines intake to payment, keeps cash views current, and trims manual entry with built‑in automation.
How to Improve Xero Skills
Make the workflow crisp:
Automate capture with integrated tools like Hubdoc to pull bills from email and vendors, extracting key fields.
Use purchase orders and enforce matching for spend control.
Enable payment services (ACH/cards) to quicken settlements and consolidate remittances.
Reconcile daily via bank feeds; create bank rules for predictable classifications.
Approval steps by amount or department, with audit trails kept on each bill.
Custom reports for aging, terms compliance, and discount capture—share on a schedule.
Train the team and apply new releases promptly; updates often cut clicks.
How to Display Xero Skills on Your Resume
6. NetSuite
NetSuite is a cloud ERP with robust AP: vendor records, approvals, 3‑way match, payments, and granular reporting.
Why It's Important
It connects procurement, inventory, and finance. Real‑time visibility plus workflows equals fewer bottlenecks.
How to Improve NetSuite Skills
Lean into its native tools:
SuiteFlow to route invoices by thresholds, departments, and exception types.
Electronic payments for ACH/Wire/check formats with approvals and remittance advice.
Custom dashboards using KPIs, reminders, and saved searches for overdue approvals and blocked invoices.
Vendor Center to reduce inquiries—share PO status, payment dates, and remittances.
SuiteAnalytics for DPO, cycle time, and discount realization; schedule and distribute.
Integrations via SuiteApps when you need expense, tax, or payments extras—keep data flowing, not rekeyed.
How to Display NetSuite Skills on Your Resume
7. VLOOKUP
VLOOKUP is an Excel function that locates a value in the first column of a range and returns data from another column in the same row. Handy for mapping invoice IDs to vendors, GLs, or amounts.
Why It's Important
It speeds reconciliation and cross‑checking, cuts manual scanning, and reduces mismatches.
How to Improve VLOOKUP Skills
Make lookups precise and resilient:
Use exact match by setting the last argument to FALSE. No fuzzy surprises.
Lock ranges with absolute references ($A$1:$F$50000) before filling formulas across sheets.
Clean keys with TRIM/UPPER to avoid invisible mismatches.
Prefer XLOOKUP (or INDEX/MATCH) for more flexible left/right lookups and safer defaults.
Audit results with COUNTIF to spot missing or duplicate keys quickly.
How to Display VLOOKUP Skills on Your Resume
8. PivotTables
PivotTables summarize large datasets by vendor, date, category, or status in seconds. They turn raw ledger lines into clear stories.
Why It's Important
They spotlight trends, delays, and exceptions. Perfect for weekly spend reviews and close reporting.
How to Improve PivotTables Skills
Make them sharper:
Start with clean tables—headers on one row, no merged cells, consistent types.
Rename fields to business‑friendly labels (not cryptic export names).
Group dates by month/quarter; group vendors or categories for higher‑level views.
Calculated fields for variances, discount rates, or per‑invoice fees.
Conditional formats to surface overdue items or large variances fast.
Refresh schedules so pivots stay current without manual nudges.
Slicers and timelines for clean filtering during review meetings.
How to Display PivotTables Skills on Your Resume
9. Concur
SAP Concur manages expenses and invoices in the cloud. It captures, routes, and pays with solid policy controls.
Why It's Important
Automated intake and approvals mean fewer errors, tighter compliance, and real‑time spend visibility.
How to Improve Concur Skills
Reduce touches, raise clarity:
Automate invoices with e‑invoicing and capture; policy checks trigger right away.
Integrate with your ERP so vendor, GL, and payment data sync without manual effort.
Tailor approvals by threshold, cost center, and risk flags; add timed escalations.
Use analytics to find duplicate spend, non‑compliant categories, and discount opportunities.
Train users and refresh rule sets quarterly—policies drift unless revisited.
How to Display Concur Skills on Your Resume
10. JD Edwards
JD Edwards EnterpriseOne delivers ERP capabilities for finance, supply chain, and AP—with flexible workflows and strong controls.
Why It's Important
It streamlines invoice matching and payments, enforces policy, and supports detailed audit requirements.
How to Improve JD Edwards Skills
Trim friction, add guardrails:
Automate invoice and payment workflows to reduce keying and speed approvals.
Tune tolerance settings for price/quantity variances; only exceptions should need eyes.
Exploit reporting for aging, holds, and cash needs—push alerts to approvers.
Integrate banking and procurement to keep remittances, positive pay, and PO data in sync.
Stay current with patches and features that improve security and usability.
How to Display JD Edwards Skills on Your Resume
11. PeopleSoft
PeopleSoft offers mature financials with AP modules that automate intake, matching, approvals, payments, and compliance.
Why It's Important
It cuts cycle time while raising control quality. Large organizations rely on it for scale and auditability.
How to Improve PeopleSoft Skills
Focus on usability and governance:
Use Fluid UI to streamline entry and approval experiences, especially on mobile.
Leverage analytics for blocked invoices, vendor performance, and cash forecasting.
Customize with PeopleTools where needed—light tweaks can save heavy effort.
Integrate via Integration Broker to keep supplier, PO, and bank data aligned.
Enforce vendor master controls (W‑9/W‑8 status, TIN checks, bank validations) to prevent downstream fixes.
How to Display PeopleSoft Skills on Your Resume
12. Coupa
Coupa is a Business Spend Management platform covering P2P, AP automation, and supplier management with strong visibility across spend.
Why It's Important
It centralizes buying, approvals, and payments, tightening compliance and surfacing savings opportunities.
How to Improve Coupa Skills
Drive adoption and outcomes:
Automate invoicing through the Supplier Portal and e‑invoicing; reduce PDF chaos.
Use dynamic discounting to capture early‑pay savings when cash allows.
Strengthen supplier onboarding with Supplier Information Management—complete profiles, validated bank data.
Report deeply on accruals, cycle times, maverick spend, and exception causes; fix root issues, not symptoms.
Calibrate approvals and segregation of duties; review quarterly to reflect org changes.
Integrate with ERP for master data, GL, and payment status sync to avoid rework.
Keep learning—new releases frequently add AI‑driven anomaly detection and reconciliation features.
How to Display Coupa Skills on Your Resume
