Top 12 General Accountant Skills to Put on Your Resume

In today’s hiring frenzy, a general accountant stands out not just by degrees or years clocked, but by a toolkit that hums. The right skills on a resume say more than duties ever could—they signal precision, judgment, and the chops to turn numbers into decisions that actually move the business.

General Accountant Skills

1. QuickBooks
2. SAP
3. Excel
4. Xero
5. Oracle Financials
6. GAAP Compliance
7. Tax Preparation
8. Financial Analysis
9. Budget Forecasting
10. Payroll Processing
11. Accounts Reconciliation
12. Auditing Procedures

1. QuickBooks

QuickBooks is accounting software (with widely used online and desktop versions) built for small and midsize businesses. It tracks sales and expenses, manages invoices and bills, handles payroll, supports bank feeds, and generates financial statements.

Why It's Important

For a general accountant, QuickBooks trims busywork, improves accuracy, and speeds up closing. Clean books, faster reports, fewer headaches.

How to Improve QuickBooks Skills

1. Work faster: Learn core shortcuts and recurring transactions. Batch entries where possible.
2. Tighten your chart: Build a clear, scalable chart of accounts; archive or merge duplicates.
3. Dial in bank rules: Set precise bank rules for consistent coding and rapid reconciliations.
4. Customize reports: Save report groups, add filters, memorize layouts, schedule deliveries.
5. Automate wisely: Use recurring invoices, bill pay workflows, and recurring journals with strict approvals.
6. Inventory and classes: If relevant, enable locations/classes or advanced inventory to sharpen margins and segment results.
7. Protect the file: Enforce roles and permissions, enable multi-factor authentication, back up regularly, and verify/rebuild when needed.

How to Display QuickBooks Skills on Your Resume

2. SAP

SAP provides enterprise-grade tools for financial accounting, controlling, asset management, and reporting. It stitches transactions, master data, and compliance into a single source of truth across large organizations.

Why It's Important

It delivers real-time data, strong controls, and scalable processes. That mix helps accountants produce reliable statements and decision-ready analysis, even in complex environments.

How to Improve SAP Skills

1. Go deep in FI and CO: Master core flows—AP, AR, GL, asset accounting, cost centers, internal orders, and profitability analysis.
2. Understand integration: Map how purchasing, sales, and inventory hit the subledgers and GL. Trace a document from source to financial impact.
3. Tune configuration: Learn posting keys, tolerances, tax codes, and substitution/validation rules to reduce errors at the source.
4. Practice in sandboxes: Rehearse closes, allocations, and reconciliations in a safe environment.
5. Focus on controls: Use roles, workflows, and audit logs to support compliance without slowing operations.
6. Pursue certification: Formal assessments can sharpen knowledge and signal credibility.

How to Display SAP Skills on Your Resume

3. Excel

Excel is the accountant’s Swiss army knife for organizing, calculating, visualizing, and modeling financial data.

Why It's Important

Budgets, reconciliations, ad‑hoc analysis, quick forecasts—Excel handles them all, bridging systems and speeding decisions.

How to Improve Excel Skills

1. Level up formulas: Nail SUMIFS, XLOOKUP (modern replacement for VLOOKUP), INDEX/MATCH, IF/IFS, TEXT functions, and array logic.
2. Pivots and Power Query: Summarize fast with PivotTables; use Power Query to clean, combine, and refresh data reliably.
3. Model with Power Pivot: Build relationships, measures (DAX), and multidimensional reports without brittle spreadsheets.
4. Automate the boring stuff: Create repeatable templates, use named ranges, and consider Office Scripts or basic VBA for routine tasks.
5. Design for clarity: Structure tabs, lock cells, add data validation, and document assumptions to avoid silent errors.
6. Shortcuts and checks: Learn key shortcuts; use formula auditing, error checks, and conditional formatting to spot anomalies.

How to Display Excel Skills on Your Resume

4. Xero

Xero is cloud accounting tailored to small and midsize businesses, enabling live collaboration, automated bank feeds, invoicing, payroll add-ons, and tidy reporting.

Why It's Important

Accountants get timely data, clients get transparency, and month-end gets lighter thanks to automation and clean connectivity.

How to Improve Xero Skills

1. Bank rules and reconciliation: Build specific rules and reconcile daily to keep books current.
2. Integrations: Connect CRM, payments, inventory, and time-tracking via the app marketplace to cut duplicate entry.
3. Chart discipline: Streamline the chart of accounts, standardize tracking categories, and enforce naming conventions.
4. Leverage reporting: Customize layouts, publish report packs, and schedule delivery to stakeholders.
5. Security first: Enable multi-factor authentication, set granular user roles, and review access regularly.
6. Templates and repeats: Use repeating invoices, bills, and bank statement import templates to standardize cadence.

How to Display Xero Skills on Your Resume

5. Oracle Financials

Oracle Financials (within Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP) offers an integrated suite: general ledger, payables, receivables, fixed assets, expense management, and robust reporting and controls.

Why It's Important

It centralizes financial operations, enforces strong governance, and delivers analytics that scale with complex, multi-entity organizations.

How to Improve Oracle Financials Skills

1. Master core flows: From subledger to GL, understand journal approvals, tax setups, and close management.
2. Automate and orchestrate: Use workflows, scheduled processes, and integrations to remove manual touch points.
3. Report with intent: Build custom financial reports, dashboards, and account groups tailored to leadership needs.
4. Keep current: Track quarterly cloud releases and adopt features that improve speed, accuracy, or controls.
5. Data hygiene: Standardize suppliers, customers, and chart elements; archive stale records to improve performance and clarity.
6. Cross-system view: Integrate with CRM, HCM, and procurement for end-to-end traceability.

How to Display Oracle Financials Skills on Your Resume

6. GAAP Compliance

GAAP compliance means preparing financial statements under U.S. accounting standards set by the FASB. It’s about consistency, comparability, and transparent disclosure.

Why It's Important

Stakeholders rely on GAAP-compliant reports to judge performance and risk. Compliance also reduces regulatory exposure and sharpens internal decision-making.

How to Improve GAAP Compliance Skills

1. Stay current: Track new and updated standards—revenue (ASC 606), leases (ASC 842), credit losses (ASC 326), among others.
2. Strengthen controls: Segregate duties, formalize reviews, and document key judgments and estimates.
3. Policy playbook: Maintain a living accounting policy manual and tie procedures to specific ASC references.
4. Close discipline: Use checklists, materiality thresholds, and sign-offs to prevent last‑minute scrambles.
5. Systems alignment: Configure accounting software to enforce GAAP treatments where feasible.
6. Training and counsel: Invest in CPE and seek expert input on complex arrangements.

How to Display GAAP Compliance Skills on Your Resume

7. Tax Preparation

Tax preparation covers compiling, analyzing, and filing returns for individuals or entities, ensuring accurate reporting of income, deductions, and credits under applicable tax law.

Why It's Important

It guards against penalties, trims liabilities through informed planning, and keeps filings clean and timely.

How to Improve Tax Preparation Skills

1. Know the changes: Monitor annual tax law updates, thresholds, credits, and forms (including W‑2, 1099‑NEC/1099‑MISC, and relevant state filings).
2. Tight document control: Standardize client organizers, checklists, and secure intake. Track open items relentlessly.
3. Software mastery: Use professional tax software with e‑file, diagnostics, and integration to accounting systems.
4. Year‑round planning: Model estimated taxes, entity elections, depreciation methods, and timing strategies well before year‑end.
5. Quality review: Implement second-preparer reviews for complex returns and keep a log of recurring adjustments.
6. Data security: Enforce encryption, MFA, and least‑privilege access for sensitive taxpayer data.

How to Display Tax Preparation Skills on Your Resume

8. Financial Analysis

Financial analysis evaluates performance, profitability, liquidity, and risk using statements, ratios, and trends, then translates findings into decisions.

Why It's Important

It reveals what’s working, what’s wobbling, and where to steer next. It underpins planning, pricing, and capital choices.

How to Improve Financial Analysis Skills

1. Sharpen fundamentals: Master cash flow analysis, common-size statements, variance analysis, and ratio suites (margin, turnover, leverage, coverage).
2. Tell a story with numbers: Pair visuals with concise narratives. Answer “so what?” not just “what.”
3. Model drivers: Build driver-based models, sensitivity tests, and scenarios that reflect how the business truly operates.
4. Benchmark: Compare to budgets, prior periods, and peer sets to contextualize performance.
5. Tool fluency: Combine Excel with BI dashboards when scale or repeatability demand it.
6. Partner with operators: Sit with sales, ops, and supply chain to ground assumptions in reality.

How to Display Financial Analysis Skills on Your Resume

9. Budget Forecasting

Budget forecasting estimates future revenue and expenses over a defined horizon so leaders can allocate resources and prepare for what’s coming—good or otherwise.

Why It's Important

It anchors strategy to reality. Smart forecasts guide spend, highlight constraints, and keep growth sustainable.

How to Improve Budget Forecasting Skills

1. Go rolling: Use rolling forecasts rather than annual set‑and‑forget budgets to stay nimble.
2. Driver‑based planning: Tie revenue and costs to concrete drivers—units, pricing, headcount, productivity, capacity.
3. Scenario and sensitivity: Build base, upside, and downside cases. Stress test assumptions where volatility hits hardest.
4. Data discipline: Clean historicals, reconcile definitions, and align versions so you’re not comparing apples to mangos.
5. Right‑sized tools: Whether Excel or dedicated planning software (e.g., Workday Adaptive Planning, Prophix), standardize models and controls.
6. Cross‑functional inputs: Collect assumptions from sales, HR, procurement, and operations, then reconcile conflicts early.

How to Display Budget Forecasting Skills on Your Resume

10. Payroll Processing

Payroll processing calculates gross-to-net pay, taxes, deductions, and employer liabilities, then pays employees and files the required returns—accurately and on time.

Why It's Important

It protects compliance, employee trust, and cash planning. Miss it, and the ripple effects get expensive quickly.

How to Improve Payroll Processing Skills

1. Automate end‑to‑end: Use payroll software that syncs timekeeping, benefits, and GL. Fewer manual keystrokes, fewer mistakes.
2. Policy clarity: Document PTO, overtime, benefits, and approval cutoffs so inputs arrive clean.
3. Reconcile relentlessly: Tie payroll registers to bank debits, tax deposits, and GL postings every cycle.
4. Stay compliant: Track federal, state, and local changes (minimum wage, garnishments, paid leave, filing deadlines).
5. Year‑end readiness: Dry‑run W‑2s and 1099s, validate addresses/SSNs/EINs, and square quarterlies early.
6. Secure PII: Lock down access, enable MFA, and audit who can view or change sensitive data.

How to Display Payroll Processing Skills on Your Resume

11. Accounts Reconciliation

Accounts reconciliation compares internal records to external statements or subsystem balances, finds mismatches, and fixes them—before they snowball.

Why It's Important

It underpins accurate reporting, reduces fraud risk, and accelerates the close. Trustworthy numbers start here.

How to Improve Accounts Reconciliation Skills

1. Standard playbook: Use uniform checklists, aging rules, and materiality thresholds across all accounts.
2. Automate matching: Apply bank rules, matching engines, and templates to cut manual tie‑outs.
3. Reconcile early and often: Daily for cash, at least monthly for key balance sheet accounts.
4. Root‑cause fixes: Track recurring breaks and solve upstream—coding, timing, or integration issues.
5. Audit trail: Document support, preparer, reviewer, and dates. No mystery balances.

How to Display Accounts Reconciliation Skills on Your Resume

12. Auditing Procedures

Auditing procedures are the steps used to obtain evidence—inspection, observation, inquiry, confirmation, analytics—to conclude whether financial statements are fairly stated.

Why It's Important

Even outside a formal audit, an accountant benefits from audit thinking. Better evidence, better controls, fewer surprises.

How to Improve Auditing Procedures Skills

1. Risk first: Focus on areas with material misstatement risk—revenue, estimates, cutoff, and cash.
2. Plan tests smartly: Mix tests of controls and substantive procedures; right-size samples and analytics.
3. Document rigorously: Keep clear workpapers showing purpose, procedures, results, and conclusions.
4. Use technology: Apply data analytics for anomaly detection and population-level testing where feasible.
5. Refresh standards knowledge: Keep up with auditing and accounting standard changes that affect procedures.
6. Independent review: Build in peer reviews for complex areas to catch blind spots.

How to Display Auditing Procedures Skills on Your Resume