Top 12 Intermediate Accountant Skills to Put on Your Resume

In today's job market, getting noticed as an intermediate accountant means showing real skill—practical, technical, commercially sharp. The right mix on your resume signals you can wrangle the numbers, explain the story, and keep the engine humming under pressure.

Intermediate Accountant Skills

1. QuickBooks
2. Excel
3. SAP
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 Standards

1. QuickBooks

QuickBooks is accounting software for small and mid-sized companies, built to manage invoicing, payables and receivables, payroll, and financial reporting with streamlined workflows.

Why It's Important

For an intermediate accountant, QuickBooks trims manual drudgery, tightens accuracy, and puts real-time financials at your fingertips—so decisions move faster and mistakes stay small.

How to Improve QuickBooks Skills

Level up by going beyond the basics and shaping the tool around your work.

1. Master advanced features: Custom reports, classes and locations, budgeting, multi-entity workflows. Push into the features you barely touch.

2. Use add-ons and integrations: Connect expense tools, bill pay, inventory, and time tracking to cut duplicate entry.

3. Automate: Recurring invoices, rules for bank feeds, scheduled reports, memorized transactions—minutes saved turn into hours.

4. Keep it current: Update your software and your chart of accounts. New features drop; security matters.

5. Community and training: Join user forums, attend webinars, and pursue certification to cement best practices.

6. Customize dashboards and reports: Tailor KPIs, aging, cash flow, and variance views so the signal pops and the noise fades.

Dialed-in setup plus disciplined workflows equals cleaner books and clearer insight.

How to Display QuickBooks Skills on Your Resume

2. Excel

Excel is the accountant’s multitool—a spreadsheet platform for modeling, analysis, reconciliation, and reporting.

Why It's Important

It lets you tame large datasets, run complex calculations, and build clear reports. Precision and speed, in one window.

How to Improve Excel Skills

Aim for speed, accuracy, and automation.

1. Advanced formulas: XLOOKUP, SUMIFS, INDEX/MATCH, XNPV, XIRR, dynamic arrays (FILTER, UNIQUE, SORT), and LET/LAMBDA to simplify gnarly logic.

2. Pivot tables: Summarize, slice, and drill into big data without breaking a sweat. Grouping, calculated fields, timelines.

3. Data visualization: Build clear charts, sparklines, and lightweight dashboards. Emphasize trends, not decoration.

4. Macros and VBA: Automate reconciliations, imports, and report refreshes. Record, then refine.

Add Power Query and Power Pivot when your data outgrows the grid. The payoff compounds.

How to Display Excel Skills on Your Resume

3. SAP

SAP is an enterprise resource planning platform (commonly S/4HANA) that centralizes finance, controlling, and operational data for real-time processing and reporting.

Why It's Important

It connects the dots across finance, operations, and supply chain, improving data integrity, auditability, and the speed of reporting and analysis.

How to Improve SAP Skills

1. Go deep on FI and CO: Document splitting, asset accounting, cost centers, internal orders, profitability analysis.

2. Understand integration: How FI touches MM and SD—GR/IR, pricing, revenue recognition, and settlement flows.

3. Reporting stack: SAP Analytics Cloud and embedded analytics for real-time KPIs and drilldowns.

4. SAP Fiori: Use role-based apps to speed routine tasks and approvals.

5. Sandbox and certification: Practice in a nonproduction environment; pursue credentials that match your module focus.

6. Automation: Explore SAP Build Process Automation to eliminate repetitive tasks.

7. Customization awareness: Learn how configuration choices (and ABAP enhancements) affect financial processes and controls.

Better mastery yields cleaner closes, fewer surprises, and smarter analysis.

How to Display SAP Skills on Your Resume

4. Xero

Xero is cloud accounting for small and mid-sized businesses, featuring bank feeds, invoicing, reconciliation, expense tracking, inventory basics, and reporting.

Why It's Important

Automation, bank rules, and clean reporting cut the clutter and make daily accounting faster and more reliable.

How to Improve Xero Skills

1. Learn advanced reporting: Custom layouts, tracking categories, and management packs tailored to budget holders.

2. Automate the routine: Bank rules, repeating invoices and bills, payment reminders—reduce manual touchpoints.

3. Use the ecosystem: Add payroll, time tracking, and AP automation tools through vetted integrations.

4. Certification and updates: Complete official training and keep pace with feature releases.

5. Community: Discuss edge cases and clever workflows with experienced users.

The result: smoother month-end and sharper cash visibility.

How to Display Xero Skills on Your Resume

5. Oracle Financials

Oracle Fusion Cloud Financials is a suite covering general ledger, payables, receivables, fixed assets, cash management, and more—built for automation, controls, and real-time analytics.

Why It's Important

It streamlines core processes, tightens compliance, and delivers consistent, auditable reporting across entities and geographies.

How to Improve Oracle Financials Skills

1. Structured learning: Take role-based courses focused on GL, AP/AR, and Assets. Apply configuration in a test environment.

2. Automate and orchestrate: Use workflows, approvals, and scheduled processes to reduce manual entries and reconciliation time.

3. Reporting: Build with OTBI and Smart View; standardize report books for close and management review.

4. Tailor the system: Configure account hierarchies, subledger accounting rules, and controls to fit the business without over-customizing.

5. Stay current: Monitor quarterly release notes and adopt features that improve control or speed.

6. Security and compliance: Use least-privilege roles, segregation of duties checks, and audit trails.

Good setup plus disciplined governance turns the platform into an advantage, not a chore.

How to Display Oracle Financials Skills on Your Resume

6. GAAP Compliance

GAAP compliance means preparing and presenting financial statements according to U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles—consistency, comparability, transparency.

Why It's Important

Stakeholders trust the numbers, audits go smoother, and decisions rest on solid footing. Deviations invite risk.

How to Improve GAAP Compliance Skills

1. Keep learning: Track updates to standards and adopt them promptly; document interpretations and elections.

2. Internal controls: Map processes, segregate duties, and test key controls over financial reporting.

3. Policy playbook: Maintain clear accounting policies with examples, thresholds, and approval paths.

4. Reconciliation rigor: Perform timely account reconciliations with supporting evidence and review sign-offs.

5. Audit readiness: Engage early with auditors on complex areas (revenue, leases, impairments) to avoid last-minute scrambles.

Precision in the basics prevents fire drills later.

How to Display GAAP Compliance Skills on Your Resume

7. Tax Preparation

Tax preparation is compiling, reviewing, and filing returns with accurate income, deductions, and credits—on time and in full compliance.

Why It's Important

Done right, it minimizes liability, avoids penalties, and surfaces planning opportunities. Sloppy work invites notices and headaches.

How to Improve Tax Preparation Skills

1. Stay current: Track law changes, inflation adjustments, and new guidance; refresh checklists each season.

2. Software mastery: Learn advanced features, diagnostics, e-file workflows, and organizer tools.

3. Tight document control: Use standardized naming, intake checklists, and secure storage; reconcile statements to forms.

4. Second sets of eyes: Peer review high-risk returns; spot anomalies with analytics.

5. Client communication: Set timelines, clarify missing items early, and explain positions plainly.

6. Time management: Build capacity plans and buffers for peak load; batch similar returns to reduce context switching.

The result is fewer amendments, fewer notices, calmer seasons.

How to Display Tax Preparation Skills on Your Resume

8. Financial Analysis

Financial analysis evaluates performance and risk—profitability, liquidity, efficiency—and informs budgets, investments, and strategy.

Why It's Important

It turns raw numbers into decisions. Better forecasts, better capital use, fewer surprises.

How to Improve Financial Analysis Skills

1. Sharpen the fundamentals: Master ratio analysis, cash flow drivers, working capital cycles, and cost behavior.

2. Model with intent: Build flexible, auditable models with clear assumptions, scenarios, and sensitivity analysis.

3. Tooling: Excel first, then Power Query/Power BI as data grows. Version control your workbooks.

4. Context matters: Follow industry trends and macro indicators that move your business.

5. Credentials and practice: Pursue structured learning or certifications if they fit your path; review real financials often.

Analysis that’s repeatable and explainable earns trust.

How to Display Financial Analysis Skills on Your Resume

9. Budget Forecasting

Budget forecasting estimates future revenue and costs, translating strategy into numbers that guide hiring, spending, and investment.

Why It's Important

It anchors planning, reveals risks early, and keeps resources aligned with priorities.

How to Improve Budget Forecasting Skills

1. Mine history: Analyze seasonality, cohorts, unit economics, and variance drivers—not just totals.

2. Rolling forecasts: Update monthly or quarterly; extend the horizon as each period closes.

3. Scenario planning: Build base, upside, and downside cases; link assumptions to operational levers.

4. Right-sized software: Move beyond spreadsheets when collaboration and scale demand it; compare options with analyst research and trials.

5. Postmortems: Compare forecast to actuals, document misses, and tune assumptions methodically.

6. Cross-functional inputs: Partner with sales, operations, and HR so assumptions reflect reality on the ground.

Forecasts that adapt beat forecasts that dazzle once and go stale.

How to Display Budget Forecasting Skills on Your Resume

10. Payroll Processing

Payroll processing calculates wages, taxes, and deductions, then pays employees and agencies on the correct schedule with full compliance.

Why It's Important

People get paid on time, records stay clean, and tax authorities remain satisfied. Misses here erode trust fast.

How to Improve Payroll Processing Skills

1. Automate core flows: Use payroll software for gross-to-net, filings, and payments; set up dependable calendars and alerts.

2. Regulatory vigilance: Track federal, state, and local changes—rates, wage thresholds, leave rules.

3. Audit routinely: Reconcile payroll registers to GL, bank debits, and tax liabilities; investigate variances immediately.

4. Employee self-service: Provide portals for pay stubs, tax forms, and updates to reduce manual requests.

5. Document and train: Maintain SOPs for new hires, terminations, garnishments, and year-end (W-2/1099) tasks.

6. Outsource where sensible: Offload filings or multi-state complexity if it reduces risk and cost.

Reliable payroll is invisible. That’s the goal.

How to Display Payroll Processing Skills on Your Resume

11. Accounts Reconciliation

Accounts reconciliation confirms ledger balances by matching internal records to external statements, hunting down discrepancies and fixing them.

Why It's Important

Accurate books, fewer surprises, stronger controls. Errors shrink when reconciliations are disciplined and timely.

How to Improve Accounts Reconciliation Skills

1. Standardize: Templates, schedules, materiality thresholds, and required attachments—consistency speeds review.

2. Automate: Use tools that match transactions, flag exceptions, and maintain audit trails.

3. Reconcile often: High-volume accounts daily or weekly; everything else at month-end with clear ownership.

4. Checklists and evidence: Document aging, subledger ties, and support for each recon; require sign-offs.

5. Investigate root causes: Don’t just clear items—prevent repeats by fixing upstream processes.

6. Skill up: Continue training on advanced accounting topics and system features that reduce exceptions.

The compound effect is a faster, calmer close.

How to Display Accounts Reconciliation Skills on Your Resume

12. Auditing Standards

Auditing standards set the rules for planning, executing, and reporting audits so results are consistent, credible, and useful.

Why It's Important

They protect quality and trust—management, boards, lenders, and regulators rely on that assurance.

How to Improve Auditing Standards Skills

1. Ongoing education: Track updates to ISA, PCAOB, and AU‑C standards; refresh methodologies accordingly.

2. Technology-forward: Apply data analytics and risk assessment tools to focus work where risk actually lives.

3. Professional skepticism: Practice critical questioning, corroboration, and documentation of judgment calls.

4. Quality control: Enforce engagement quality reviews, independence checks, and consistent workpaper standards.

5. Peer review and feedback: Embrace findings, close gaps quickly, and share lessons learned across the team.

6. Ethics first: Revisit the code of ethics regularly; independence and objectivity aren’t negotiable.

Better audits come from better thinking, organized work, and unflinching integrity.

How to Display Auditing Standards Skills on Your Resume