Whether you’re a senior bookkeeper with years of experience or looking for your first role as a bookkeeper, it can be difficult to know what to include in your resume and how to format it properly.
We analyzed hundreds of bookkeepers’ resumes and learned what works to help you get more interviews in 2024. We created eleven resume templates based on these learnings to help bookkeepers build great resumes at all stages of their careers.
The hardest part of writing a great cover letter and resume is making a start. These resumes and tips are a great place to set you on your way.
Why this resume works
- The hiring manager will spend, on average, six seconds reviewing your bookkeeper resume before deciding whether you’re going to get a first-round interview. This means they have to be convinced of your qualifications no matter where they look on your resume.
- The best way to make your case as an effective, seasoned bookkeeper is through the use of metrics when demonstrating your impact in your past roles. Numbers draw the hiring manager’s attention, and they make a stronger case that you’ll have a huge impact in your next role because you’ve had a similar, demonstrable impact in your past roles.
- Takeaway: Numbers speak louder than words!
Why this resume works
- Focusing on your previous job experiences in your senior bookkeeper resume, don’t be haphazard with the arrangement; otherwise, you will come across as disorganized.
- Emulate how Emily capitalizes on reverse chronological order, her most recent senior role first, tracing her career journey back to earlier days. That visually encapsulates your career growth and how your roles and responsibilities have progressed over time, showing your growth and commitment.
Why this resume works
- As an experienced bookkeeper, you should demonstrate an increase in the level of responsibility or project scope in your work experience throughout your career. If you’ve had the chance to manage projects or lead other bookkeepers, be sure to mention that in your experienced bookkeeper resume explicitly.
- Your resume summary should give a snapshot of the impact you’ve had across your career (instead of one job) in numbers. Quantify your impact here! This is not the place to be humble.
- Note: State metrics that aggregate across all of your jobs instead of focusing on one job.
- Takeaway: Demonstrate an increase in responsibilities throughout your career.
Why this resume works
- The toughest part of building a great career in bookkeeping is getting your first break. What should you focus on in your resume if you don’t have work experience to draw on? Hint: Anything that will convince the hiring manager you deserve an interview!
- If you have a great technical skillset through school/online courses, highlight those in your resume skills. If you have a great project demonstrating your bookkeeping prowess, include it. If you’ve had a part-time job unrelated to bookkeeping that you’ve held while studying, add it since that demonstrates your ability to juggle priorities.
- Takeaway: On your entry-level bookkeeper resume, focus on your strengths, not your lack of experience!
Why this resume works
- For a bookkeeper assistant resume, let’s give it a sturdy foundation. And by this, we mean numbers—they work magic for your claims, rendering them credible and compelling.
- Yet, don’t get too engrossed in percentage improvements. Relive moments when your actions facilitated substantial savings in money (dollar amount) and time (hours) invested in some procedures. An example here would be saving 18 hours for the finance team and averting a tax overpayment of 54K.
Why this resume works
- In bookkeeping, a small data error has a huge implication for all departments. When you do your work, you would want to leave a perfect record of data accuracy.
- Therefore, indicate in your freelance bookkeeper resume how you ensured a perfect track record of data entry errors. This achievement, accompanied by your technology competencies, will set you apart from the rest.
Why this resume works
- Every business out there is interested in cutting costs and boosting profitability. That’s the only way to keep activities running optimally. To pitch your potential to recruiters, citing your track record in reducing expenses and driving up profit margins is one great way to go.
- Ensure your office manager bookkeeper resume highlights your initiatives that saw a significant reduction in costs through a comprehensive analysis of payment and expenses processes
Why this resume works
- More than anything, when you’re applying for a full-charge bookkeeper job, you need to demonstrate you can handle all aspects of bookkeeping mentioned in the job description.
- This means you should highlight different areas (accounts payable, expense reporting, financial reporting, etc.) that you have command over.
- If the role you’re applying to has a focus on invoices and accounts payable, you’re much more likely to get an interview if you talk about your accounts payable experience in your past roles.
- Takeaway: Customize your full-charge bookkeeper resume for each job to which you apply.
Why this resume works
- Many job seekers neglect the second most important section on their resume: the skills section.
- The skills section is particularly important for your corporate bookkeeper resume because of the diverse array of hard and soft skills that the job requires.
- Struggling to come up with eight to ten bookkeeping skills?
- Include a mix of soft skills such as attention to detail, critical thinking, communication, and hard skills like QuickBooks, XERO, FRS, and GAAP.
- The skills section is also essential because hiring managers filter resumes with Applicant Tracking Software (ATS) to find qualified candidates. They enter keywords and skills into the software, and resumes without enough matching words are automatically thrown out.
- Don’t let this happen to you!
Why this resume works
- When you glance over your property management bookkeeper resume briefly, what stands out to you?
- You probably notice the numbers first.
- We recommend you include quantitative metrics in every bullet point possible because catching hiring managers’ eyes and encouraging them to read your resume thoroughly can be the difference between a rejection and an interview.
- Fortunately, it’s not very difficult to find quantitative metrics to include on your resume.
- Include numbers on hours saved due to efficient practices, the number of people you collaborated with, the number of presentations you gave, awards, and revenue generated due to cost-saving and profit maximization.
Why this resume works
- How much information should you include on your resume?
- If you’re a highly-qualified, driven applicant, and have an impressive track record, list it!
- Convey aptitude for the job even if you have only one work experience by including a professional-sounding career objective, plenty of quantitative metrics, any student awards, and various achievements.
- As a student, you shouldn’t be afraid to list any relevant coursework on your insurance agency bookkeeper resume.
- But, remember to keep these courses relevant. Hiring managers will be less interested in the creative writing course you took freshman year than your business economics seminar.
Related resume guides
5 Resume Tips for Bookkeepers
No matter what, the most important rule to remember is that the hiring manager is not spending much time reviewing your resume. Thus, you have to make all work and project experiences stand out using numbers—and save the juicy details for your bookkeeper cover letter.
Outside of that, follow these five tips to optimize different sections of your bookkeeper resume:
- Customize your resume depending on the job description.
- Match your resume skills to the bookkeeper role to which you’re applying.
- More likely than not, you don’t need a resume objective.
- Quantify the impact of your work.
- Please, please proofread. This is a silly and too common reason not to get an interview.
Bookkeeper job description for resume
It’s not what you want to hear as a job applicant, but it’s the truth. It is worth the time to customize your resume depending on the bookkeeper role to which you’re applying.
By including specific experiences or skills mentioned in the job description, you increase your chances of getting an interview by over 25%!
This is one of those things that’s easier to understand when you see an example.
Example: Customize your bookkeeper resume for the job
Work background
This bookkeeper, Stephanie, has three years of experience primarily working in accounts payable while also dabbling in invoicing, sales tax, and financial reporting.
On the first version of her resume, she defines her work experience as a bookkeeper at Feedzai.
Feedzai
August 2016 – May 2018, New York NY
Bookkeeper
- Efficiently processed all A/P invoices and ensured 100% of approved invoices were paid in full and on-time while maximizing cash flow.
- Oversaw the tracking and reporting of sales tax returns, registering with new states as sales geographies expanded
- Prepared balance sheets, profit and loss, and other financial reports to executive stakeholders to give a clear view of the business
Bookkeeper job description
Here is a quick summary of the job description for what Acme Corp is looking for:
We’re now hiring a Full-Charge Bookkeeper to help us keep growing. Acme Corp is a perfect place to get ahead if you’re excited to be part of a winning team. You’ll be glad you applied to Acme Corp.
This position will start as a remote position until the COVID-19 Pause for NY is lifted. Once lifted, the position will switch to on-site.
Responsibilities:
- Responsible for full-cycle accounting duties
- Code and enter vendor expense invoices
- Accounts payable
- Responsible for bank reconciliation of multiple accounts.
- Ensure accuracy in the general ledger
- Responsible for all aspects of client bookkeeping needs
Update the work experience
All in all, the work experience in Stephanie’s resume is pretty relevant for this role at Acme Corp. Still, I would try to incorporate specific keywords from this job description in her resume.
Specifically, I would talk about full-cycle accounting duties, reconciliation, and general ledger experience.
In addition, I would mention specifically coding vendor expense invoices as part of the invoicing bullet point.
So, her updated experience might look like this (changes underlined):
Feedzai
August 2016 – May 2018, New York NY
Bookkeeper
- Efficiently processed and coded vendor expense invoices and ensured 100% of approved invoices were paid in full and on time while maximizing cash flow.
- Performed full-cycle accounting duties, including managing the general ledger and reconciling multiple accounts
- Oversaw the tracking and reporting of sales tax returns, registering with new states as sales geographies expanded
- Prepared balance sheets, profit and loss, and other financial reports to executive stakeholders to give a clear view of the business
Resume skills
The skills section of your resume will help you get through the first automated resume review stage.
Before a human ever looks at your resume an automated system called an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) will score your resume based on whether or not it contains certain keywords.
Your skills section is a great opportunity to include tools you have experience with specifically mentioned in the job description.
Yes, this means you should update your resume for each bookkeeper role to which you apply. However, it also means you’ll drastically increase the chances of getting past the first hurdle to getting an interview.
Next, the hiring manager or recruiter will review your resume. A big red flag to a hiring manager is when they see a long list of skills taking up too much real estate in an applicant’s resume.
So, keep your skills section to five to ten of your top skills. As a rule of thumb, only include skills you would be comfortable being asked about in an interview.
Here’s a list of common skills employers are looking for in bookkeepers.
Common resume skills for bookkeepers
- Attention to detail
- Multi-tasking
- Data entry
- Accounts payable
- Accounts receivable
- Microsoft Office
- Excel expert (lookups, pivot tables, etc.)
- QuickBooks
- Expense tracking
- Tax returns
- Payroll processing
- Sales tax
- Data analysis
- GAAP
- Accrual accounting
- Financial reporting (profit & loss, balance statements, income statements)
Resume objective
Your resume objective is your introductory paragraph for your resume. The reality is 95% of people should omit a resume objective on their bookkeeper resume altogether.
Why? Because most bookkeeper resume objectives are generic and don’t add any evidence for why an applicant deserves an interview.
If you’re going to include a resume objective, be sure to follow these rules to make sure it adds real value to your candidacy:
- Customize it for each job you apply to. Mention the team or company name you’re applying to right in the objective.
- Include numbers. Make a high-level case for the impact you’ve had throughout your career.
Put yourself in the shoes of the hiring manager. When you’re reading your resume objective, ask if it will stand out and add real value to your resume?
Here are a few bookkeeper resume objective examples to inspire you.
Bookkeeper resume objective examples
- “Experienced bookkeeper with a focus on building processes that save time and improve accuracy to give a holistic financial picture of the business. Looking for an opportunity as a full-charge bookkeeper at a quickly growing B2C company like Acme Corp.”
- “Full-charge bookkeeper with experience taking on more responsibility as a company grows. Eager to leverage my background of saving costs by analyzing vendor efficiency to help scale Acme Corp.”
- “Senior bookkeeper with 10+ years of relevant experience saving companies I’ve worked for over $5M in annual savings through reporting, monitoring, and streamlining of costs. Looking to build scalable financial reporting for Acme Corp to enable growth through efficient use of capital.”
- “Excited about the prospect of using my bookkeeping and financial reporting skills to help Acme Corp maintain fiscal discipline as they grow. I have helped a local business establish best bookkeeping practices, and now I want to hone those best practices for a larger organization.”
Measure your impact
Stating the impact you’ve had in your past roles as a bookkeeper is the quickest and most convincing way to make the case that you deserve an interview.
Luckily, as a bookkeeper, there are a lot of ways you may have had an impact.
These metrics can be very rough estimates.
The goal here is to make the case that you know ultimately what metrics matter as a bookkeeper and you have worked to positively influence them in your past experience.
How can you quantify your impact as a bookkeeper? Here are a few ideas:
- Accuracy improvements through better or more robust reporting
- Efficiency improvements through automation or more streamlined processes
- Reduced costs through identifying under-performing vendors
- Allowed for quicker decision making by providing up-to-date financial reporting
- Increased revenue by reducing the number and size of overdue invoice payments
Let’s look at a concrete example of what this may look like in practice.
This is a sample work experience before quantifying impact.
WRONG – no quantifiable metrics
Acme Corp
August 2016 – May 2018, New York NY
Full-Charge Bookkeeper
- Managed the full cycle accounting activities for the company, which grew
- Evaluated and reviewed processes for onboarding vendors, saving in annual costs while improving bookkeeping efficiency
- Processed accounts payable and maintained a scalable system for employee expense reporting
Now, here’s the same exact experience, but the impact of these work projects is quantified. Notice the difference?
RIGHT – quantifiable impact
Acme Corp
August 2016 – May 2018, New York NY
Full-Charge Bookkeeper
- Managed the full cycle accounting activities for the company, which grew to over $8M in annual revenue
- Evaluated and reviewed processes for onboarding vendors, saving $800,000 in annual costs while improving bookkeeping efficiency by 11%
- Processed accounts payable and maintained a scalable system for employee expense reporting as the company grew to 32 employees
Including these metrics accomplishes two major things:
- They convince the hiring manager you’ve had a large impact in your past roles and will likely have a similarly large impact in your next role no matter where they look on your resume.
- Numbers draw the attention of readers and since hiring managers are largely going to be skimming your resume, this means they will read your resume more in-depth.
There you have it; the major rules you should follow on your bookkeeper resume. Applying to jobs can be soul-draining, so congratulate yourself on taking the big first step of creating or updating your resume.
You’ve got this!
