INDUSTRY STATS
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Accounts Receivable positions are at a -3% growth rate, which is negative. With that said, there are currently 1,620,000 jobs in the market right now. The total number of jobs is expected to decrease by -48,100 to 1,571,900 in the period of 2020-30.
What’s more, the median annual wage for the Accounts Receivable jobs was $42,410 in May 2020. The lowest 10% earned less than $27,050, and the highest 10% more than $63,900.
Our conclusion? The Accounts Receivable job market is facing competition due to decreasing demand.
Top Accounts Receivable sections that make the best resume
- Header
- Professional summary
- Experience (with numbers and results)
- Relevant skills
- Education
- Certifications
How to write a Accounts Receivable resume experience section
Accounts Receivable Resume’s Job Experience Checklist:
- Use 4-6 bullet points per job title;
- Don’t go further than a decade behind when describing your job history, unless you’re applying for an executive position;
- Combine job responsibilities as well as achievements with numbers in results when you describe your past work;
- Start each sentence with a power verb and avoid overused buzzwords;
- Use either C-A-R or S-T-A-R methodology, when describing your experience.
The work experience samples below come from real Accounts Receivable resumes that got people hired at top companies. You can use them as an inspiration to build your own resume:
- Responsible for the collection process for overdue invoices
- Communicate customer account status to sales force, finance
- Assist in the credit analysis
- Performongoing analysis, maintenance and review of the existing customers and their credit limits and payment terms
- Review the progress of collections, aging and DSO against target
- Follow up and allocation of payments &Month-end closing
- Research and resolution of payment discrepancies
- Commission release and commission release reporting
- Responsible for follow-up & communication with clients
- Managed all accounts receivable matters including billing, collections, write offs, deposits, billable expense charges, as well as researching and answering all questions sent to accounting.
- Expedited the month end close and completion of all billing.
- Management of bank accounts, including journal entries, cash receipts, and management of the trust account following the Louisiana State Bar Association guidelines.
- Cross-trained in accounts payable procedures, including issuing checks, recording invoices, expense reimbursements, bank reconciliations, and investigating outstanding checks.
- Handled both A/P and A/R accounting duties for a three month period, then trained new hire in firm A/P procedures.
- Reorganized and updated asset tags, including updating inventory, tagging backup receipts, and coordinated with firm accountant to ensure accuracy across databases.
- Investigate and problem solve discrepancies
- Create and maintain ageing reports
- Provide analysis of data for continuous improvement
- Provide support for Credit Managers of 17 Locations
- Monitored daily reject reports
- Processing debit and credit payments for our customers from The Netherlands, Belgium, France, Luxemburg, United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, Poland, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden.
- Resolving the issues that our Payment Specialists face with Salesforce and SAP-FI.
- Resolving creditcard issues.
- Intervening in Paypal conflicts.
- Fraud recognition and prevention, working closely with our Fraud department.
- Assisting our Debt Collection offices in The Netherlands, Belgium and Finland.
- Training new hires.
- Responsible for record keeping on central filing systems and billing.
- Account maintenance, debits and credits, refunds and payment processing.
- Monthly billing and reporting
- Responsible for receivables for Buffalo Niagara International Airport, Niagara Falls International Airport, NFTA Properties, and healthcare.
- New York State fuel tax, prompt tax, sales tax and quarterly tax fillings.
- Monitoring & developing collection processes with collection agent.
- Streamlined and automated reporting, logging and remittance.
- Posts customer payments by recording cash, checks, and credit card transactions.
- Updates receivables by totaling unpaid invoices.
- Summarizes receivables by maintaining invoice accounts.
- Coordinating with guests with regard to credit card inquiries and bank transactions.
- Accomplishes accounting and organization mission by completing related results as needed.
- Chase and monitor the outstanding balance
- Decide on / provide repayment arrangements
- Provide periodical financial reports
- Respond to incoming queries and investigate issues
- Training new team members
- Enter purchases into system on a daily basis
- Maintain records for over 300 customers.
- Oversee daily cash control, prepared bank and credit card deposits.
- Manage outgoing shipments on a daily basis.
- Collect payments for customer billing and posted to general ledger.
- Supervised invoice processing, purchase orders, expense reports, credit memos and payment transactions.
- Responsible for 75 properties, 12 with no managers, 63 with managers, completely trained managers on new software program which rolled out in 2015.
- Responsible for auditing all paperwork sent in from property managers
- Responsible for move-ins, setting up new residents in software system
- Posted money for rent, payment and damages.
- Worked with portfolio managers, changing market rents as the market saw fit.
- Weekly audits comparing money that had been posted verses money in the bank, done weekly and all issues resolved by end of the month.
- Daily bank reconciliation
- Generation of fee statements
- Customer support
- Invoicing and receipting
- Analyze customer accounts at the time of application for any skipped or partial payments, or customer errors.
- Contact customers immediately to resolve any remittance discrepancies. Accounts Receivable analysis and reporting. Generate AR aging reports and identify critical issues.
- Contact customers to collect past due amounts. Identify any reasons for nonpayment and develop plans with supervisor on how to resolve. Document results of contacts. Track and follow-up on customer commitments.
- Handle customer receivable inquiries. Flag and communicate any invoicing or credit memo errors identified when applying remittances
- Review customer balances as directed by supervisor to identify past due accounts.
- Analyze deductions and credits in customer accounts, identifying items to net, items to follow-up with customer, and items requiring potential write-off.
- Escalate unresolved issues, tracking to final resolution.
- Interface with customer to obtain documentation. Analyze and ensure appropriately authorized.
- Research and resolution of assigned requests and effective communication of resolution to the requestor.
- Ensure that each cash receipt batch is posted, balanced to bank deposit and applied. Perform quality assurance and compliance in AR related activities. Audit/check and verify deposits and investigate unapplied cash. Generate daily journal reports to verify application and assist in maintaining daily cash reconciliation spreadsheets for each lockbox both with local and offshore staff.
- Preparing weekly Credit card files to be charged to clients account for Treasury Department.
- $MM portfolio of accounts, full cycle reconciliation of corporate advertisers, ad agencies, shared service centres, government.
- Worked closely with vendors during Sun Media integration period into a single Postmedia invoice, driving vendors to self-service invoice and audit options.
- Identifying best practices to decide appropriate collections treatment, improving DSO results.
- Keen observer of advertiser trends, and regional variances that delay payment.
- $MM portfolio of accounts, full cycle reconciliation of corporate advertisers, ad agencies, shared service centres, government.
- Improved vendor satisfaction with a significant reduction of discrepancies benefiting cash flow.
- Improved established procedures for processing receipts, cash, credit, and system usage.
- Identifying best practices to decide appropriate collections treatment, improving DSO results.
- Keen observer of advertiser trends, and regional variances that delay payment.
- Led the improvement of automatic payment allocation rate in SAP up to 80%, which reduced manual team work approx 75 hrs/month
- Led the design and implementation of improved standard procedures for Europe and US payment methods (Direct debit, Ricevuta bancaria, Credit cards, EDI)
- Led global reporting centering based on GCAP and SAP environments
- Apply on customers accounts daily payments received through the different banks
- Investigate discrepancies and Contact customers to solve them
- Led monthly closing and reconciliation activities for European countries
PRO TIP
Make sure to relate your experience to your job description, but never lie. That’s not tolerated and will show up in the face-to-face interview later on.
Action Verbs for your Accounts Receivable Resume
Recommended reads:
Accounts Receivable Resume Skills’ Tips & Tricks to Impress Recruiters
Resume Skills Section Checklist:
- Ensure your hard skills section (including technologies) are exactly matching the job description.
- Don’t simply list your soft skills. Apply the “show, don’t tell” principle - let your job achievements speak for themselves.
- Find a way to showcase your skills beyond the skills section.
- Your resume’s skill section is important to ATS systems - so don’t skip it.
Top Skills for your Accounts Receivable resume
- Salesforce
- Customer Connect (BMO)
- Customer Financing System (BMO)
- SAP
- Database
- Opera
- Oracle
- Deltek Accounting System
- Quickbooks Enterprise
- Communication
- Negotiation
- Critical thinking
- Problem solving
- Collaboration
- Flexibitly
- Resilience
- Dedication
- Empathy
PRO TIP
Don’t feel obliged to spend a separate section for your soft skills - you can weave them throughout your job experience or career summary. But, don’t just write empty words - back them with examples.
Recommended reads:
Accounts Receivable Resume Header: Tips, Red Flags, and Best Practices
CHECKLIST For Your Accounts Receivable Resume Header
- Your name and surname in a legible and larger resume font
- The job title you’re applying for or your current job title as a subheading to your name
- Link to your portfolio or online profile, such as LinkedIn
- Address (City and State for the US; just your city for rest of the world)
- Email address
- Headshot (required or welcomed in the EU; not required and sometimes frowned upon in the US)
Stick to popular email providers such as Gmail or Outlook. And use these professional formats to create your username:
- first.last@gmail.com
- last.first@gmail.com
- firstlast@gmail.com
- f.last@gmail.com
- first.l@gmail.com
Recommended reads:
PRO TIP
Some companies, states, and countries have non-discrimination policies about what kind of information can be included on your Accounts Receivable resume. This might include a photo (which is often included in a resume header and might be on personal web pages you link to). You can always email the company’s HR department to ask about their policies before you apply.
Accounts Receivable Resume Summary Best Practices
Checklist: What to include in your Accounts Receivable resume summary:
- Years of experience;
- Highlight top 3 skills and proficiencies;
- One big professional accomplishment you’re most proud of, that you can tie with the aforementioned skills;
- Use short, direct sentences - but no more than three - to keep the HRs interested.
Resume Summary Formula:
PRO TIP
Your summary should act as an elevator speech, briefly promoting how you will benefit the employer if hired. Pitch your strengths in the summary and expand on them in your Accounts Receivable experience section. Give examples like how your work benefited each employer.
Recommended reads:
Listing Your Education, Certifications and Courses
Resume Education Section Checklist:
- Ensure your hard skills section (including technologies) are exactly matching the job description.
- Don’t simply list your soft skills. Apply the “show, don’t tell” principle - let your job achievements speak for themselves.
- Find a way to showcase your skills beyond the skills section.
- Your resume’s skill section is important to ATS systems - so don’t skip it.
Top Certifications for your Accounts Receivable resume
Recommended reads:
PRO TIP
If you hold a certain major and a minor, your majors should be mentioned first.
Accounts Receivable Resume: Additional Writing & Formatting Tips
There are three basic resume formats you can choose from:
- Reverse-chronological resume format;
- Functional resume format;
- Hybrid (or Combination) resume format;
The most optimal format for your particular case will depend on your years of experience, as well as whether you’re switching industries or not.
Reverse chronological resumes are best suited for experienced individuals who are sticking to their industry. The experience section takes a central place, and its bullets contain your responsibilities and achievements, coupled with numbers and results.
Functional resumes are used by less experienced jobseekers or career changers. Note that it’s not a format that recruiters prefer, as most are used to the classic chronological alignment. Instead of a list of job titles, functional resumes focus on your skills, and through what experiences you gained them.
Hybrid resumes are great for both experienced and entry-level candidates, as well as career changers. They combine the best of both worlds - most often in a double column format, where one side of the content is focused on your experience, whereas the other - on your skills, strengths, and proudest moments.
Accounts Receivable Resume Summary best practices
Here are more resume tips regarding your layout and style:
- Clear and legible 12p resume font size;
- Use 10’’ resume margins - that’s default for a great resume design;
- Use a one-page template resume length if you’ve got less than 10 years of experience; otherwise, opt for a two-page resume;
- Save your resume as PDF before sending it to the recruiter.
To take it a step further, check out how your resume can stand out without leaning too much on the creative side.
Recommended reads:
PRO TIP
Sometimes you’ll want to go after a job which requires more experience than you have. Instead of using a typical Accounts Receivable resume layout, you can use a creative layout. Getting noticed is the most important challenge and a creative resume layout might help you get invited for an interview as most of other accountants have boring resume designs.
Other sections to include in your resume
Depending on the type of company (corporation or start-up; innovative or traditional), job seniority level and your location, you may want to include more sections to your Accounts Receivable resume:
Accounts Receivable Resume: How to Make Yours More Creative & Stand Out
When you send your resume to a potential employer, chances are it's the fiftieth one they've seen that day. That's why you need to make your Accounts Receivable resume stand out for the right reasons. That means showing your personality, not just your professional experience. Employers are far more likely to remember a candidate who seems like a genuine person and not a robot. Do this by including your passions (which is also a great place to demonstrate skills on a resume), share your favorite books, or even what your usual day looks like.
What Makes a Great Accounts Receivable Resume: Key Takeaways
- Choose a resume layout that sends the right message across and fits your current career situation;
- Create a resume header that shows your desired job title, and easy to find contact numbers;
- Be specific about your experience, accomplishments and future goals in your summary;
- Feature detailed metrics and specific examples that show the impact you made in your previous roles when describing your experience;
- List soft skills backed by examples;
- Add all of your technical skills and certifications that you have and match the job description;
- Show off a dash of personality in your resume that will demonstrate your culture fit and the right mix of hard and soft skills.
