CV example · ACCA-qualified, six years in industry
Accountant CV example
The example CV, rendered at full page size in the Accountant CV template. The full text of the summary and the highlighted bullet points is reproduced below in selectable form.
Daniel Example is a fictional person. The employers, figures and qualifications shown are illustrative and exist only to demonstrate how a CV of this kind is constructed.
The text, in full
The professional summary
ACCA-qualified management accountant with six years in industry, currently running the month-end close for three trading entities with £46m combined turnover in GBP and EUR. Took the close from nine working days to five and rebuilt the balance sheet reconciliation pack that the finance team still runs on. NetSuite and Excel to model-building depth; comfortable owning the audit relationship.
Why it is written this way: Four facts in four sentences, in the order a finance reader wants them: qualification and years, the ledger scope with turnover and currencies, one measurable improvement, and the systems. Nothing here is an adjective. The last clause — "comfortable owning the audit relationship" — is doing a specific job, because it answers the question a controller has about whether they will have to supervise the audit themselves.
The text, in full
4 experience bullets, and why each one works
Bullet 1
Cut the month-end timetable from nine working days to five by automating intercompany reconciliations and the accruals journal in NetSuite, with no increase in post-close adjustments.
Every management accountant runs a close, so the differentiator is speed and scope. This states both, names the mechanism, and adds the clause that pre-empts the obvious objection: the timetable did not get shorter by pushing errors into the next period.
Bullet 2
Inherited a balance sheet with 40 unreconciled control accounts and cleared it to nil over two quarters; wrote the monthly reconciliation pack now used across all three entities, and the following audit raised no adjustments on those accounts.
A recovery story with a starting condition, a size, a finish line and — crucially — an independent verdict. The audit outcome is as close to third-party verification as anything on an accounting CV gets, which is why it belongs in the same sentence.
Bullet 3
Owned the audit deliverables for a £46m group audit, delivering all 31 requested schedules by day three of fieldwork and closing both prior-year management letter points on revenue cut-off.
Audit work is usually written as "liaised with auditors", which describes presence rather than responsibility. This names the standard of the engagement, the volume delivered, the speed, and the two specific findings that were closed.
Bullet 4
Rebuilt the rolling 13-week cash forecast in Power Query against live bank feeds; forecast variance at week four fell from an average of 14% to under 5% across two quarters.
A cash bullet, because finance directors care about cash more than almost anything else on this page. The tool is named, the horizon is stated, and the improvement is expressed as forecast variance rather than as "improved accuracy".
Section by section
Why the CV is built the way it is
Designatory letters in the job title
"Management Accountant, ACCA" appears in the header before anything else. Qualification stage is the first hard filter in finance recruitment, and a reader who has to reach a certifications block on page two to find it has already been made to work. This is why the document uses the title line rather than saving it for later.
The qualification section, second on the page
Directly under the profile, where most professions would put nothing. Both the acronym and the full name appear once — "ACCA — Association of Chartered Certified Accountants" — because screening systems in this field match on the string, and the two forms are not interchangeable. The AAT route is included because it explains the path into the profession.
The scope line under each employer
Entities, turnover, currencies, reporting standard, team size and who the role reports to. These six facts are what let a reader decide whether this candidate has run something like their ledger, and they do more work than any single bullet. Note that the scope line names FRS 102 — the standard, like the ERP, is a genuine screening term.
Systems given their own section
Grouped into ERP, reporting and standards rather than listed alphabetically, and specific about depth: "Excel — Power Query, Power Pivot, model auditing" rather than "Excel (advanced)", which every accountant writes and nobody can distinguish. Finance teams filter hard on system match, so vagueness here costs applications.
Practice experience translated for industry
The audit role at the bottom is described in the language of the ledger rather than the language of the practice: turnover ranges, sectors, standards, number of audits and how many were led. A reader in industry cannot interpret "managed a portfolio of clients", but they can interpret "£1m–£30m turnover, mainly manufacturing and wholesale".
A voluntary role that is evidence, not a hobby
The treasurer position is on the page because it is unpaid financial responsibility with a board and a set of accounts attached — it evidences exactly what the CV is claiming. A hobbies line would not have earned the space, which is why there is not one.
What is deliberately absent
No photograph, no "attention to detail" in a skills list, no referee contact details, and no interests. In finance those four are the standard filler, and every one of them displaces something a hiring manager would actually use.
Adapt it
What to change if you have less experience
- Part-qualified: put the exam status directly under the profile and be precise — "ACCA, 11 of 13 papers passed, finalist expected September 2026". Vagueness here is read as bad news being hidden.
- One page, two roles, three bullets each. Keep the scope line under each employer even if the numbers are small; a £4m single-entity ledger is still a ledger a reader can size.
- If you have not measured your close timetable, count it next month and quote it. It is the single most useful number you can add to an early-career accounting CV.
- Keep the practice roles described in industry language from the start, even while you are still in practice — it costs nothing and makes the eventual move easier.
- Where you have taken over a process rather than improved one, say what state it was in when you inherited it. Inheriting a mess and stabilising it is a real achievement at any level.
US market
What to change for a US résumé
- CPA is the reference credential. State ACCA in full once and add any progress towards a US licence or reciprocity, because the acronym alone will not be assumed.
- Say explicitly which framework you have reported under. This example says FRS 102; a US reader needs "US GAAP" or "IFRS" spelled out, and SOX experience named if you have it.
- Cut to one page: the practice role compresses to two lines and the voluntary role usually goes.
- Translate the job title — "management accountant" has no clean US equivalent, and "Senior Financial Analyst" or "Cost Accountant" often describes the same work more legibly.
- Give figures in USD or state the reporting currency next to the number, and drop the degree classification.
The conventions behind those edits are set out in full on the US résumé guide.
Use the structure, not the sentences
Everything above is fictional, and it is meant to be studied rather than copied. Recruiters in a given field read hundreds of CVs a month and recognisable phrasing is noticeable — the value of a worked example is in showing you what to include, how a claim is constructed and where it belongs on the page. The specifics have to be yours, because the specifics are the only part that persuades anyone.
The most portable things here are the scope line under each employer, the distribution of bullets across the roles, and the habit of ending a sentence with a number and its method rather than with an adjective. Those three transfer to almost any profession. For the advice that does not transfer — the metrics, the section order, the terms a parser in your field is matching for — read the profession guides.
Accountant CV example: common questions
Keep going
- Accountant CV guideAn accountant CV is filtered on three things before anyone reads a sentence: qualification stage, the size of the ledger you handle, and the systems you work in.
- Data analyst CV guideA data analyst CV is read for the stack, then for evidence that your analysis changed a decision. How to write both, with three bullets rewritten and templates that parse.
- Project manager CV guideA project manager CV is judged on the size of what you have run and whether it landed. Budget, headcount, duration, variance against plan — and how to write them honestly.
- Project manager CV exampleA full worked document — eleven years, business change and systems.
- Software engineer CV exampleA full worked document — seven years, mid-to-senior.
- All CV examplesTen roles, each with one weak bullet rewritten into a strong one.
- ATS-friendly CV templatesWhat a parser does with your file, and the layouts built to survive it.
Start from this accountant example
Open the editor with the same template already selected, then replace the content with your own. Switching to another design later keeps every word you have written.
Free to start. A Pro or Lifetime plan unlocks this design and every other one.