An accountant resume gets read for the CPA line first and the close second, so the first job is to state your CPA status exactly. Precision matters more than having the license. Of 12 live accounting postings we read on 9 November 2026, 9 mentioned the CPA, none required it, and 8 accepted something short of a license: "eligible", "candidate", "in the process". The sample is small and leans to growth companies, but the point holds: most of these readers want to know where you stand, and only you can say it accurately.
The CPA line, every honest form
Each line below is a labelled sample. Swap in your own state, sections and dates.
| Where you stand | Write this | Do not write | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Licensed, active | Jordan Reyes, CPA in the header, and CPA, Illinois (active) under credentials | Nothing else is needed | The license is issued by a state, so name it |
| Licensed, inactive | CPA-Inactive, Washington | Jordan Reyes, CPA | Washington lets inactive licensees who are not practicing public accounting use that form, with "Inactive" in the same font and size |
| License lapsed | Leave the letters off and reinstate first if you can | CPA, CPA-Inactive | Washington bars both after a lapse. Other boards use other labels |
| Retired | CPA-Retired, where your board allows it | CPA | Washington permits this if you met its rule when you retired |
| Passed all sections, not yet licensed | Passed all sections of the CPA Exam, May 2026. Completing experience requirement, Texas | CPA, CPA (pending), CPA, awaiting license | Passing the exam is one of three requirements, not the license |
| Passed some sections | CPA Exam: FAR and AUD passed; REG scheduled March 2027 | CPA Candidate next to your name | Sections tell the reader how far along you are. See the note below on the label |
| Eligible to sit, not started | Eligible to sit for the CPA Exam, Maine. FAR scheduled February 2027 | CPA eligible with no detail | "Eligible" can mean eligible to sit or eligible to be licensed |
| Credit hours short | 138 of 150 credit hours complete, on track for June 2027. Plan to sit in Maine | CPA track | The reader can do the arithmetic and you stay accurate |
| Credential from another country | Spell it out, for example Chartered Professional Accountant, Ontario. Not a US license | CPA alone | Washington's board names "CPA Canada" and "chartered accountant" among titles it does not allow in that state, so check where you are applying |
| Not pursuing it | Leave it out | Any of the above | 3 of the 12 postings did not mention the CPA at all |
Why you can never round this up. CPAs are licensed by their state's board, and the title is restricted. Washington's board calls CPA a "restricted title" and says other titles likely to be confused with it may violate state law and lead to discipline. A Journal of Accountancy article from 11 February 2019 warns that people "may inadvertently violate their state board's rules" in exactly these places: "resume, LinkedIn profile, business card, email signature". The same article tells hiring staff to "always check whether job applicants have the credentials they claim to", and names CPAverify as a place to look a license up. Assume your line will be checked.
About the label "CPA Candidate". Employers use it freely. Semafor's posting says "CPA or CPA candidate a plus". Boards can read it differently. One forum poster reported a Texas board letter about "CPA Candidate" on a LinkedIn profile, asking for written assurance and removal. That is one undated account that we could not confirm with the board, so do not treat it as a ruling. It is still a cheap risk to avoid, because the sections line says more anyway. This post is general information, and your state board has the final word.
Credit hours and exam sections
Much of what you will read about this is out of date. The Bureau of Labor Statistics' career page still says "All states require CPA candidates to complete 150 semester hours". That was the rule for a long time. It no longer describes the country.
AICPA's road map, dated 24 July 2025, lists three routes:
| Route | Education | Experience | Exam |
|---|---|---|---|
| Master's | Master's degree | 1 year | CPA Exam |
| 150 hours | Bachelor's plus enough hours to reach 150 | 1 year | CPA Exam |
| Bachelor's plus experience | Bachelor's degree | 2 years | CPA Exam |
Adoption is state by state. UWorld's tracker, updated 21 September 2026, lists 42 jurisdictions with a 120-hour route, 6 still requiring 150 (including Maine and Wyoming) and 4 with legislation in progress. UWorld sells CPA review and some effective dates are in the future, so confirm with your board.
Here is what that does to one resume. Take a candidate with a 120-credit bachelor's and 18 graduate credits, 138 in all (our sample):
- In a 150-only state, she is 12 credits short:
138 of 150 credit hours complete, on track for June 2027. - In a state with the bachelor's route, credits are not her gap. Experience is:
Bachelor's route, 14 of 24 months of supervised experience complete.
So name the state. The same person is short of different things in different places.
Use today's section names too. The exam changed in January 2024 to three core sections, AUD, FAR and REG, plus one discipline: BAR, ISC or TCP. BEC is gone, so a template listing it is old. Section credit does not last forever. AICPA notes that NASBA recommends a 30-month window, but your state board decides. If a credit expires, take it off the resume.
Software and close cycle lines
We counted the terms in those 12 postings. Reconciliations appeared in 11, Excel in 11, GAAP in 10 and NetSuite in 10. Treat NetSuite as high, because our search included the word and Greenhouse postings lean to younger companies. SAP appeared once and Workday not at all. Across all employers, O*NET flags QuickBooks, SAP, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint and Microsoft Office as in demand for accountants, based on job postings. Your target employer decides which of these worlds you are in, so copy the system names from each posting.
Software names are real keywords, and forms test them. Cognitiv's form asks, "Which ERP or accounting systems have you worked in directly?" The word "directly" matters. If you saw a client's NetSuite as an auditor, you did not run it. Our resume keywords guide covers finding these terms in any posting.
A good line has scope, system, cycle and result. These are samples:
Closed the books by day 5, down from day 9, by moving 14 recurring entries to NetSuite templatesReconcile 38 balance sheet accounts monthly; cleared $212K of aged items in the first quarterRun intercompany eliminations across 5 entities in 3 currenciesPrepared 30 audit schedules for the annual audit; auditors proposed no adjustments in my areasTested 22 key controls under SOX 404 and fixed 2 access gaps before year end
Skip "accuracy" percentages, since nobody can check them, and "responsible for" lines with no number.
Sample: staff accountant
Everything in these three samples is invented, including the people and companies.
MAYA ORTEGA
Portland, ME | (555) 010-4417 | maya.ortega@example.com
CREDENTIALS
CPA Exam: FAR and AUD passed (2026); REG scheduled March 2027. Plan to license in Maine.
138 of 150 credit hours complete, on track for June 2027.
EXPERIENCE
Staff Accountant, Harlow Distribution (sample), $85M revenue | 2024 to present
- Prepare 40 monthly journal entries and 26 balance sheet reconciliations in NetSuite
- Cut the AP accrual true-up from 3 days to 1 with a received-not-invoiced report
- Cleared $64K of unapplied cash in my first quarter by matching remittances to invoices
- Supplied 30 audit schedules; auditors raised no findings in my accounts
EDUCATION
BS Accounting, Casco Bay University (sample), 2024
SKILLS
NetSuite, Excel (XLOOKUP, pivot tables), Concur, US GAAP, month-end close
Sample: senior accountant
DANIEL KWON, CPA
Chicago, IL | (555) 010-7732 | daniel.kwon@example.com
CREDENTIALS
CPA, Illinois (active)
EXPERIENCE
Senior Accountant, Brightwell Foods (sample), 5 entities, 3 currencies | 2023 to present
- Own the consolidated close; moved it from day 7 to day 4 over FY25
- Review the work of 2 staff accountants and rebuilt the close checklist in Excel
- Run intercompany eliminations and FX revaluation in Sage Intacct
- Led the fixed asset cleanup that retired $1.3M of fully depreciated assets
- Main audit contact; annual audit fieldwork fell from 5 weeks to 3
Staff Accountant, Brightwell Foods (sample) | 2020 to 2023
- Took over 22 reconciliations and cleared a 4-month backlog in 6 weeks
SKILLS
Sage Intacct, Excel, ASC 606, ASC 842, SOX 404, consolidations
Sample: public to industry
The job here is translation. An industry controller wants someone who can run a close, and audit language describes checking one.
| Audit wording | Rewrite for industry |
|---|---|
| Performed substantive testing of revenue | Tested ASC 606 revenue at 6 software clients ($20M to $140M) and proposed 9 adjustments that clients booked |
| Worked with client management | Walked 4 client controllers through lease accounting changes under ASC 842 |
| Experience with NetSuite | Read NetSuite and Sage Intacct at clients to pull support. Have not run a close in either |
That last row keeps you safe on a form asking what you worked in directly.
AISHA BELL, CPA
Atlanta, GA | (555) 010-2290 | aisha.bell@example.com
CREDENTIALS
CPA, Georgia (active)
EXPERIENCE
Audit Senior, Marlow & Tate LLP (sample) | 2022 to present
- Ran fieldwork on 8 audits a year for private software and distribution clients
- Tested ASC 606 revenue at 6 clients ($20M to $140M); clients booked 9 proposed adjustments
- Built reconciliation templates that 3 clients adopted for their own monthly close
- Supervised teams of 2 to 3 staff; trained 5 new hires on inventory observation
SKILLS
US GAAP, ASC 606, ASC 842, Excel, read access to NetSuite and Sage Intacct
What forms ask
These are real questions, copied from forms that were live when we read them on 9 November 2026:
| Employer and role | Question | Options |
|---|---|---|
| Intrinsic, Transaction Accountant | "Do you hold an active CPA license?" | Yes, No, In progress, Inactive |
| Cognitiv, Finance Analyst | "Do you have a CPA certification?" | Yes, No |
| Momentum, Staff Accountant graduate program | "Are you comfortable working onsite 5 days/week in our Dallas office" | Yes, No |
| Scale AI, Senior Accountant | "Are you open to working in either our New York or San Francisco office 3 times a week?" | Yes, No |
| Mitratech, Senior Accountant | "Please indicate your desired base salary" and desired total compensation | Free text |
Notice the second row. A CPA is a license, the form calls it a certification, and it offers no middle answer. If you have passed two sections, the true answer is No, and your resume carries the rest. Momentum also asks for your GPA in bands, which a resume would not show.
Location comes up as often as credentials, so have an answer ready. In our job pool, roughly 5% of finance and accounting roles are fully remote and roughly 17% are hybrid.
ApplyEze polls more than 100,000 employer boards directly. The chart shows those figures next to roughly 54,000 open roles, roughly 68% on application systems ApplyEze applies to once an inbox is connected, and a median advertised pay of about $95,000. They come from a 1% sample taken on 9 November 2026, and only about 15% of postings state pay, so use them as a rough direction. The family mixes accountants with analysts. For accountants and auditors alone, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports a median of $83,680 in May 2025.
Sending it with your CPA line intact
If you apply through ApplyEze, the CPA line stays yours. For each application, an AI model reads that posting and your real history and writes a resume for it. Your employers, job titles, dates, schools, degrees and certifications come from your own record, and a certification the posting asks for is not added unless you hold it. Code rejects a rewrite that adds a figure, employer, school or credential your record does not hold, and an audit of 84 sampled resumes on 4 November 2026 found 0 invented employers, dates, degrees or numbers.
Tools follow a different rule. ApplyEze brings the posting's named skills and tools onto your skills line, even when your own record does not list them. There is no step to remove one before a live run, so use a dry run to see what it writes, and be ready to discuss anything on the page. You choose what goes in your queue, so a posting built around a system you have never run can stay out of it.
On forms, hard facts come from your profile. When a required question is not covered by your saved answers, ApplyEze still fills it rather than stopping the run, so that answer may not come from you. Fill in your saved answers, use dry run first, and read your receipts. You pick the matches and queue them in the desktop app, and it applies in Chrome on your computer, so keep the computer on and awake until the queue finishes. Workday and Oracle jobs stay hidden until you connect an application inbox, because those sites email a code.
If you are moving toward FP&A, the financial analyst resume and our guide to getting into finance are the next reads. Otherwise, write your CPA line today, exactly as your state board would have it. If you would rather spend your evenings on REG than on application forms, your first 50 applications are free, with no card, and ApplyEze builds a resume for each posting.