Accounts Payable and Receivable Clerk Jobs Are Shrinking. The Hiring Never Stops.

The federal government thinks the accounts payable and receivable clerk job is dying, and its own numbers kind of prove it while arguing with themselves - the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects the whole bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks category to shrink about 6 percent between 2025 and 2035, purely because software keeps eating more of the data entry every year, and that same BLS release still projects roughly 144,100 openings a year in that category, every single year, for a decade straight, mostly because people in these jobs retire or get promoted or leave and somebody has to backfill the seat. Across the accounting and finance postings we track at Audit Friendly, AP and AR listings follow exactly that pattern - a role everyone assumes is getting automated into nothing, that still won't stop hiring. If you're trying to break into accounting without a degree, or you're a bookkeeper looking for something with more structure, this is one of the more underrated entry points - close cousin to the case I made for landing a remote accounting job with no experience - and a real slice of the postings actually let you do it from home.

Why does the government think this job is disappearing?

Because the tasks are, even if the title mostly isn't yet. The BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook is blunt about the mechanism: software innovations have automated many of the tasks bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks used to do by hand, and the agency's own explanation is that the same amount of work can now get done with fewer people - which is exactly the kind of sentence that should worry you a little and also tell you where to aim your career. The stuff getting automated is the transactional grind - matching invoices, keying transactions, chasing a mismatched check number, the tedious shit nobody ever built a career on - and that's real, AI is plainly coming for the boring half of this job. The judgment sitting right on top of it is what's actually sticking around: deciding whether a vendor discrepancy is a fraud flag or a typo, handling the relationship when a payment goes sideways, owning the process when three systems don't talk to each other. That's the part worth building toward.

So why do employers keep hiring for it?

Turnover, mostly, plus growth in specific pockets. A 144,100-a-year opening number inside a shrinking category is churn, plain and simple - people in these roles get promoted into staff accountant, or leave the field, or retire, and somebody with a pulse and a decent grip on debits and credits needs to fill the seat while the bigger automation story plays out over a decade, not a quarter. Separately, plenty of growing companies - anyone stacking up entities, anyone scaling transaction volume faster than headcount - are net adding these roles even while the national trendline points down, because a national average flattens out a lot of very different local realities, the same way it does when you look at a single market like accounts payable hiring in Chicago.

What do these jobs actually pay?

Robert Half's own salary data for the accounts payable clerk title puts the range at roughly $43,250 at the 25th percentile up to $54,750 at the 75th, with the midpoint sitting around $49,250 nationally - candidates newer to the role land toward the bottom, people with a few years and real software chops land toward the top, and your city's cost of living moves the whole band from there. Receivable-side roles track close to the same range. This pays modestly on its own, and I'd rather say that straight than dress it up, and it's also a real foothold with a defined path into staff accountant and beyond, with an entry bar genuinely lower than almost anything else in accounting.

Are the remote listings actually real?

Some, and you should be a little more skeptical here than you'd be with senior roles. Plenty of "remote" AP/AR postings are recruiter spam or location-scrubbed junk that turns hybrid the second you get a callback, which is a genuinely pissed-off-making experience the first time it happens to you, and that's true across entry-level accounting generally, not just this title. What genuinely goes remote: companies running AP/AR out of a shared-services or finance-ops function instead of tying it to one office, multi-entity businesses where the transaction volume doesn't care where you're sitting, and SaaS or distributed-first companies that never built an office-centric process to begin with. Look for those employer types specifically, instead of trusting the "remote" tag on its own.

What I'd do

Get fluent in whatever ERP or AP automation tool shows up most in postings in your target market - Bill.com, NetSuite, QuickBooks, Coupa, whatever it turns out to be - because that single line on a resume does more work here than a degree. Ask in the interview how the team handles exceptions, because the answer tells you whether you'd be doing real judgment work or just keying in numbers all damn day, and treat the first year as a runway toward staff accountant, not a destination. Browse open roles on the Audit Friendly work-from-home accounting jobs board, where the remote tag actually means something because we clean out the recruiter spam and link straight to the employer's own career page.

Frequently asked questions

Do you need a degree to become an accounts payable or receivable clerk?

No, usually not. BLS lists "some college, no degree" as the typical entry point, and plenty of employers will hire off a high school diploma plus decent Excel and software skills, though coursework or a degree in accounting helps you climb faster once you're in.

What's the difference between an AP clerk and an AR clerk role?

AP handles money going out - paying vendor bills, matching invoices to purchase orders - and AR handles money coming in - invoicing customers, chasing down what they owe. Some smaller companies combine both into one seat, which is actually a good entry job because you learn the whole cash cycle instead of half of it.

Is accounts payable a dying career?

The task list is genuinely shrinking under automation, and BLS projects the broader clerk category to shrink about 6 percent over the next decade, and the job still holds up fine on any timeline you'd actually plan a career around, because the openings keep coming from turnover. Treat it as an entry point with a shelf life, a launchpad rather than a lifetime title, and you'll be fine.

What software skills matter most for these roles?

Whatever ERP or AP automation platform your target employers actually run - check the postings in your market instead of guessing. QuickBooks and NetSuite show up constantly, Bill.com and other AP automation tools are increasingly expected, and basic Excel fluency is close to non-negotiable everywhere.

How much do accounts payable clerks make?

Robert Half puts the national range at roughly $43,250 to $54,750 depending on experience, with the midpoint near $49,250 - the real number moves with your city and your software skills, so treat that as a starting anchor you climb from.

The clerical layer of accounting is genuinely getting thinner, and pretending otherwise helps nobody, and a role that still adds 144,000 openings a year inside a shrinking category is worth taking seriously as a real way in, the kind of seat you build from rather than settle into. Go build the skill set that survives the next decade.