Short intro, I come from a background in banking operations but as much of the work has disappeared off to India I'm trying to move towards setting up my own accountancy practice (I work in an accounting role plus have twenty years experience doing my own companies bookkeeping, VAT and payroll. Companies house annual return plus my own self assessment (up until now my accountant has done my accounts and CT600).
As an added complication I'm a single dad with sole custody (since he was 18 months old) which makes working in corporate a bit of a logistical nightmare (my boys just started secondary school this year).
I've got the Open University Certificate in Accounting (B680) under my belt and I used that as a stepping stone to move up to studying ACCA (I did not take any of the exemptions that I could have taken).
I joined the ICB in late 2008 and took levels I and II to become AICB (exams only, no study). The main reason for this being that I felt that the more that I studied for my ACCA qualification the more that I was losing track of the basics (thankfully with scores of 99% and 98% respectively I was proven wrong but I'm sure that everyone must occasionally feel as though they've lost what they thought they knew).
I'm currently still a member of the ICB but will be dropping it soon as I have found that when talking to agents the first mention of ICB and they don't want to know you no matter what other experience or qualifications you may have!
Now for a question. As a part qualified ACCA I'm only allowed to offer basic bookkeeping services to trial balance, payroll and VAT services. If I wanted to offer my services to the public would you consider the public willing to pay for services that stop at trial balance? (i.e. they would also need to have a seperate accountant).
To my mind I cannot see the smallest companies wanting a seperate bookkeeper yet they would seem to be the target market for bookkeepers?
Under ACCA rules, until I've got three years signed off pre qualification experience plus three years post qualification experience signed off by a practice supervision authorised practice, I'm not allowed to produce documents relied upon by anyone but the client, I can't give any advice and I'm not allowed to produce management reports unless supervised by a fully qualified accountant.... Seems a bit unfair I know considering the services some other bodies are permitted to offer, but rules are rules and they're there for a reason.
It's a bit of a nightmare in that you need good practical experience to be able to offer a good service to clients. You cannot get a job without experience and you cannot get experience without a job.
Also, considering all of the above, if there is a market for services stopping at trial balance do you think that there would be any point in me investing in the BookCert kit to get me started?
Well, just remains to wish everyone a happy and prosperous new year.
Have a good one,
Shaun.
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Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
Welcome to the forum - from reading your posts so far, you seem very much on the ball!
Being a member of an association generally comes with its limitations and thus far, I personally have not been a member of any! Its only now that the money laundering regs have come into play that I have gone down the route of sorts wiht the ICB to become qualified/hold practising certificate etc.
It sounds like you will be going down the accountant route more than the book-keeping one, so the rules are more stringent, for obvious reasons.
Good luck with it all, sounds like you've done well thus far!
it seems that at there is lack of definition as to where bookkeeping stops and accountancy begins with the bookkeeping bodies but there is with the accountancy ones.
My intention is to go down the accountancy route but feel that one needs a good foundation in the dark art of bookkeeping as a foundation to any successful accountancy practice.
Even when I've passed all of my accountancy exams I've still got to do three years post qualification for a practice certificate training certified firm before I can set up properly on my own.
The intention is to get as many temp positions as possible as well as doing any bookkeeping and payroll that I can get.
As mentioned above, I'm AICB at the moment but am thinking of leaving anyway.
I am however a little perturbed for those who remain by the changes going through to merge AICB/AICB(comp), MICB/MICB(comp) which to me seems something of a revenue gathering excercise by making members take all four exams where previously people only took two. (have a look in the members area for membership grades 2011 and you'll see what I mean).
All the best,
Shaun.
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Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
I used to be a member of ACCA but let my membership slide 5 or 6 years ago when I left my job to have my 2 young children. Don't know what the exams are like now but the finals were pretty tough when I sat them.
I found I had to retrain in order to gain any professional status so I chose ICB as I thought this would be the quickest and cheapest route but I am a bit annoyed at the limitations this places on me. I have around 13 years experience a few of which were as a manager of an accounting practice with a staff of 6 and producing final accounts which the accounting partner just signed off and barely looked at and now I find that the only services I am allowed to offer is to produce a basic trial balance ( as at the moment I am AICB (comp) it is very frustrating! I feel like all my past hard work has been for nothing just because I chose to devote 5 years of my life to bringing up my children (that I don't regret).
I think you are right about the bookkeeping experience, I was lucky that I started out in a very small accounting practise straight from school and most of my early experience was mainly of a bookkeeping nature as clients would just drop off bags of invoices. I think some things you can't learn from textbooks you just pick it up as you go along.
Good question about the bookcert, I was also wondering if this would be any good, does anyone have an opinion on this?
Good luck with it, I know how difficult it is trying to juggle kids/study/work.
they're still tough but the rules have eased up on having to pass the final three in a single sitting and you now get 15 minutes reading time at the start, so 3.25 hours per paper rather than 3.
I took advanced Corporate reporting, Advanced Performance Management and Advanced Audit & Assurance in December and came out of it shell shocked right up to Christmas.
Made the fatal mistake of losing track of time whilst doing the group accounting question in the corporate reporting paper and ended up with insufficient time to even start the last question so I'm at least 25% shy straight away. Also the fact that my balance sheet didn't makes me think that I'll be sitting at least the Corporate Reporting paper again in June. At least gives me another few months to become more comfortable with group cash flow statements (my personal nemesis).
Considering that the ICB look to be playing silly games with our rights to practice with AICB (comp), have you thought about redoing ACCA? You're still a member of a recognised supervisory body from the money laundering perspective and a PQ is allowed to do about the same as an MICB (bookkeeping to trial balance, Payroll & VAT).
Don't know where you would stand on insurance though without an ICB practicing certificate? Mmm, might be a question for another thread there!
Anyway, hope that you have a great year. Sure we'll get to chat lots.
Have a good one,
Shaun.
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Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
I'm not known as someone short of an opinion or two... My arguments from a capitalist perspective against a strongly socialist father are quite legendary!
I'll keep you informed as to the response I get from the ICB.
Talk soon,
Shaun.
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Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
Don't write off the corporate reporting just yet. I don't think I ever managed to balance in an exam and you probably only dropped a mark or two. The stress makes you do silly mistakes eh?
I may consider going back to do either ACCA or AAT depending on the outcome of the ICB rules. I don't want to have to do the manual exams and fork out more money. I was thinking of doing the self assessment paper though as this looks to be a nice little earner, there seems to be a lot of work for this where I live as there are a lot of people working for themselves managing to do their books but a bit overwhelmed by the self assessment and not really wanting to pay accountant rates. We'll see..
Well, three days gone and no response from the ICB yet!
The self assessment (and Payroll) modules both look like good idea's.
After doing the ACCA exams for years advanced corporate reporting which I sat as the last exam of this last sitting was the first where I have actually sat in front of the paper before you're allowed to open it and feared that I wasn't going to be able to answer anything.
I had seen it happen to someone in Business Analysis back in June where they ended up spending the first hour reading the questions and the next two doodling on the front cover of the question booklet.
Maybe that's the real ACCA test? They're trying to see if we burn out under the pressure. You must admit that at times it really seems like way too much information for one little human brain to hold.
The fact that for paper 1.1 (that one's F3 now) it started out as a huge hall (or in some parts of the country multiple huge halls) just for one paper then by the finals you've got three or four papers being sat at the same time in a hall half the size means that there must be a terrific drop out rate.
If you've already completed ACCA and it's just that your memberships lapsed post qualification I'm pretty sure that you can re-register with exemptions from just about everything. They'll probably charge you for every exempted exam again though, and expect to have to jump through some burning hoops.
Was your STR fully signed off? If so and you've got two years post qualification, or even if you can get an accountant to sign off any bookkeeping work done in a supervised capacity then can't you go straight to practice as a qualified accountant? (providing that all points of the STR / PER are covered of course).
Even if you didn't fancy that route, a qualified ACCA without a practicing certificate is still allowed to do everything the an MICB is with one... Dont think that you're actually allowed to mention your ACCA status to clients though in that scenario (but you can mention it to insurance companies so insurance should be cheaper).
Talk soon,
Shaun
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Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
I don't know how to word this without it sounding liking a blatant plug for our services but here goes...
You mention your frustration at not being able to provide a whole service to your clients because of the restrictions of your professional body. Have you though about taking on the whole work and then outsourcing the work you are not allowed to do to another company (yes we offer this).
You could then add on your margin to gain extra income for your business and the client experiences a seamless service.
Thanks. Always happy to share a few words of wit and wisdom.
You and Peasie were quite the double act this evening!
Hope that the new years treating you well.
Talk soon,
Shaun.
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Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
hope that your well and the new years being kind to you.
Many thanks for the offer but I've already got an arrangement with a local chartered accountant... Sort of!
Apparently she'll pass me the one's that are too small for her and I pass her the one's that I'm not allowed to do yet.
So far it's just been one way traffic!
Accountants are having a hard time of things as well at the moment so they're keeping staff busy doing work that they wouldn't normally be bothered with.
Fingers crossed things are going to pick up this year and hopefully the arrangement will eventually work out as mutually beneficial. Hence, I'm adverse to go for short term gain as in the long run I might be shooting myself in the foot (always good to have an ACA in your corner).
I might have shot myself in the foot anyway as one of the clients that I passed to her she spent a lot of time sorting out and then they folded the company before paying her! I know it's not my fault but I do feel a bit guilty about that.
I think you're right about our spammers. I'll dig out the website contact details and tell them what's occurring. (You can take the boy out of Wales but you can't take the Welsh out of the boy!!!).
Have a good one and hope to talk soon,
Shaun.
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Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
It's understandable that you have a local arrangement and hopefully it will prove beneficial to you in the coming months. We have a separate accountancy business and have used external bookkeepers in the last month so hopefully that's a sign that things are picking up for us all.
It's unfortunate about the client you passed to her but these things happen so I'm sure she won't hold it against you.
And six years on, almost to the day I hit the magic 10,000th post (wonder if the ticker will go to five digits? Strange that I will be the first to find out).
In celebration for a limited run only it's back to my very first Avatar (Fat cat. A play on being an ex banker).
So strange looking back at my introduction thread and putting myself back into the mindset of where I was then.
My boy who had just started secondary school is now in the sixth form.
I've got my ACCA letters (although still working on getting that ACCA practice certificate).
I never did follow through with the idea of lots of temp roles to gain wider experience. Maybe I should put that on my 2016 to do list?
Who would have thought that joining this site would lead to becoming its moderator.
And back then I would have laughed at anyone who had suggested that I would win bookkeeping and accounting awards from the likes of BKN and Reed.
I did indeed leave the ICB, I dallied with the IFA and for a while had my own premises that my clients almost never visited.
There have been many, many fun threads as well as a few heated ones... Even driven to using expletives on the site a couple of times (once at the sheep video and once at blatant advertising).
And what's changed in the industry?
Well, reading the above it seems that the ICB used to be a bookkeeping rather than accounting qualification.
The ACCA qualification is now four sittings a year.
CIMA left the CCAB party and took their ball with them
IFA were taken over by an Australian body
UK GAAP became UK IFRS (in reality if not in name)
ACCA-X hit the market as a free alternative to entry level training
And of course, RTI, Automatic Enrolment, loss of the useful HMRC help facility... plus, one thing that I do remember very well was how bleak this industry looked in the dying days of the Brown Labour administration where clients were about as common as unicorns.
Been an interesting 10k posts. Let's see what changes occur, what fun we have and what debates unfold during the next 10k?
All the best to posters old and new.
Shaun.
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Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
Interesting read. Did you come away from Acca in the end, or get what was needed to in order to practice? I know you were with IFA until they jumped in bed with the Aussies (thoughts of Kylie just popped in my head then - no we wont go there lol )
And wow 10k posts! I recently hit 500 and became a guru, which made me feel a little bit special
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John
Any advice given is for general guidance and professional advice should be sought applicable to your circumstances.
no, tempting as it was to take the easier route due to my age (#1), even to the point of joining another IFAC recognised body, when it came to it I could not bring myself to abandon the qualification that I sweated blood to achieve so I never properly used the IFA qualification, only ever going beyond trial balance where I had suitable supervision for the work.
It became very apparent to me very quickly that lop off my head and I've got ACCA running through me like a stick of blackpool rock. If the IFA hadn't gone through their transition I would have still left them as anything other than ACCA was in reality settling for less (ok, ICAEW excepted)
I found a Chartered practice (ICAEW & ACCA)... Or more to the point, they found me, who, largely down to some of the help and guidance that I had given people on here that they had read were happy to take me on under their ACCA practice certificate supervision program so I'm currently in a supervision contract and will be for quite some time to come (you have to do three years post qualification unless your three years signed off pre qualification experience was for a recognised practice certificate training employer (rather than just accountants qualified with a recognised body) in which case post qualification is reduced to two years.... My pre qualification was all signed off in banking and high finance, not practice, so I have to do the full three years post qualification).
The hope is that when I get my practice certificate and I'm able to build the practice properly I'll eventually be in a position a few years down the line to help someone else use their letters, perhaps (but not necessarily) ex corporate, in their 50's, who absolutely loves the ACCA, tries to help others on here and has the right ethics. (see the wheel that I see myself on here).
I'm sure that we have a few people currently doing AAT who will not stop there. I know that Neil (SpamKebab) went forwards post MAAT with his studies to ACCA but he's under Nick's wing so he's well looked after.
When I first joined the site there used to be quite a celebration when someone hit 500 posts but thats sadly lapsed. Its a tradition that we should bring back. Congratulations on your first 500 matey. I always thought that the titles Guru and Expert were the wrong way around.
All the best,
Shaun.
#1 You don't feel in your 50's until you find yourself not even getting asked to interview for positions that you could do in your sleep because agents have identified others "better qualified for the role"... Which means that to a twenty something agent who could not actually do any of the jobs that they are trying to find people for, anyone over 50 should be in a care home.... Ageism may not be legal but its rife amongst agents who hide it with reasoning that they cannot substantiate and actively prevent the right CV's from getting to the desks that they need to reach.
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Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
What Shaun doesnt show - his teeth marks in the back of that cake!
Well done guys on the number of posts. At least most of yours arent rambling on about cakes! (OK - some of John's are!!)
10k posts and counting Shaun - thats just amazing and shows what being dedicated to the cause of helping the rest of us out means - to Shaun, but also to us. On behalf of all site members, Im sure you wouldnt mind me saying - a huge THANK YOU you for all your help over the years.
Interesting reading Shaun's backstory and the fact that in a lot of ways not much changes! Good to see a philanthropist at work and planning to continue to help others, despite having to further build his own business once that practice supervision period is over. Although with all your comments about regulation 8, Shaun, I do wonder where you might find someone ''perhaps (but not necessarily) ex corporate, in their 50's, who absolutely loves the ACCA, tries to help others on here and has the right ethics'' bonkers enough to go for that lot rather than taking early retirement in the sun. Oh yeah - a workaholic nutter might!
Happy New Year everyone. Cant wait to see what 2016 brings to BKN.
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Joanne
Winner of Bookkeeper of the Year 2015, 2016 & 2017
Thoughts are my own/not to be regarded as official advice,which should be sought from a suitably qualified Accountant.
You should check out answers with reference to the legal position
