I have IAB Level 2 Bookkeeping, Level 2 AAT and Level 3 AAT and personally think that AAT is a much better qualification, however everyone is different.
I have to say that actual experience in manual bookkeeping, computersied bookkeeping helps alot. As good as a qualification is to have, it only really comes together in your head once you've actually put it to practice.
I have been working in bookkeeping for 5 months now and am surprised at how different it all is to doing the work in college.
As with most things practical experience is better than qualifications.
Qualfications show you have the knowledge to do what is needed. But practical experience shows you can actually do what is needed which many employers/clients prefer.
Would strongly echo Mark's comments about experience - if you can do the work, you may find clients are less bothered about qualifications and more about customer service.
I'm a qualified accountant and very rarely do people ask whether I'm qualified.
but don't you think that the reason that people don't ask is down to the public expectation that all accountants are qualified?
Certainly before I started my studies I had always believed that all accountants had to be qualified. Imagine my horror when I found out the truth!
In general I agree with Marks assessment but the problem is back to the age old issue that for the most part you can't get the experience without the qualifications but getting the qualifications doesn't seem to open the doors that it should to gaining the experience as an employee.
The result of the above is that people end up setting up as self employed bookkeepers with no practice experience.
That to my mind is not always a bad thing and there are many success stories on here of people that have taken that route. However, in many cases that was not peoples intention. They wanted a change of career but find their only option is self employment.
There seems at the moment to be a large number of people in local government who are looking at retraining to bookkeeping and I fear that the only people that are going to make any money at all out of this are the training companies and supervisory bodies.
What we really need is more people setting up businesses churning out widgets rather than more people doing the books of a declining numbers of manufacturing businesses.
What's the old addage, so many sharks, so few fish!
Right, off my soap box. Talk later,
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.
Thank you for all the your advice. I think in my head that people will not hand over their books or their small payrolls to myself ,On my say so that I have experience. I thought that I would need a qualification to cover computerised bookkeeping and manual bookkeeping.I thought i would be OK with the payroll side, and i thought i needed a licence to call myself a bookkeeper? I thought of getting a degree in bookkeeping but this qualification is hard to find, except home learning. I may have to do a little more research.
Thanks for that rant shamus. It was very informative. I just love working in payroll and books. So this what i know. I don't want to change my career. I just want to do it properly and legally.
I agree with you which is kind of my point! Here I am, a qualified acountant, trading and complying with my professional body's requirements - PI, LOE, complaints procedure, etc.. If they insist we wear pink shirts on Wednesday, then we would have to.
Alternatively, and I think this happens a lot in ICAEW, why not just stop being a member of your body and be free to operate as you wish. OK, some of their stipulations are best practice and make sense, and you would still need AML done by our chums at HMRC, but it would be one less set of 'regulations' that you would have to worry about.
BTW, I'm not advocating qualifications either way, I know many fantastic accountants who are not qualified and many qualified accountants who are awful, but ces't la vie!
But this comes back to what I was saying to Marie about the improtance of experience.
You don't need a license to call yourself a bookkeeper, but if you were working self employed you would need to be registered for the Money Laundering Regulations by either HMRC or a professional supervisory body, like the ICB, AAT, IAB.
There is no degree in bookkeeping that I know of. Distance learning is probably the more popular way to study, but if you wanted a college course try the AAT: http://www.aat.org.uk, although they have stopped payrol for the moment.
Experience is important, but so are qualifications. You will come across employers or clients who only care about experience, and others who only care about qualifications.
Most of the awarding bodies are moving towards more flexible testing, so if you have the experience you might as well take the qualification. For example, the ICB Level III Diploma in Payrol Management is a home assignment, client scenario. Its about 3 hours work and costs £40 (+ £45 student registration). So then you would have the best of both worlds.
