Hi Sugra,

short answer is unfortunately no.

Longer answer is that this was a scenario that I hit a little while back where I was put forward for an interview with a practice then found out, almost by accident that they were not qualified with any supervisory body (QBE).

I contacted the ACCA help desk who in no uncertain terms told me that I could not accept employment with them.

First of all I didn't believe what I was being told so phoned back to get a second opinion only to be told the same by a different person at the ACCA (who was actually very freindly and helpful and almost appologetic over the rules).

I then, after having sailed through the interview and been offered the job at more than the advertised remuneration package, had to inform the practice who wanted to take me on that they were not qualified enough to employ me! (didn't actually put it in those words but you could tell that the guy knew what was implied by my more subtle answer).

So, you actually have two issues here. If they are not qualified accountants you may not be able to work for them regardless as to the accounts signing issue.

Last thing that you want is to lose you qualification on a regulation 8 issue so best approach would be to give the ACCA a call or email them and explain the scenario to them. There's a vague possibility that their stance may have changed in the last couple of years but somehow I doubt it.

Good luck with this,

kind regards,

Shaun.

Hope that you have a good weekend too Sugra.

Sorry that my response wasn't more positive.

One thing I did pick up in your answer though was about ACCA qualified. I think that providing that it's a recognised supervisory accountancy body (I would imagine AAT excluded) then it should be ok. So ACCA, ICAEW, ICAS, ICAI and I think CIMA, you should be fine.

Wonder what the situation with experience gained under an IFA practice is now that they've had a promotion into the big league from IFAC?

Also, dare I say it but worst case scenario there is still the option of swapping allegiences... Absolute travesty that people in your position even have to contemplate such drastic action but it can at times get to the position with the ACCA that it seems you run into an immovable wall preventing you from moving forwards.

All the best, and hope you have a great one too,

kindest regards,

Shaun.

Hi Neil,

the issue though is that you put so much of your life into gaining the qualification and it's so well respected once you do finally get it that it's a very difficult thing to walk away from.

If you've gone through all 14 of the exams getting different letters after your name at the end of it to the one's you worked towards is never going to sit well with you even though you are likely to be able to earn greater financial reward working for yourself under a different body than not being able to work for yourself because the practice certificate is virtually impossible to achieve and you're not allowed to practice under anyone elses banner and still keep the letters.

If you've got the ACCA practice certificate you can practice under other peoples under reciprocal arrangements but you still need to maintain both memberships (thinking of the ACCA / ICAEW arrangement there although I believe that's now been brought to a close for new applicants).

There's an issue that I can see there with the AAT arrangement in that you can get AAT membership if you're qualified ACCA but I believe that you still need to have the ACCA practice certificate in order to practice under the AAT banner.

like the way that you've picked up on a fair few of my buzzwords there! Do you think that maybe I use the phrases Draconian and Dark side a little too much in connection with this subject matter!

Thinking practically though I suspect that there are an awful lot of IFA people out there who started out intending to be Chartered Certified Accountants and I cannot in all honesty say that would not be a route that I would end up on should the barriers to the practice licence with the ACCA prove ultimately to be too difficult to traverse.

For now though I keep on trying to find the right key for entry to the Death Star... Mmm, maybe on completion instead of getting the Letters ACCA after your name you should get the letters Darth before it?

Hi Neil,

Sorry for the delayed reply, been having problems with Firefox this morning.

Only pretending to be a Darth. Still unfortunately a Padawan at the moment!

From your reply I have to ask, if you took the CIMA route would you always be feeling somehow behind if you had chosen the ACCA one? Thats nothing against CIMA there which is an excellent weell respected qualification, I'm just picking up on the sentiment in your words (although if you get PQ every month it does feel as though the ACCA have more respect for their students).

if you want paid employment then to my mind a PQ ACCA wins over all of the others.

I would have no issue walking into a position (been offered several, one of the less suitable was mentioned in the first response above) but the added complication that I have of single parenting makes that a non starter for the next couple of years at least.

When employers advertise for PQ's they want three things.

(1) to have passed the first nine papers (Fundamental and Skills levels)

(2) Previous experience working in an accounts office.

(3) Expertise in the software that they use.

Not going to try teaching my grannie to suck eggs on those last two so just a review of what you would need to do to achieve first nine status (why am I thinking Sons of Anarchy there?)

The fundaments papers are F1 to F3 and are very much AAT level IV level.

Papers F4 to F9 are life sucking monsters that are a quantum leap from the first three papers and are at BSc level of study (P1 to P7 are at Masters level).

The papers are (with my comments in brackets) :

F1 Accountant in Business (waffly paper showing understanding of basic management theory)

F2 Management Accounting (What it says on the Tin. Think AAT level IV)

F3 Financial Accounting (What it says on the Tin. A little more advanced than AAT level IV but not a difficult paper)

F4 Corporate and Business Law (After succering people in with the first three papers the fun starts here and most candidates drop out at this paper where you need to have lawyer level knowledge of case law. No calculations in this paper but it's anything but waffly)

F5 Performance Management (More management accounting with more complex scenarios than F2).

F6 Taxation (Exactly what it states on the tin with an emphasis on corporate taxation. The evil tax stuff doesn't creep in until paper P6)

F7 Financial Reporting (A great, well balanced paper that churns out competent accountants. With F6 and F8 they are the three for becoming a financial account and to my mind, unless people can pass this they should not be allowed to prepare company books. The more advanced version is paper P2 which is aimed more towards the accounts of major corporations).

F8 Audit and Assurance (Always do this paper at the same time as F7 as it requires the same level of knowledge but from a different perspective. i.e. the accounts have already been prepared and your saying why they are not correct rather than compiling them. Even if you are not going to become an auditor this is an important paper for gaining the knowledge neccessary to prepare accounts).

F9 Financial Management (all about financing and performance management. It has elements of F2, F5 and to a certain extent F7 about it so should not be attempted until you have those three under your belt. Its concerned primarily with risk and financing).

 

Going the ACCA route is never a mistake from the level of knowledge gained perspective but as you've spotted from my prevvious posts trying to earn a crust whilst staying within the remit of regulation 8 can be an absolute nightmare.

Then of course you hit the real catch 22. You can't get a job without experience and you can't gain experience because you can't get a job.

Regulation 8 effectively prevents gaining real experience in a self employed capacity as all that you can offer are bookkeeping to trial balance, VAT and Payroll work and I defy anyone to be able to make a living out of that (no accounts work, no advice).

Also, as touched upon above, being an ACCA student even restricts who you are allowed to work for in a related capacity.

But, as you say. Its the golden apple and it didn't get to be that by being easy to achieve.

As for the hours worked employed compared to self employed.

I've worked for some pretty major banks and insurance companies and there is generally an expectation of hours driven by workload.

In recent years there has been a move from hourly rate to professional working day which is another way of saying that they want every hour of your time for no more money.

With smaller companies I've worked well into the evening for no extra pay.

For large corporations I've spent all night in the office before being able to go home.

Just walk around London, Birmingham or Edinburgh at night and look at the office buildings with their lights on at three in the morning.

Lights nowadays tend to have motion sensors so once everyone has gone home they switch themselves off after ten mins.

lol, just remembered one bank where their sensors arn't that good and you have to get up from your desk and you have to get up from your desk and jump around waving your arms every so often... Bless, sure that they're just thinking about staff getting their daily excercise!

If you do go the ACCA route and ever need help or advice on anything (which papers to take together, which papers require what study techniques etc., help with any technichal issues) just drop me a line as always happy to help a mate out.

All the best,

Shaun.

Hi Neil,

no training provider needed but it will cost a small fortune in books! It will set you back about £120 per paper for an I-Learn CD (a course on a disk) from BPP, A success CD (listen whilst you do other stuff) from BPP, Study text from Kaplan (I believe supperior to the BPP study texts) and Exam prep from Kaplan and BPP (they use old ACCA exam papers but often have different answers and use different past questions) You could spend much more than this on pocket notes, I-pass CD's and more books but I've found that the course, audio book and three books is all that I really use.

Also, when you move up to ACCA sign up to Opentuition which includes free online lectures and copious notes to print off. Also, ACCA has a huge resource library of old student accountant articles plus over ten years worth of past exam papers (although better to read old papers in the Kaplan and BPP exam prep texts as they update them to the latest standards which of course the ACCA don't as the papers on the ACCA website are exactly as they were sat in the actual exam.

Here's a link to the ACCA papers where you can download old exam papers to have a look at the standard of questions you will need to answer :

http://www2.accaglobal.com/students/acca/exams/f1/

Good idea to check out the Syllabus and study guides then look at the exams. (F1, F2 and F3 only come with pilot papers. All the rest contain the pilots plus real exams from each sitting).

Best to avoid old texts bought second hand as (a) they can be full of highlighting as to what others found important (but may not be to you) and (b) the ACCA keep changing the syllabus moving things between papers. I assume to make sure that we keep buying the books.

The exception to this rule would be is you could get your hands on BPP study texts for papers 1.1, 1.2 or 2.4 which are timeless classics from before BPP changed their study text format and the ACCA dumbed down the first three papers a little.

I don't think that claiming exemption from F1 is any biggy (it's management theory).

AAT level IV would also give you exemption from F2 and F3.

Exemptions with ACCA come in the form of guaranteed passes, you still have to pay for the exam that you get an exemption from (go figure!).

If you take the exemptions I would still at least buy and read the Kaplan study text for each... Actually might be worth doing that for your AAT studies as the AAT Kaplan texts are quite often simply cut down versions of the ACCA ones.

Missing F3 will make F7 slightly more difficult and missing F2 will make F5 and F9 more difficult. However, if you did the papers in sequence (you don't have to as detailed below) the time period between taking the papers may mean that it seems as though you are relearning from scratch anyway and as you've already suffered exams to the level of F2 and F3 with the AAT it may well be worth taking the exemptions and going straight in at the deep end with ACCA.

Paper F4 is a real baptism of fire. You need to be able to memorise about 150 peices of case law (which in the exams you need to quote applicable law for a scenario including the year) plus gain a thougher understanding of corporate Governance and all of the major laws and regulations related to accountancy.

You don't have to take the exams in sequence and as you will have come straight from AAT I would suggest taking either F7 and F8 (if you enjoyed financial accounting) in your first sitting or F5 and F9 (if management accounting was your bag) in your first sitting.

Be prepared for failures and assume, even with a 50% pass mark, that you will be retaking the papers at the next sitting until you get the results.

F6 (taxation) links to and fits nicely with F7 and F8 but could really do with a sitting all to itself.

F4 may be best left until last although this causes an issue. Studying F4 gets you away from the calculation side of study but you are going to need that when you move onto the P level papers... Although, P1 (links to paper F1 but you can't skip this one) is predominantly a waffly paper so if you take F4 last probably best to do that one first when you move up a gear.

Before signing up for ACCA though remember the restrictions that it's going to place on you.... That would be the cunningly hidden machine gun nest at the end of the trap door and mine strewn corridor!

HTH,

Shaun.

Hi Shaun

 

I studied the first 2 years of ACCA an Manchester Met, however have to say there wasnt anything that they taught which i didnt have to learn myself, basically the lectures were very basic and didnt cover the levelwe needed topass exams, so I completed the last part of part 2 and the part 3 exams by just buying the books, revision kits and looking at past papers which was the best prep for me. We all have different learning styles however i really did find learning on my own the best way for me and it is a good option if you candiscipline yourself with sticking to time you set aside for study and revision.

 

As Shaun mentioned keep in mind the restrictions, im really happy and proud ive completed the ACCA but do feel frustrated at the practising certificate guidelines, didntrealsie it would be this strict. Depend whether youw ant to go into practise or work for a company, in which case membership requirements arent a sstrict.

 

All the best