I am new here and just after some advice really. I graduated last yr with ACCA accredited degree in Acct & Finance and am wanting to finiah my studies but not sure whether to finish ACCA or do CIMA?
I am exempt from the 9 P levels of ACCA but only the 3 lowest CIMA exams. On this basis it would make sense to continue ACCA as it would be quicker (and cheaper!) BUT I am not employed in practice but in industry so would I struggle to gain the competencys required for ACCA? I am a FInancial Controller for a SME dealing with all aspects of the accounts including Year end / FA register etc. I also have previous experience in accts in the public sector can I use this previous experience?
My employer has no preference and I would probably be self funding my study so its entirely up to me which route I choose, I just wondered if anyone could offer any advice?
Looks like you would be okay gaining the experience requirement if you can get someone to sign it off. Note that's the experience requirement for ACCA membership, not the one required for practising certificate. If you're aiming for that, good luck getting the required experience....
If you are self funding, in your case, I would seriously consider ACCA over CIMA given the exemptions you have.
as KTC states, definitely sounds as though ACCA is the way to go.
If you've note signed up for it yet, sign up for PQ magazine. It's free and delivered monthly.
Go through a few back issues and check out the complaints pages espechially as that gives a bit of insoght into how the various bodies treat their students.
As an example, when the Aston Villa leisure centre was closed down as an exam centre the ACCA went out of their way to ensure that every student was informed of the last minute change and on the day there were ACCA representatives at the centre to give guidance to anyone turning up who might have not received their updated information.
Conversely, with CIMA who also used the same centre, for many people the first that they knew about the change was turning up on the day at the old centre to find locked doors and nobody around.
That said, the ACCA exams at the P level are hard (you've made a mistake in your post, the exams that you have exemptions from are those at the foundation and skills levels (basically F1 to F9). You need to take the core (P1 to P3) and two from four of P4 to P7.
I come from a background in banking and an accountancy qualification is really useful in that environment. Like yourself there was no real preference between ACCA and CIMA as they were regarded as equivalents.... But... The ACCA qualification was always deemed much more complex and demanding than CIMA so people would take the CIMA qualification then on passing transfer directly to ACCA membership.
Since CIMA left the CCAB party to join up with the Americans last year ACCA now only gives exemption to people who have passed CIMA for the first three fundamentals level papers which is like the ACCA turning around and saying that there is no difference between CIMA and AAT or IAB which earn similar exemptions (ICB don't get any exemptions but that's a whole other topic). (Have a read of the Battlelines are drawn article in the December issue of PQ magazine).
I think the ACCA stance is more down to politics than the reality of the scenario but it's something to bear in mind that the CIMA to ACCA route has been closed as has the ACCA to ICAEW route.
One last point worth mentioning, if anyone says to you that ACCA is for financial accountants and CIMA is for management accountants tell them to go look at the syllabus. Everything in the CIMA syllabus is included in the ACCA one een though ACCA has much more emphasis on financial accountancy than CIMA.
All in all the ACCA qualification is to my mind second to non but be prepared for a bit of a system shock espechially when studying paper P2.
The P level papers are at Msc. level and paper P2 (commonly referred to as the beast) is officialy the most difficult paper of any professional accountancy body in Europe.
The people who get this far are very clever people and even though 50% is a pass take a look at the ACCA pass rates... Trust me, this is going to be really, really hard work and when you come out the other side with a pass you will really feel that you have earn't something special as an awful lot of students drop by the wayside at this level.
As such. even though you can get exemptions it might still be worth taking at least F7 and F8 to prepare you for the P level papers.
As you work in industry I imagine that you'll be looking to take P4 and P5 as options rather than P6 and P7. Try to take P1, P3, P4 and P5 all together as they are all very much complimentary.
Don't try to do P2 in the same sitting as anything but P7 (if you decide to take P7 as an option).
I also self study and would advise you from the start to always use Kaplan rather than BPP study texts. They can be harder to find but it's worth hunting them down as they explain things with a lot more examples than BPP which, it's been said on the site before, seems to assume that you are using the study text in a classroom envirronment.
It is however worth buying the exam kits of both BPP and Kaplan even though they quite often cover the same old exam papers (but in different ways).
Good luck with whatever route you take and welcome to the forum,
kind regards,
Shaun.
__________________
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.
