And one has to wonder the reasoning behind posting this thread which seems to serve no other purpose than to concurr with the ICBs dodgy statistics.
Dave, I like you as an individual mate but for christ sake, stop with blowing smoke up the ICBs arse.
If they are genuinely a practicing accountant why would they want to pass ICB exams? They can just be a bookkeeper if thats all that they want to do.
Any PII company would be happy to cover them.
No need for a professional body for bookkeeping.
MLR direct from HMRC.
IAB / IFA more than happy to welcome them to most of their networking events.
I can understand student accountants or retired accountant wanting to join, As a student I did it myself for a while (and scored 99% in that paper only using BPP ACCA materials (the 2002 edition of the paper 1.1. study text)).
But a qualified practicing accountant... Really?
-- Edited by Shamus on Friday 18th of October 2013 02:02:16 PM
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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.
many arguments about going from Bookkeeping to Accountancy but what about the other way around? We have just had a qualified practising Accountant fail our level 1 Basic Bookkeeping mock exam with a mark of 69%? Go figure or not as it seems
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.
Accountants have to know debits and credits (Which is mainly what level 1 is) to be able to complete an ETB so I'm not quite sure how it's possible to fail!
Shaun, you yourself appear (to me at least) to be negative towards the ICB at any occasion. Maybe it isn't intended - but that's the way it comes across to me. For many weeks I've thought of posting this but this latest jibe has prompted me.
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Don't have proof of body not something a student has to prove we just have to take the word of someone, but the person failed on multi choice questions, I will be back with more details. I have heard a lot of times about accountants failing the ICB level 1 exam but we have never had an accountant fail one of our mocks before.
And one has to wonder the reasoning behind posting this thread which seems to serve no other purpose than to concurr with the ICBs dodgy statistics.
Dave, I like you as an individual mate but for christ sake, stop with blowing smoke up the ICBs arse.
If they are genuinely a practicing accountant why would they want to pass ICB exams? They can just be a bookkeeper if thats all that they want to do.
Any PII company would be happy to cover them.
No need for a professional body for bookkeeping.
MLR direct from HMRC.
IAB / IFA more than happy to welcome them to most of their networking events.
I can understand student accountants or retired accountant wanting to join, As a student I did it myself for a while (and scored 99% in that paper only using BPP ACCA materials (the 2002 edition of the paper 1.1. study text)).
But a qualified practicing accountant... Really?
-- Edited by Shamus on Friday 18th of October 2013 02:02:16 PM
Shaun was there any need for that? Like me or not like me is beside the point, fact is my friend I have made a post about an alleged accountant failing our mock exam nothing to do with smoke up the ICB's arse as you put it, how dare you Shaun, are your opinions so bigoted that you just cannot imagine that an accountant can fail a basic bookkeeping exam regardless of body?
Shaun, you yourself appear (to me at least) to be negative towards the ICB at any occasion. Maybe it isn't intended - but that's the way it comes across to me. For many weeks I've thought of posting this but this latest jibe has prompted me.
Fair enough.
Personally I think that I have been quite fair with the ICB and have debated respectfully with James and thanked him when he has explained matters in more detail such as the exemptions the other day.
If the ICB stops throwing mud at accountants and other professional bodies and concentrates on trying to prove that they are better rather than everyone else is worse then maybe they will get less flack.
Oh, almost forgot.
just friendly banter!
(apparently if you add that to a post anything that you say before it is ok)
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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 have proof of body not something a student has to prove we just have to take the word of someone, but the person failed on multi choice questions, I will be back with more details. I have heard a lot of times about accountants failing the ICB level 1 exam but we have never had an accountant fail one of our mocks before.
The ICB make me annoyed with the statistics where in this business we all know that we can do anything that we like with statistics.
One persons "Our product is killing people" is another persons "We are now receiving less complaints".
This thread where you now admit that this is the first time you have come accross someone who claims to be an accountant failing (and you are one of the largest training providers) in its original statement form can only serve to strengthen the ICBs very weak position over their statistics which quite frankly I do not for one minute believe... I don't think htat they have lied but I do not think that the statistics are what they seem.
This subject lights my blue touch paper. From previous arguments on here you must have known that.
I'm absolutely furious about the continued suggestion that accountants do not understand bookkeeping and as such I'm now going out for a while.
Everyone feel free to debate this matter in the relative safety of my absence.
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 more shocked that people think everyone who is an accountant is good at what they do. They're only human and come good and bad, just like doctors, plumbers, dentists, builders, councillors and any other occupation you can think of.
Sorry Dave, I think it's a bit of a non story. Someone got something wrong. Wow!
I do agree with Kris, one person getting something wrong is not really a damning verdict on which ever professional body they belong to. Likewise, I am sure you have had an ICB student who made a real pigs ear of the double entry on a Level 3 manual exam. Does this mean that ICB students don't know double entry? Obviously not.
But I don't think anyone (ICB included) can generalise and say accountants can not do bookkeeping. It is, generally, a wrong statement and to be fair fairly offensive to the likes of me who have started right at the bottom with double entry with the AAT.
I have even had Gary Carter suggest that I initially didn't know double entry as the AAT is an accounting qualification and not a bookkeeping one, which as you can imagine was slightly annoying.
Nick
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Nick
Nick Craggs FMAAT ACA AAT Distance Learning Manager
Wow where did this all come from? I can understand Dave's surprise that a practising accountant would fail the bookkeeping exam, no matter who that exam was governed by, or which body they were affiliated with... but I did not read anything into the OP being about the governing bodies, just simple surprise that an accountant wouldn't pass bookkeeping. It isn't what I would've expected, to be fair.
I can only assume that the accountant has been practising under someone else's certificate, and is now looking to branch out on their own and so are working their way through the ICB route to get the accounts and tax qualification. I assume this cant be done without going through the bookkeeping first? I know accountants that were formally ICAEW but allowed their membership to lapse, whilst they worked in Chartered Practices. They took the ICB exams in order to go it alone, as they couldn't achieve it with the ICAEW. I don't understand the the specifics of it, but I have seen discussions on here where ACCA members seem to be struggling too?
Perhaps they havent had to dealt with the intricacies of bookkeeping for a long time, or have been taught badly and were unaware that they were doing anything wrong? Still seems a bit weird, will be interesting to see the details of the failures, Dave.
Hi Kris,
Oh how I remember quietly reading your posts smiling and then it all went quiet! Smiling again now. I'm in that happy medium of being neither a qualified accountant or a qualified bookkeeper so I won't be taking the exam!
I guess there are scenarios where someone can pass their ACCA for example whilst having a very specific role that doesn't involve much accounts prep and therefore their bookkeeping skills are limited.
I would be interested to know which questions they got wrong. Multiple choice exams can trip people up sometimes.
Unfortunately some Bookkeepers/Accountants are only taught the computerised way to do bookkeeping, really they should go back to basics and be taught the manual way.
I have met people who say to me 'I have been on a bookkeeping course at college and I am doing my accounts on Sage' well that always rings alarm bells with me as 9 times out of 10 they have no idea what they are doing and when you talk to them about journals etc they don't know what you are talking about! Ask them what the P & L is and they don't know.
I am by no means an accountant and never sell myself as one, but this year I came across an accountant (Chartered), who was so CRAP it was untrue, I was utterly shocked by the mess and basic errors and I didn't even look at the accounting errors. And this person runs a large practice, probably not successful now as they are so bad. The problem with this is although he is qualified (so his website says), the clients are none the wiser whether he is any good or not, they just go with the flow. At least if you have a bad plumber you will probably realise when the toilet is flooding everywhere, or the boiler isn't working after a service.
I would expect the majority of Accountants to be able to do double entry bookkeeping, but I suppose you never know these days!
This is just my take on past experience and I am by no means saying accountants and bookkeepers are rubbish.
Just noticed an earlier comment and would like to state that neither the ICB nor any of its staff have been involved in people being banned from this forum.
James, I never said you did, directly. I did pass some comments about ICB, there were some back room dealings and I was shown the exit very soon thereafter. I was just warning Shaun to take care not to befall as similar fate.
If it is someone who trained with say a big 4 firm then I wouldnt be surprised they dont know the details of bookkeeping as their training tends to be on big company audits rather than preparing accounts from a carrier bag that happens in smaller firms.
If they are practicing they may have staff doing the number crunching and just do the higher end level work.
When I was in my first month of training back in the day I recall my senior who was a "qualified ICAEW accountant" not being able to help me reverse an accrual.
Haunts me to this day that they could pass chartered accountants exams but not understand this basic concept of double entry..
Also recall speaking to a top 4 accountant for some handover info who could not understand year end adjustments hitting reserves " we only do balance sheet adjustments" so could not explain the £200k+ P&L adjustment that hit reserves... that was a long day.. haha
This though is very rare and it has to be said that I do see more problems the other way round where some bookkeepers try to do too much..
Feel very satisfied that I learned from the very bottom, did AAT then did ACCA
Feels like ages since I was last on here, been very busy with new developments which is exciting..
Also In that time my team sorted the Villans out -sorry Dave & co, there seems to be a good number of Villa Fans here...!
Cheers
Jeremy
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This post was not meant to cause a stir and I certainly don't think that the reaction I received from a certain person was justified, I merely shared with the forum about a student of ours who failed our mock exam. I don't know if the post was reported to my boss but needless to say it got me in hot water and rightly so, as far as I am concerned the matter is closed and my posts on this forum will now be few and far between, just a few promotions a bit of Friday fun and of course the fantasy football. Impulsive and at times short tempered is not the best way to conduct oneself on a forum especially when you represent the company you work for.
As for Everton, I went to the game and it was the best I have seen Villa play at home this year, especially the first half, it was good to see Gareth Barry be applauded by the Villa fans and he repaid us by getting the assist for the second goal. Villa have one world class player the others just don't cut it or work hard enough, if Villa lose Benteke then the Championship will soon be calling.
Your season on the Fantasy league is not going as well as last year and with so many of us having the same players going to be harder than ever to catch up this year.
