I have been looking for some bookkeeping certification and came across your website. As it happens I live in the USA and I do realize that there are a couple of groups in the USA that have certification - but I actually like the way the ICB in the UK is structured better. If I were to take a course from one of the ICB training providers and complete it satisfactorily, do any of you know: would there be any problem with either my taking the ICB exams or becoming a member of ICB? (I do realize there would be differences between the U.S. and UK bookkeeping standards.)
I should note that I would not mind having a "global" qualification in case I should ever relocate.
bookkeeping in fundamental form is the same no matter where in the world that it is taught.
Cracks start to appear in bookkeeping where on your side of the pond you have sales tax and on ours VAT both with their own peculiararities and complexities.
So, at base level the issues are with tax rather than reporting standards. You will find as a rule that much more is allowable for tax purposes stateside than over here and for matters such as tax you should only consider learning local variants as ours would be of no use to you at all.
That said, I'm pretty sure that the ICB qualification stays pretty clear of tax as thats a complex and constantly changing area where bookkeeping (like management accounting) hasn't changed that much in the last century.
The reporting standards that you refer to would be financial reporting standards. There is much commonality between yours and ours but that masks the fact that yours are currently rules based where ours are principles based.
I know that there is a big fight on at the moment to get the USA to move to international standards but I think that there are too many powerful companies with vested interests in home grown loopholes which are inherent of rules based systems to see that happening any time soon (think that it will take a second Enron to really make congress sit up and move to IFRS).
And there lies the problem with your plan.
At base level ICB is global but from levels III up it needs to be local.
I don't know if the ICB intends to go stateside but if they do they will need a local variant of the qualification and that itself poses other problems in that we have had people on here before where they thought that the qualification was global but the branches of the qualification in different countries may still require one to take the local variant of the qualification.
Kudos to ICB for that as thats a good thing in that it ensures that a person holding a qualification is able to do what their letters suggest.
As for the reasons for looking for a global qualification in the UK the ICB is predominantly for self employment.
They are doing a lot of work to try and get their brand recognised with businesses although new qualifications trying to make headway into established markets is always going to be an uphill struggle.
To see what the market actually wants now I generally advise people to do a search of the Reed website (www.reed.co.uk) using the qualification as search criteria and see what comes back. Reed are one of the largest players in the recruitment market at this level in the UK.
Other genuinely global brands that may be of interest to you would be IAB, AIA, ACCA and CIMA.
IAB and AIA seem to be have a foothold in Asia.
ICB seems to be making headway into Eastern Europe and Australia.
ICB South Africa is a bit of a strange case as its actually part of the IAB, not the ICB.
ACCA is genuinely global with reciprocal qualification agreements with the USA
CIMA is similar.
AIA, ACCA and CIMA are accountancy rather than bookkeeping qualifications.
I'm pretty sure that the ICB will be looking at expanding stateside as its a huge market. The downside is that its a market that needs a lot of capital to get into and slow takeup in a market of that size could kill the brand.
Even a major organisation with the might of the ACCA only ventured into that market in a mutual recognition partnership with the IMA
Then again, nothing ventured nothing gained.
Sure that James will be on here imminently to relay any long term aspirations that the ICB may have stateside and perhaps with his industry knowledge offer some advice as to the best option for you for now.
kind regards,
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.
A short answer to your question would be that the ICB would be delighted to have you studying their qualification and would certainly accept you as a Member. The structure of their exams means that there would be no issues with you completing all exams from the States and, as Shaun has indicated, the majority of bookkeeping principles are universal, although some terminology does differ.
and thank you for such a helpful answer! I appreciate it very much. I dare say you are 100% right about what you wrote. The U.S. is indeed rules based rather than principles based, and also tax is the main issue as I see it as far as the practical differences.
For me there is one reason ICB may be practical for me, despite the differences in U.S. and UK accounting/bookkeeping: my particular "niche" in bookkeeping is in non-profit organizations. By that I mean specifically churches - and hence tax is not quite as big a concern since we here do not file income tax returns for churches. (I actually would not mind knowing how this is treated in the UK.) We DO deal with payroll tax issues some, but not specifically income tax issues for the most part for churches themselves.
I appreciate the breakdown of the other qualifications as well. In fact I may have follow-up questions about IFA as I had not heard of them until recently. And AIA is a new one to me, so I will check them out.
Thank you for your answer also...I appreciate that clarification. I will be considering ICB but apparently there are a couple of other organizations I need to check out too!
The main bookkeeping bodies in the USA are AIPB and NACPB, both of which offer some form of certification. NACPB is currently undergoing something of a revision of how they administer tests and have come out with at least one new certification. They had included tax as one of their tests, unlike AIPB, but I do not know for certain where tax will wind up now.
Actually USA is quite different, the terminology is different which probably causes the biggest problem. As Shaun mentions the tax is different, probably more complicated because it actually varies between states, state tax, federal tax, all on different things at different amounts.
The ICB has no problem with you studying its UK structure (or any of its other structures) and does have test centres all over the USA.
ICB has members in USA but only around 100 and they tend to be working for the US branch of UK companies and so use UK GAAP anyway.
The US bookkeeping body is the American Institute of Professional Bookkeepers, I do not know much about them, they seem to register anyone with money back guarantee from $30 per year (£18.50). They have 41 people in their directory (oddly you have to be registered to view it, but you can view jobs without being a member).
So yes you could study with ICB UK if you like, but it probably wont be much help in the US. It might actually be better to study with ICB Australia as their Sales Tax is similar, and I believe they also have state taxes.
Hope this helps :)
p.s ICB South Africa is not part of IAB anymore, or IFA, however I believe IAB still give South African students full membership.
Thank you for your kind reply as well. I will certainly consider your advice and will also investigate what ICB Australia has to offer. It does appear to me that AIPB in the USA might be a good option if I can find a satisfactory training provider (and I have located a couple of them) that could give some refresher training before taking the AIPB Certified Bookkeeper exam. But I have also seen some quite interesting training courses from UK providers for ICB so I'll think about those too.
