Hi Rafal,

I did ACCA from the books.

You need to be very disciplined and aim for a minimum of three months hard study per paper and ensure that you sit a mocjk exam under exam conditions as ACCA is as much about time management as it is about knowing the material.

Also don't forget that you have the free open tuition lectures and lecture notes available to you. (see here : opentuition.com/)

I prefer Kaplan study texts to BPP due to the study/try/repeat with more complexity approach which really drives home the material.

There are three levels of fee for the exams dependant upon how early you are paying for them.

At the fundamentals knwledge level the fee's are currently :

If paid before September the 8th £69 for F1

If paid between September the 8th and October the 8th £74 for F1

If paid after the 8th of October £225 for paper F1.

For Skills level papers those rates go up to £87/£93/£225

For professional level paper the rates are £100/£108/£259

To drive studies I usually have an Excel spreadsheet as a day planner with notes about everything that I need to cover by when.

For the next 5-10 years this page will be the most important one on the ACCA site for you. Not in itself but as a link to all of the study materials that you need including many past papers to work through.

www.accaglobal.com/gb/en/student/acca-qual-student-journey/qual-resource/acca-qualification.html

Always buy your materials from Amazon as they work out cheaper than direct from Kaplan.

get in a stock of index cards where you can write a short question on one side and the answer on the other. for example (very simple example related to F1) on one side write "Motivational Theory" and on the other "Herzberg". Cards like that can be questions from either side.

Good luck in your studies and feel free to post any questions that you have on here where I or one of the other contributors will always be glad to help out when we can.

kindest regards,

Shaun.

p.s. when you start watching the Opentuition lectures whenever you take a subject run by Mike Little the guy is an absolutely amazing lecturer who really brings the subject matter to life with his occassional anecdotes.

Hi Rafal,

libraries are not a great source for ACCA study texts, but... take this advice with a health warning... some subjects change little between sittings and older study texts are still valid (and much cheaper through Amazon resellers... sometimes as little as 1p plus £2.80 delivery).

Management accounting, law, professionalism, business analysis, performance management, etc. you can get away with that.

Financial reporting papers and audit you may get away with being a year or so out.

Tax (F6 and P6) has to be this years books.

The difficulty question can in itself be misleading.

Papers F1, F2 and F3 (the knowledge level) is out of step with the rest of the qualification. They are papers set at around AAT level to gently ease people into ACCA. Most people that I know that dropped ACCA dropped the qualification when they got to F4 and realised what it really entails.

That said, F1 to F3 give you the foundations upon which to build your further studies. They are just not a good basis for making a judgement call as to th complexity of the qualification and by the time you reach the complexity you will have already invested a great deal of time and money in getting to that stage.

If you decided to do AAT before ACCA the qualification would give you exemption from the knowledge level papers so you would start at F4. Now, thats going to take longer, be more expensive and not prepare you for the way that ACCA phrases questions.

Personally even though I had exemptions from the first three I still took them anyway just to get used to the ACCA way of asking questions.

But, in direct answer to your question. Yes, Kaplan also do AAT study texts which are often cut down versions of the ACCA study texts.

Overall, if your intention is ACCA then study ACCA and drop the idea of AAT. If your intention is to get a good quality qualification but you fear that ACCA may be too much for you to handle then AAT is a sound qualification in its own right and at MAAT you are an accountant.

Don't take on more than you feel that you can commit yourself to. Each ACCA paper will take at least three months at 6 hours per day, six days per week (always factor in some recreation time).

For AAT you will need a training provider for certain modules. It is not like ACCA where one does not need a training provider at all.

HTH,

kind regards,

Shaun.

Member of the Association of Accounting Technicians.

Although you are an accountant at that level such is not the same as being CIMA, ACCA or ACA (ICAEW/ICAS/ICAI). Think of it more as entry level into the profession with plenty of scope to advance your skillset.

That said, if your target market is the bookkeeping and accounts of SME businesses then such may be all that you actually need.

Think of it as a tree.

the lowest branches would be ICB and IAB.

The next level up AAT, IFA and AIA (some would put AAT slightly lower than the other two but I see them as equivalents)

Above that ACCA, CIMA and CIPFA

And top of the tree ACA.

There are other qualifications including several tax specific ones but the above gives a general structure.

Some loan providers and government bodies do not recognise anyone below ACCA/CIMA as being an accountant but for the purposes of servicing clients the distance between levels of the tree are a lot less clear cut with even many bookkeepers acting as accountants (going beyond trial balance).

With AAT it does exist as more of a link qualification in that those with the bookkeeping qualifications regarding it as an accountancy qualification and those with accountancy qualifications regarding it as advanced bookkeeping.

The truth is that its just a good all round entry level accountancy qualification which has been the foundation stone of many who have gone o to achieve higher qualifications.

kind regards,

Shaun.

Great answer Shaun,

Where would you plonk ATT and CIOT on your arboreal metaphor?

Cheers charlie

rafapak wrote:

---

thanks for explanation

by the way, why is this necessary to have a tutor when you do AAT?

---

Hi,

I think that you will find this thread useful especially Nicks comments about external marking :

http://www.book-keepers.org.uk/t53418546/distance-learning-aat/

Seems that you don't have to do the entire module through the training provider but you still need to find a training provider to have your work marked.

HTH,

Shaun.

 

 

 

 

Pah! how can ACA be at the top of the tree when you are allowed to take books into the exams?

Real accountants don't need books in the exams do they Nick?

And you Sir, are entitled to your opinion and apparently to also bring your books into an exam.

How 'Spot the Dog' and 'Fungus the Bogeyman' help, is beyond me.

You mean like, take Tax instead of Auditing or Credit Management?

Surely Sir, you would never have thought of doing this for yourself.

under a book?

He's run away

To be fair to Nick, i started it.

I think Nick would let me win today, do you think i'd try it any other day?

Ah, the Kaplan P6 study text.

I didn't even do tax as an option but I still buy that one every year as its a really, really good text.

Its now up to 1164 pages excluding the 40 page intro and 8 page index.

As I've always said, if you've absolutely, positively got to beat someone to death with a book, accept no substitute.

Anyway, don't look at it so much as ganging up as a couple of freinds just helping you towards an epiphany Nick :)