Hi All,
I am part qualified with ACCA and in the process of taking my final exams. I was wondering if I am able to offer bookkeeping services to some friends who have start-up businesses??
I also work full time in Finance and Ii love what I do so was wondering if I could offer bookkeeping services, if so, to what limit? I am aware as part qualified I cannot offer tax advice etc.
I look forward to replies!
:)
yes but the services are severly restricted (refer to ACCA regulation 8).
You need to get MLR cover directly from HMRC as ACCA will not cover you until you have a practice certificate.
The only services that you can offer of bookkeeping to trial balance, VAT and Payroll.
As a student you cannot offer accounting services (i.e. accounts production), filing, tax work, etc.
Also, when advertising your services you cannot make any mention of any affiliation with the ACCA
Hope that helps and welcome to the forum,
kindest 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.
To confirm, you say I am able to offer bookkeeping (i.e. filing of paperwork and keeping accounting records electronically and manually), VAT and payroll services?
Just to let you know, the clients I have are very small business with 0 employees so I doubt I need to do payroll.
My actual plan is to assist friends with bookkeeping parts of their business through the year and let an accountant take over at year end. For example, I will use an accounting software to record business transactions and also keep manual records. Am Ii on the right track here??
yes, your description in the last paragraph is spot on.
you can do all of the bookkeeping to trial balance and then the accountant files the accounts and tax return at the year end.
Good luck with the studies Adeolu, it sounds as though you are nearly there.
Which options papers did you choose? (I did P5 and P7).
All the best,
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.
Hi Shaun,
Thanks for the support. My clients will actually be sole traders and I am aware they are not obliged to file accounts, they only need to do a self assessment twice a year?
Do I still need the HMRC insurance even though I'm not actually a company (just helping out friends)? Can I register his/her company with hmrc or does he/she have to do so?
I'm taking p1 and p2 at the moment. May take advanced tax and audit. Not sure the P number off the top of my head lol!
Cheers
You absolutely HAVE to register for MLR - its not just for companies, its for anyone doing bookkeeping/Accounting in any shape or form. Failure to do so will involve a fine and as Shaun often says - imprisonment!
You can register companies with HMRC for taxes but I suggest you do it whilst they are sitting alongside you until you know what kinds of information they are looking for as each tax asks for different things.
Your clients may not need to FILE accounts and may think they do not NEED accounts, but they should always be prepared. Sole traders often try to avoid this to keep their costs down but then there is usually a major panic to get the last three years accounts done for when they need a loan or a mortgage, so its best practice to complete them. Besides part of the prep work for doing them is 'included' in the tax return is it not eg depreciation etc. Now being an ACCA PQ, even after passing all the exams until you have the practice cert you CANNOT provide anything past trial balance ie no final accounts, not even for sole traders (even friends). Thats my understanding of Reg 8 - Shaun will confirm Im sure.
Self assessment is currently only once per year (are you thinking of the payments being twice), although there is all the change afoot for monthly reporting.
Dont forget PII cover.
__________________
Joanne
Winner of Bookkeeper of the Year 2015, 2016 & 2017
Thoughts are my own/not to be regarded as official advice,which should be sought from a suitably qualified Accountant.
You should check out answers with reference to the legal position
I'm afraid that its a little more draconian even than suggested by Joanne above.
As she states, registering for MLR with HMRC is not optional. If you do not then it carries a two year jail sentence and unlimited fine. Plus of course once you have a criminal record from not having MLR then you cannot be with the ACCA so just to emphasise how critical that one is.
For the self employed whilst you may not have to file accounts you still have to produce them in order to fill out the self assessment return.
Joannes mortgage example is good and emphasises how a third party finance provider would depend upon your work in making a decision.
And then there's another issue.
Again to expand upon Joannes response ACCA rules are very strict. Nothing beyond trial balance.
Self assessment (that is not you own self assessment) is filing a tax return so is beyond trial balance and is not permitted under regulation 8.
Really sorry, it actually surprises quite a few people that all ACCA PQ's are, unless under direct supervision in practice, bookkeepers but people on the lower qualifications who claim to be bookkeepers are actually offering accountancy services.
Its a crazy world to be sure but I hope that you appreciate why the ACCA need to do that in order to protect their brand from being cheapened.
Tax and Audit would be P6 and P7 respectively. P7 is more about greater in depth knowledge of P2 than audit procedures. I needed P5 for my work in corporate and I studied P6 but tax worries me in that when you are taking it in an exam scenario if you fail a paper under one finance act you need to unlearn what you know to take the paper at the next sitting under a different finance act.
Whilst I know that all of us do that for our work, knowing the breadth of the P6 syllabus kowing that you will not in an exam have time to refer to the tax tables put me off that one which is why I went P7 which I'll be honest, I absolutely loved espechially questions around ethics and reading between the lines to determine the motivation behind managements dubious decisions (generally to take share price up in order to divest their shares).
At this level I'm sure that you are already finding that things have moved up several gears from degree level study to masters level. Those last options papers have really low pass rates (28% in one of them this time) as the time pressure to get your knowledge down on paper is ridiculously short (in the real world you would spend more than three hours thinking about any one of those questions let alone needing to answer four of them!). And as mentioned above there will be as much to bring up implied between the lines of the scenario whan is actually written.
You are working full time and you are about to enter the real nightmare exams which truly differentiate ACCA people (I would say start with P2. P1 really eases you into the higher papers). Is this really the right time to be thinking of starting a bookkeeping business in your spare time when pretty much all of your spare time will be taken up with study and doing past paper after past paper to try and get faster and faster.
You will find that for the last month before these exams you will be doing a past paper a day followed by further study in areas of weakness identified during the exam.
Trust me, helping your friends may seem like a good idea now but I suspect that it will be taking on too much.
Hope that this reply comes accross constructive as intended rather than negative.
kindest 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.
Looking at the latest issue of PQ magazine - ACCA does seem to have quite low pass rates - and many never passing. It must be like the accounting version of those extreme Japanese quiz shows !!
Do you think students are looking at other bodies to study under now ?
1) I doubt I'll start my own bookkeeping business officially, its more like helping my friends do their bookkeeping then advising them to get an accountant to do their tax returns annually. I will defo get the necessary insurances as I cannot risk my career! I plan on doing this free for friends/family to get experience, 1 or 2 sole traders so I doubt it'll take up much time??? Although I am doing it for free and doing only to trial balance, do I need to register myself as a sole trader with HMRC?
2) With reference to the ACCA exams, this does require plenty studying, I have a very busy lifestyle ahah as I also play football twice a week. So my schedule will be full time work 9-5 mon-fri, study in the evenings, do some bookkeeping work every weekend, football on a weekday evening and a Saturday. Sunday is REST DAY! So I guess I have no social life, which I am not fussed about. I plan to ,once qualified, have my own accounting practice, so helping friends with bookkeeping stuff now will prepare me for that, right?
Looking at the latest issue of PQ magazine - ACCA does seem to have quite low pass rates - and many never passing. It must be like the accounting version of those extreme Japanese quiz shows !!
Do you think students are looking at other bodies to study under now ?
Hi Trevor,
its the way that its always been following the old addage that anything thats easy to get isn't worth having.
think that I've said it before on this site that paper by paper people fall by the wayside.
For my first paper (1.1 which is now F3) the ACCA hired two huge exam halls in Birmingham alone to sit that paper. Each hall capable of holding a thousand plus people. Each exam following that the number of sitters fell whilst the cars in the centre car park improved.
By the final papers just one hall runs several papers and paper variants at the same time and of those, as you've seen some papers results are as low as 28% getting through them (that would be P5, advanced performance management, really proud of the fact that P5 is one of the options that I took as I think that failure rate works to the benefit of those who take that one).
I do wonder in percentage terms what percentage of those who start along this path actually get all the way to letters. I suspect that it's quite small.
Certainly in my case there was quite a large group of us and I was the only one to even make to to the professional level papers... Again, think that we've discussed that one over the mistake that people make in taking offered exemptions. With ACCA I think far better to take the lower level ACCA exams even if you don't have to.
The closest that I ever got to quiting was at P7 (advanced Audit) when I filled the exam script book plus two additional books and then failed with 49%.... That was also the only time that I paid to have my script reviewed (they just recount their ticks, they don't remark the paper).
I joined the IFA but when it came to it I couldn't leave the ACCA as you have the realisation that you are giving up something that you have sweated blood for and accepting anything else, no matter how good the other qualification might be, you are only there because you failed.
Anyway, I persisted, I dropped IFA, I got my ACCA letters and am now into my second of three years practice certificate supervision with a chartered practice (which was a direct result of my posting answers on here... Accountants do read this site).
Alls well that ends well it seems
All the best,
Shaun.
p.s. the other bodies to study under would be ICAEW (or regional variants) or CIMA. To become Chartered you really need to have supervision in place before you start your studies which is no good at all for career changers who would not get a foot in the door. And CIMA is geared more towards the management accounting side than the ACCA's spread accross both branches of accounting with a strong emphasis on the fiancial acconting side.
I like the ACCA mantra that they are lookng for the very best to pull into the profession no matter what your background. There is no requirement for ACCA people to come to the table with a degree (you can pick one of those up during the qualification if you want it), rather they are looking for people with the right aptitude no matter what your education or social background in order to make a profession that is hypathetically open to all.
But, of course, if you have a profession open to all you need to make sure that its members are respected and they do that by complex time pressured exams, demanding pre and post qualification experience reqirements and ensuring that members have a strong ethical code.
__________________
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.
If you want the best - you have to put them through the ringer! Then put them through it again! And again! And again! Those that make it clearly want it enough and clearly deserve it. Aim high is what I say. Not everyone can make it to the top of their profession but just aim to be the best you can be.
Mind you - ACCA or not..... in this business, I had to laugh at Adeolu's comment about a rest day! Whats one of those then?
__________________
Joanne
Winner of Bookkeeper of the Year 2015, 2016 & 2017
Thoughts are my own/not to be regarded as official advice,which should be sought from a suitably qualified Accountant.
You should check out answers with reference to the legal position
