Evening all, just looking through the ACCA website at their quals. Is it possible to achieve the ACCA membership without supervision? I appreciate I'd need to pass all the exams but I think I'd struggle to find someone qualified to supervise my work or give me practical experience. Looks like we're talking a good few years to get through the exams so don't want to waste my time if I can't get the experience. Thanks guys.
There are two different levels of supervision. You have a Student Training Record (STR) in order to gain membership and Practice Certificate Training Record (PCTR) in order to be able to practice.
The student training record needs three years experience. but its not smply a matter of being involved in accountancy for three years. You need to get specific areas of competence signed off.
- The experience requirement is split over 9 areas of competence consisting of 68 possible elements.
- You must get at least 12 elements of competence, including 6 key elements of competence from at least 2 areas.
Each element of competance needs to be detailed in the training records and signed off by a suitably qualified supervisor. In this instance suitably qualified does not necessitate a practicing chartered or chartered certified accountant. I have heard of cases of ACCA STR's being signed off by AAT accountants, or line managers who have a recognised qualification. At this stage whilst the manager concerned would be investigated by the ACCA to ansure that they are legitimate they do not have to be an accoual accountant. All of my own STR was signed off in banking. Managed to get 38 elements of competence signed off.
Now, the STR is quite often confused with the PCTR by people just starting out on this path.
The PCTR is an accountant training to be let loose on the public and one needs at least 4620 hours signed off over at least three years (I managed 6872 as I had finished in 2 years but still needed another years experience to reach the three to gain my PCTR!).
With this one there are 67 elements of competence and you are trying for as many as possible as this will define the services that you will be allowed to offer to the public. You must however gan at least the five mandatory elements, 8 technical including six key from at least two areas. Plus 2 management elements including 1 key element... In reality you will really need to gain far more than the minimum to be accepted.
The PCTR can only be signed off by a qualified accountant Chartered or Chartered Certified who runs an ACCA accredited training practice. It's free for practices to join but they open themselves up to a whole additional level of professional level scrutiny.
Your training record is poured over by the ACCA and it takes a lot to get the practice certificate. It's not just a rubber stamping excercise.
So, there are three places that you can get to.
ACCA Associate - you pass all of the exams inside ten years but have not gained gthe experience requirment
ACCA Member - you pass all of the exams inside 10 years and you have three years experience signed off in your student training record
ACCA Member in practice - after membership you gain your PCTR whic will take at least three years
Nothing against AAT but it is much, much. much easier to get to a practice certificate than it is with the ACCA.
What I will say is that ACCA training is second to none and if you can get to associate level then other professional bodies can be very accomodating about allowing you to swap over in order to gain their practice certificates. It would however take you a long time of a lot oof hours per week to achieve. I worked it out that I could get through an exam doing around 30 hours a week study for 13 weeks.
The pass mark per exam is 50% but the exams are VERY time pressured often with no points for things like calculations and everything dependant upon analysis and reading the questions written between the lines o the exam paper.
One other nice thing about ACCA is that because it is so highly regarded you get a lot of credit towards an MSc. with UCL (one of the worlds top universities) so after qualifying you can also get a few more letters after your name (takes about a year of very intensive work to achieve).
It was a struggle to achieve but to my mind absolutely worth it and I would not change the path that I took.
HTH,
Shaun... FCCA MIP, MSc.
(that last bit in corporate basically says, go on then, argue with me if you dare, lol).
__________________
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.
From your previous posts I understand that you are QBE, working as a bookkeeper, doing self-assessments for a few sole trader clients and looking to go full time self employed in the future.
If you are looking to go self employed doing bookkeeping and self assessments then ACCA would be an unnecessarily high level qualification for this as would all of the chartered level qualifications. I would also say that ACCA is too high level a qualification for this.
If I have understood your career goals correctly, then I would suggest Institute of Certified Bookkeepers. Do their core qualification and the additional Diploma in Self Assessment Tax. There are no experience requirements to the qualification.
If you still aspire to higher level qualifications then you could consider:
Association of Accounting Technicians
Institute of Financial Accountants
If you still want to consider a chartered level qualification then Chartered Institute of Management Accountants could be an option. I understand that clients can sign off your experience, however, as with ACCA, experience must be gained over a defined period of time and covering specified areas of experience.
AAT and IFA also have experience requirements that need to be satisfied.
Thanks Shaun and David for the detailed replies, thanks so much for the advice and taking the time to reply. Certainly given me food for thought. Whilst I'd love to become chartered, the type of business I'd like to run is more smaller scale, ideally lots of small business owners helping with end of year accounts, tax returns and bookkeeping. The ICB sounds interesting and then perhaps moving on to AAT if thats possible.
Interestingly and rather spookily I've just had a speculative conversation with a local accountant who's looking for a part-time bookkeeper. Around 30 hours a week which would give me time to study. Possibility to move over to the accounts and tax side in future. No numbers mentioned yet so might be a no go if the income side doesnt work, but a possible route.
