Any accountants or people studying accountancy about?

AAT may be the best one to start on with a view to continuing to ACCA / ACA (Certified / Chartered)?

I started straight to ACCA and it is a long slog but with all your qualifications, it sounds as though education is your thing so you should have no problems! From what I know of colleagues who have done AAT, it's more of a foundation than a 'professional qualification' although it is obviously recognised as an accounting qualification. But that's only as I understand it so someone who has more knowledge of AAT may be able to help.

With ACCA (and ACA), there are law modules and also non financial exams along the lines of IT and managing people - not sure what they're called anymore as the modules changed a couple of years ago. In total, it's 14 exams plus you need 3 years relevant experience and you need to achieve competences from a list which need to be signed off by *I think* someone who is supervising you and is qualified. But when the modules changed I didn't need to start the new 'route' so I don't know what the current requirements are. If you do AAT first you get exemptions from certain ACCA exams.

Hope that helps and good luck!

Hi

Well, broadly speaking;

CIMA is a management accountant qual. MAs tend to deal with finance at a more strategic level- budgeting, costings, analysis, decison making, projects.

ACCA is a financial qual. FAs are the people who will deal with your tax and produce financial statements (balance sheet, cashflow etc)

Of course there is a lot of crossover, and you can do one qual and work in the other field (although CIMA people would struggle with something like tax)

I study CIMA, so can only really comment on the ins and outs of that. I was open to doing either (company sponsered) but my boss did ask my to do CIMA on the basis if she had the choice she would employ CIMA. So I did.

There are 3 routes in really- start from the bottom (taking 5 basic finance papers- these would be at the level of a business degree difficulty wise) you can also get exempted from this level- via a suitable degree (which is what I did) or through AAT.

Unfortunatly I doubt your degree would gain you an exemption, despite the level you've studied too- all its really based on is whether you have studied the matreial held in these 5 basic papaers before.

However i would recommend if you do CIMA you take the 5 basic papers rather than AAT. I am a massive fan of AAT, its a great qualifiation, and the best basis for accounting knowldege. However, its a 3 year course- it will not qualify you in any way to practise accounting, but to be an accounting technican, which is not what you're looking for by the sounds of it.

The 5 basic papers you would've been exempted from can be done in quite a short space of time- you can sit them whenever you like- unlike the main exams for which there are only sittings twice a year- so really you could get through them in 6 months, then start on level 1 of CIMA (Managerial) there are 2 further levels- Strategic and Top CIMA.

Feel free to PM me if you would like any further info. I remember how hard it was to research when I started it!

Thanks for those, I'm out today but I'll catch up tonight, thanks again

Hi

I'm an ACA (Chartered Accountant), and qualified in 1999, so I know format of exams has changed, but I think requirements will be roughly the same.

I worked for a Big 4 accountancy firm straight from Uni (these include PriceWaterhouse Coopers; KPMG, Ernst & Young and Deloitte), and joined on a training contract, working in the audit department. This lasted 3 years, and the firm paid for all my exams and training courses, as well as time off to study, which is a great deal. As I say, the exam structure has changed since I qualified, so you can get current structure at the ICAEW. However, as a guide, my first year there were 6 exams, 2 of which were law (Company Law and Business Law), which would be exempt if you'd done a law degree. The other 4 subjects were Economics, Financial Accounting, Marketing (I think), and some kind of Business Accounting. It was the equivalent of taking 6 A Levels in 3 months.

My 2nd year had more Financial and Management Accounting, Tax, Audit, Ethics, and more of the same in the third year. Each year, the exams got harder as the subject matter became more detailed. Much of our exams were written rather than number-crunching (although obviously there was an element of that too). The training is to give you an excellent base in accounting, and the proof is that something like 60% of Managing Directors in top UK companies are ACAs.

Once qualified, I decided to move out of accountancy practice, and started working on accounts for companies. 10 years on, and I'm back in practice (albeit a much smaller one). IMO the qualification can take you anywhere - internationally as well as career-wise. I have a good friend in strategy at Yahoo (no numbers), another is trading, some went into training, forensic accounts, turnaround of comapnies in distress...I could go on. I wanted to get into the Media, and after qualification, I worked for a succession of UK TV and film companies, and achieved what I wanted before we started a family. Now, the qualification is flexible for me to be able to work part-time to fit around my family, which is perfect.

With your qualifications, I'd avoid AAT (this is usually done for people straight from school), and look further at CIMA, ACCA and ACA. ACCA and ACA will allow you to work in any sphere, CIMA may limit you to working in accounts in industry (but I have little experience of this, so I refer to comments above).

I would second Carrie's comments (am also ACA with a Big 4 background). With the qualifications you already have, ACA would look to be the most appropriate option for you. I am also not really a 'numbers' person either, and I found the first few exams quite challenging, but certainly back when I did it (a few years ago now), it got a lot less numbers-focused in the second and third years and more business/management oriented, which was much better. I heard someone describe the ACA qualification as being like a mini-MBA, which I think sums it up quite nicely.

I'm ACCA, so a bit biased towards that. I work in industry, and I am currently mentoring a staff member who is just starting out on ACCA studies. I'm pretty sure that with your qualifications you would cope fine with going straight into ACCA/CIMA/ACA level without doing AAT first.

You would probably get exemptions from a few of the earlier papers, although this is not necessarily a good thing - I was exempt from 4 as a result of my degree in business studies, but, to be honest, I hadn't covered some of the stuff taught in those subjects, so had to read up on them to catch up!

The main benefit of ACCA over CIMA is that your options are more open - I work in industry, but could switch to practice/audit if I preferred. ACCA and ACA cover all options, whereas CIMA is more limited to management accounting.

With regard to ACCA being more 'numbers based', I honestly think I wrote more essays/reports in my exams than I did numbers. It's definately a very wordy subject! Although, if numbers really aren't your bag, are you sure you want to do accountancy? Because pretty much everything I do comes back to numbers in the end, be it accounts, tax, business acquisitions etc.

I've done CIMA recently. I have done it through evening classes whilst working in accountancy during the day. Once you have passed all the exams (took me about 4 years although I could have done it quicker) you have to have your experience signed off to become chartered (minimum of 3 years, but has to cover the right areas) and if you don't do this within 10 years (or something) then you can't become chartered.

I did CIMA as I have no interest in doing auditing and think that CIMA is a very good strategic, business based qualification, although I'm not sure that there's that much difference between the qualifications - I think one of our lecturers said that their ACCA students would really struggle with the costing/ which product to make type decisions which CIMA students find routine, however, I know next to nothing about tax. I would go straight to CIMA/ACCA if I were you, rather than AAT as AAT takes 3 years and then you are only exempt from the 1st year of CIMA so I'm not sure it's worth it.

I am the opposite to you in that I love numbers and struggle with writing words, but found that at least half of the subject was wordy. We had papers in IT and personnel issues (eg motivation of employees, handling change, etc) as well as the management and financial accounting. If you're really not good at numbers though, I think it would be quite a struggle and as Elliejay said, I'm not sure how much you would enjoy the job at the end of it.

Well, I am CIMA qualified (in 1999 and I know the exams have changed since then) but I am one of the few CIMA members who have been in practice. I started in industry but felt I was lacking financial accounts experience so moved in to practice and enjoyed so I stayed! When I qualified I considered cross qualifying but by then I had enough of exams and didn't feel the need to do anymore. Personally, I don't feel I lack tax knowledge or experience because of doing CIMA rather than ACCA or ACA but then I did a lot in my job so was up to date because of that.

I think you need to consider what you want to do once you are an accountant and go from there. From my experience just because you initially go down one route it doesn't rule you out from others.

I would however suggest you consider CIMA or ACCA rather than ACA, for the key reason that to qualify as an ACA you require a training contract with a registered training practice, while with ACCA or CIMA there is no such requirement and you can put yourself through the exams if your job isn't strictly in that arena.