Accountancy jobs - what's yours?

suited-aces

Still a final year student,but have got an offer to work as a government auditor from September. Qualifying through cipfa.

katebl

Thanks everyone, this has given me loads of food for thought!

boopopps

Looks like I am an odd one out, I'm a CIMA gal! My choice being that I think it offers a broader range of options work wise, it allows you to branch into other areas of management as well as accountancy. Also, where I live most employers request CIMA over ACCA, I think due to the industries in the area (mainly manufacturing). I am not looking to travel far to work so wanted to please the majority.

I started out as a sales ledger clerk and my employer saw potential in me to go further so offered to sponser me to study AAT. They paid for all the course but I had to do it in my own time. I loved it. It is a lot more hands on qualification and tends to concentrate on manual accounting more than the systems aspect. This is a real good grounding that will help you when you go on to study ACCA or CIMA. There is a huge amount of written work as well as number crunching, I found that my English degree proved real useful with this aspect.

After completing my AAT I had a real thirst to progress and take my financial career further, so I got a job as an Assistant Management Accountant, taking responsibility for producing the accounts for a number of sites within the business. I got support to study CIMA with Kaplan. I chose to sit 3 papers in the first sitting which meant I spent all weekend every weekend in college, as well as working full-time. It was so tiring but well worth it when I passed all three first time. I sat the next three managerial papers again in one sitting and was lucky enought to succeed. I then took the strategic level which requires you sit all three at the same time, again I succeeded. Finally I took the TOPCIMA exam and passrd first time. I have been lucky enough to complete the qualification in 18mth, 4 sittings but it was hard work. Its worth putting in the effort, at the end of it all theres a real sense of achievement.

After passing I moved on and had my first Management Accountant role, which then progressed to Assistant Financial Controller.

I have contemplated now trying out the ACCA qualification as well, just for the fun of it. (Yes I am mad, I do enjoy studying!)

One thing to watch out for is that some employers in the current climate expect individuals to perform every single aspect within the finance department for one salary i.e sales ledger, purchase ledger, credit control, payroll as well as producing a full set of accounts. Me personally, after working hard to become a Chartered Accountant, do not want to return to processing invoices and payments, I want to get into the more challenging aspects.

Whatever you choose I wish you the best of look. Enjoy every minute whilst you can.

Organic12

I agree with the comments that there is little between the different qualifications these days. I work in a team of ACA, ACCA and CIMA people and we all apply the our skills to a similar level. There is little to differentiate us in terms of getting the work done.

Imho attitude and enthusiasm are more important, qualifications merely provide you a foundation and how you build upon it is up to you OP. Accounting Standards, systems and processes can be taught but having someone who is actually interested and willing to at least try cannot be taught.

OP if financial accounting interests you more than management accounting, then ACA/ACCA are more focused to those sorts of roles. However, CIMA does cover financial accounting while giving you a broad understanding of business.

Btw I’m CIMA qualified but have regularly dealt with Auditors, had a variety of Financial Control positions and now am in Management Information, directly supporting decision making. I’m lucky to have worked on both sides.

OP I wish you all the best in your career (even if you don’t opt for CIMA;))

Treading_Water

Hi There
I'm AAT qualified. I started out doing part time data entry whilst studying and bringing up the children. I them fell into a job with a soon to retire freelance accountant and then with a lot of help from a (ACCA qualified) friend took over a few of his clients and built up a client base of my own.
I didn't want to go any further with training but would say that the route you take next would depend on the route you wish to follow. CIMA is still biased towards management accounting, whereas ACCA is better for Practice and Auditing.

jessicamb

Which qualification is best for you depends on where your interests lie - in my experience ACCA is much more a "numbers" exam than CIMA which is more managerial and strategic. The numbers in CIMA tend to support something else rather than to report a result in its own right. I firmly believe that ACA/ACCA might give you better future Finance Directors but CIMA will give you the better Managing Director.

Personally I chose CIMA and Im glad I did as the part of my job I love is all around building the right strategy and successfully implementing/managing it. A lot of the figures I deal with are necessarily subjective and you have to be happy to work in the abstract - lots of assumptions and broad brushes rather than making things add up to the pounds and pence. That comes as part of a mindset though. I have some colleagues who arent happy until they have balanced a reconciliation to a penny. Personally I cant sit and work that level of detail as I dont see the value in the extra effort to make lists of numbers add up (well I do in the general sense of financial control, I just dont want to do it).

In terms of career path I took an accounting degree, then took a sales ledger processing job, then a job costing up new products, then a commercial job role where I was looking more at profitability and analysis of results, then a more commercial job where I was responsible for ensuring marketing is commercially viable. Now I do that and run the strategic planning and budgeting processes. That covers 6-7 years of career history, the early two jobs only being for a year or so each as there was little career development potential in them. You can get ahead quite quickly if you really want to and are prepared to move around whilst you are training.

jessicamb

boopopps wrote: »

I have contemplated now trying out the ACCA qualification as well, just for the fun of it. (Yes I am mad, I do enjoy studying!)

One thing to watch out for is that some employers in the current climate expect individuals to perform every single aspect within the finance department for one salary i.e sales ledger, purchase ledger, credit control, payroll as well as producing a full set of accounts. Me personally, after working hard to become a Chartered Accountant, do not want to return to processing invoices and payments, I want to get into the more challenging aspects..

If you already have an accounting qualification I dont think there is too much value in getting another accounting qualification (AAT excepted). I wanted to carry on studying and started an MBA degree. Its challenging and interesting and very relevant to work. Obviously there is a higher cost for a good course but Im sure the payback on it is only 2-3 years post qualification unless you go mad and go to Henley or Cranfield.

In terms of doing every aspect of accounts I can see two sides, firstly if it is taking up a lot of time then you are in too junior a job for your qualification and need to move on. Otherwise I dont think it hurts to do the odd bit of processing just to keep in touch with what is happening operationally. It also helps to remember what is really important - it doesnt matter if you have all the MI and value added support in the world if you cant pay the bills or collect the cash.

heretolearn_2

One thing I would say to avoid (although no offense to the person above who did it) is doing a degree in accounts unless this is also tied to professional qualifications/membership. (I don't know if any do that).

An accounts degree is not seen in the same way as ACCA etc by employers, and having tried a couple of people with these degrees, we know why. They seemed to have learned more 'about' accounting, rather than how to 'do' accounting. We would never employ anyone again with just an accounts degree.

Regshoe

jessicamb wrote: »

Which qualification is best for you depends on where your interests lie - in my experience ACCA is much more a "numbers" exam than CIMA which is more managerial and strategic. The numbers in CIMA tend to support something else rather than to report a result in its own right. I firmly believe that ACA/ACCA might give you better future Finance Directors but CIMA will give you the better Managing Director.

Personally I chose CIMA and Im glad I did as the part of my job I love is all around building the right strategy and successfully implementing/managing it. A lot of the figures I deal with are necessarily subjective and you have to be happy to work in the abstract - lots of assumptions and broad brushes rather than making things add up to the pounds and pence. That comes as part of a mindset though. I have some colleagues who arent happy until they have balanced a reconciliation to a penny. Personally I cant sit and work that level of detail as I dont see the value in the extra effort to make lists of numbers add up (well I do in the general sense of financial control, I just dont want to do it).

In terms of career path I took an accounting degree, then took a sales ledger processing job, then a job costing up new products, then a commercial job role where I was looking more at profitability and analysis of results, then a more commercial job where I was responsible for ensuring marketing is commercially viable. Now I do that and run the strategic planning and budgeting processes. That covers 6-7 years of career history, the early two jobs only being for a year or so each as there was little career development potential in them. You can get ahead quite quickly if you really want to and are prepared to move around whilst you are training.

I'm currently studying for my CIMA Strategic level exams (little over a month to go). I would say that CIMA is the "broader" qualification in the sense that it covers areas of more general management. In many ways however I almost wish I had gone for ACCA. As a maths grad I find myself much more at home with numbers. That's not to say I find the "wordy" elements of CIMA more difficult - if anything the numerical element of CIMA is probably harder then the "wordy" parts (even to somebody like me who is numerically inclined).

The thing that puts me off some sections of CIMA is that to me large sections of the syllabus is absolute twaddle. Although some of the management theory, strategy analysis, systems development is quite sensible a lot of it is rubbish. For example I don't think learning about some management theory where some overpaid tit has decided he is going to look at some element of management (for example types of manager), subdivides them into an arbitrary number of categories and gives them some abstract names makes for a good accountant (or even a good manager)! Knowing the general forces behind some of these models is fine, but a lot of the models themselves are ridiculous.

Having not studied ACCA I can't be certain that some of this rot isn't also included, but the general impression I have been given is that there is less of it.

This isn't to say I think the whole CIMA qualification is rubbish - I would say 80% plus of the material is good, its just that 10-20% which somewhat mars my opinion. I wonder if any of the other CIMA Qualfied / Part Qualifieds on here have felt this?

Ultimately though, it isn't what you think about your qualification that counts, it's what your employer/potential employer thinks.

As for my own route, I started as a Bank Reconciliations Clerk, then was promoted to Assistant Financial Analyst (at which point I started studying CIMA) then moved to my current role of Assistant Management Accountant, should be fully qualified by around September and would expect to be moving to a new role within around a year of then hopefully.

pinklover

I'm so glad that I come across this thread as I'm considering to re-train in the accounting field. Since I'll be moving to Germany for a year or so from August, I've to leave my current job as a Secretrary and would like to make use of this year out to start gaining some accounting qualifications for when I return to the UK in the hope of gaining some entry level accounting work. I've no work expereince in Accounting apart from doing some purchase ledger and generating invoice from previous jobs and have also did A levels in Bookkeeping like over 15 years ago now!

Ultimately, I'm keen to get into a finanical role within the Hotel industry as I've a degree in Hotel managment and some work expereince as well in Hospitality. So, I'm researching which option is good for me ie. AAT, ACCA or CIMA to be qualifed with, keeping in mind the industry I would ultimatley wants to get into?

I'd appreciate if any advice!!

Thanks