Accountancy jobs - what's yours?

MoneySavingUser

tunde10 wrote: »

What i wanted to know is that, does my 1st year experience count towards my 3yrs work experience needed to become fully qualified after my ACCA exams?

according to: http://www2.accaglobal.com/students/acca/per/time

relevant experience gained before you joined ACCA may be counted, providing it can be verified by a workplace mentor.

tunde10

Thanks, that should mean i qualify

Also has anyone on here completed successfully all 5 P apers through self-study succesfully without any resits? My plan is to sit first 3 compulsory P papers through self study. Then do the course for the 2 optional advanced papers as they are likely to be a bit harder to grasp. My employers will pay for my studies as i told them i am self-studying, doubt they would agree if they had to pay thousands in course fees.

Any

tunde10 wrote: »

Thanks, that should mean i qualify

Also has anyone on here completed successfully all 5 P apers through self-study succesfully without any resits? My plan is to sit first 3 compulsory P papers through self study. Then do the course for the 2 optional advanced papers as they are likely to be a bit harder to grasp. My employers will pay for my studies as i told them i am self-studying, doubt they would agree if they had to pay thousands in course fees.

By the way lots of employers do fund going to college... you don't need to doubt they would be happy, it is quite normal in the industry... Obviously depends on employer, I am just saying it is possible and quite normal.

What is your degree in?

P1 & P3 should be fine. P2 - most graduates I know struggled. The whole thing relies on VERY good knowledge of F7 and most graduates just don't have that. It is large syllabus, really built on that knowledge so unless you are very comfortable with consolidations etc (look at F7 syllabus) you will firstly need to learn that..

P2 is called "the Beast" around here... and it is called that for a reason..

tunde10

Thanks

I was planning to self-study anyway so that is what i told my employer. They probably would have reduced my salary and put a clause n my contract of having to work there 3yrs after i qualified. They did this to someone else in the company

My degree was in Accounting and Finance which i got a 1st. I have looked at the past acca papers for p2 and it seems just perfect for me. I love consolidation and learning all the rules and stuff. I have actually already done consolidated balance sheet and consolidated cash-flows for my yr2 & yr3 exams at uni. I got 90% & 89% so no worries there. I will start my study early in January as i find i can virtually perfect these type of questions once i have done them repetitively enough times by June.
I am more concerned about p1 and p3 to be honest. Thanks for the advice. I will ask for my employer to pay for college for the last 2papers.

silly_moo

tunde I passed P1-P3 and P5 first time with self study only. P1 is the easiest of them and I found P3 the most difficult. It was just not my type of exam and I kept falling asleep while reading the books. Boooring. But for P3 and P1 you only need to learn some models and then use common sense in the exam! I really enjoyed P2 though. If you have good concepts of consolidation and financial reporting, you should pass it without any problems.

Any

Well, if you have good basis of consolidation then you should be fine. I really enjoyed P2, it's just a lot of stuff to learn!

P1 I also found easiest. P3.. Depends if you have that type of thinking brain... I needed to get into the frame of mind of what is he asking.. because you need to identify which model to use for which question, once you master that you are fine! Use the model and lots of common sense to create answers.

I found P6 the hardest - not sure if you are looking at that. Advanced taxes. Loooooads to learn!! Whole 1110 pages. P5 - a bit like P3. Unfortunately I didn't do F5, I sat my fifth paper under the old syllabus so I made it harder on myself and there is new examiner that we don't have many practice questions from yet, but you will be in better position then. You might find you could do that home study too.

Yes, you are right - many people who do get everything paid for/time off paid for do have a clause in their contract. I only have a year - but I go to college at the weekends. I find going to college really at least halves the time you need to spend studying. Because I wouldn't be able to even read the book in 4 days (the usual weekend tuition per paper), never mind actually remembering anything from it!! Also at college they give you lots of tips and tricks.

But everyone is different, I remember better what am I told then what I read (especially if you have fantastic tuitor like ours for P3 - he made it extremely enjoyable with his examples from real life). My ex boss did CIMA and all he did is to read the book 3 times in the 2 weeks before exam... Now, if I could master that art!!!:-)) Must be some kind of photographic memory or something..

tunde10

Thanks Silly Moo & Any

Silly Moo
I really enjoy the kind of questions i have seen in past exam papers for P2 as well. That is why i decided to take it first. Funilly enough, i actually enjoy practicings consolidations and finding out why they didnt balance. I think this is why my exam results for them were really high. Also i think it helps that i am taking one at a time. M friend did p1 & p2 together and failed both. He even paid for the college courses himself.
By the sounds of it i should be taking p1 second in dec 2012. If i find p3 boring like u did, i may pay for college myself or ask employer. Im sure theyll b happ too the longer ive stayed with them. I just do not want to sign 3yr contract because it is a small company and opportunities will be limited.

Any
I am definately taking advanced taxes. I did taxation in Uni & that is why i have the exemption for F6. I would like to have the opportunity to work in that in the future. I know its a lot to take in & rules change all the time. But the earning potential is so good & it can also be used as a side project for friends/family to make small additional income.
The reason i would prefer to study the first few papers is that i hardly listened to lectures at University. I only paid attention to my taxation & management account lectures as the lecturers were really good. How i did so well was by taking the materials home and reading them which usually eventually made sense. In-fact for auditing i hardly turned up to lectures as the guy just talked with explaining anything. I read the whole book a month before exam and it all made sense. So i think i can read the book and understand it very quickly. However i will do that months before the exams which gives me a lot more time. If i am really struggling i would still have time to do a course or go to the crash revision version just before exams.

Thanks for your replies!

silly_moo

tunde10 wrote: »

Funilly enough, i actually enjoy practicings consolidations and finding out why they didnt balance.

I'm afraid you won't have time in the exam to find out why your consolidated statement didn't balance! The time is very very limited, as you'll no doubt find out when doing past papers.

MoneySavingUser

You don't have to go to a classroom course - you can also do either distance learning or online learning (some courses are live, others have recorded lectures) - these can be cheaper than classroom courses. The good thing about ACCA is that there are a lot of companies offering tuition and therefore a lot of competition in the market.

The advantage of a course over just reading the books and practising questions is that they can give feedback and also help with time management in the exams.

Professional exams are a lot more time pressured than university exams - often people don't finish large questions and the trick to pass is to pick up the easy marks in the time available.

As for a side project giving tax advice to people for extra income - be careful there are only certain basic things you can do for people unless you have a practising certificate (and you are supposed to get indemnity insurance and sign up money laundering regulations too) - ACCA are very strict about people offering services without having these and people have gotten into trouble over it.

As for consolidation I know someone who took a foreign equivalent of CIMA and there were 18 chapters in his book on consolidation so he only learned that - and then no consolidation questions came up!!

Any

First thing to do for you as a graduate going into professional exams is to sit down with past exam paper, put alarm on (3.15mins) and try it under real exam conditions.

NEVER EVER stop and see why you don't balance. 90% people don't finish the exam in the time allocated without actually trying to find little mistakes they made along the way, finding it might gain you 0.5-1 mark, but the time you spend finding it will cost you very valuable time answering other or discursive questions worth many more marks! If you have time in the end, by all means go back, but many many people found that this type of thing cost them the exam.

Sorry, I missunderstood, I didn't realise you are going to take it 1 by 1.

Taxation is absolutely fascinating, I am actually considering going for Chartered tax advisor exams if I find sponsoring job in that area, that is where the real money is.