Becoming an accountant / bookkeeper

Kynthia

I attended college a couple of evenings a week to do the AAT qualification, but there are other providers that do online classrooms and pre-recorded lectures. Take a look at companies like BPP, Kaplan, First Intuition, Acorn, etc.

The AAT will give you a good idea of whether Management Accounts or Financial Accounts interests you more, so there's no need to pick CIMA or ACCA now. Also by then you may find an employer who'll support you and your children will be older so finding time to study might be easier.

GJNA

pollyanna24 wrote: »

Not entirely sure. More likely a bookkeeper as I'm probably too old to start completely again as an accountant (34) and can't afford to study full time as I'm a single mum and need my job to pay my mortgage.

Absolutely not too old to train as an accountant. I'm 30 and still studying my ACCA qualification and I'm not nearly the oldest in the class!! If you want to do it, go for it!

Pennywise

The main question is whether you want a "job" in book-keeping/accountancy or whether you want to be a self employed book-keeper/accountant running their own business.

If the former, then yes, professional qualifications are best to get any kind of decent job (although experience is also needed), so start with AAT, get an entry level job, and then gain experience whilst studying ACCA or CIMA.

If you want to be self employed running your own business, then, to be blunt, I wouldn't waste my time with anything more than AAT or the Institute of book-keeping. Clients don't care whether you're fully qualified or not, there is no legal protection of either term, so you're free to call yourself an accountant or book-keeper even if you have no qualifications at all - just pay HMRC your money laundering registration fee, spend a minimal amount on book-keeping/payroll software and you're good to go. At the moment, there's lots of competition and it's a race to the bottom as regards service quality and pricing due to unqualified and part qualifieds often working from home with low overheads. Just make sure you don't get in too deep doing complicated work you don't fully understand and you'll be fine. You'll probably make as much money self employed as an AAT as you would if you were ACCA or CIMA.

And, yes, I'm saying this as an ACCA, but who is seriously thinking of giving up the ACCA status as it no longer gives any benefit to either me or my clients - just an unnecessary overhead.