Money, money, money - Other peoples though :O( (My Experiences and Advice)

Name: michaird

Hello doyoo user, You have to be logged in to use these functions... Login or register Close window

Send message to member

Product:	My Experiences and Advice
Date:	04/04/02 (176 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Flexible career which doesnt require a degree, Can earn you lots of money, Has lots of scope to progression

Disadvantages: People think your boring, Is lots of hard work to qualify.

My days at Sixth-form College were the most miserable I have ever experienced in my life, the whole student thing just didn't do it for me. The last thing I wanted to do was go to university and have to go through another three years of torture. But I still wanted a career that would get my far and pay me lots and lots of money.

At secondary school we had a computer programme in the careers office whereby you put in all the things you enjoy, all the things your good at and it'll churn out a list of careers you might want to think about. When I did it, I got Dental Nurse, Nurse, Secretary & Accountant. I'm not entirely sure how any of these fit together but the one that appealed most to my mercenary nature was accountancy, and yippee you don't need a degree to become one.

Qualities you do need include:
Good communication skills, you will be expected to cascade information to all sorts of people clients, managers, staff etc. many of these people wont have a clue about finance so you'll need to be able to alter the way you present things depending on who you're dealing with.
An eye for Detail, nowadays nobody looks at individual figures (except the VAT man) so you need to be a right first time kind of person. This kind of thing comes with experience and most people make loads of mistakes for a while.
An Analytical mind, again this is something which develops with experience but a large part of the job involves looking at things and thinking 'Is this right, why has this happened' and then more importantly explaining it to someone.
A sense of humour, its not the most exciting job in the world (but lets face it, most jobs aren't) but the thing that make work enjoyable is the people you do it with rather than what you do. A sense of fun and humour is essential.

Now there are four main accountancy bodies with whom you can become qualified (that I'm aware of anyway):
Chartered Institute
of Public finance and Accountancy (CIPFA)
Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW)
Charted Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA)
Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA)

I am currently halfway through the ACCA qualification.
The qualification consists of 14 exam papers, which you have ten years to complete, although the shortest time the whole course can be completed is about three and a half years.
The papers cover every aspect of finance and management from Accounts preparation, interpretation and audit to IT and economics and law. The pass mark for each paper is 50/100 which is harder to achieve than it sounds.
Studying for the exams is very flexible; it can be done full time, Day release from a very kind workplace, evenings and weekends. Most firms will foot the bill for the course fees (the fees for the three papers in currently doing come to around £2500)
In addition to the qualification, most students will be eligible for progression to an Oxford Brooks degree in Applied Accounting (BSc HONS) on the submission of a 1500-word project and the completion of the exams.
Course fees vary from a couple of hundred pound per paper tuition to around one thousand pounds pr paper tuition, depending on the style of study you choose and where. Public colleges and much cheaper than private. I currently study at a private college.

There are four ways to get accepted as an ACCA student:

Degree:
Most degrees will offer and basic exemption from a couple of foundation papers. Some degrees, depending on what they are and where you studied will give more exemptions.

A Level:
If you have at least 2 A'levels you are eligible to join the Course with no paper exemptions.

Technician:
Two qualifications Association of Accounting Technicians (AAT) and Certified Accounting Technician (CAT) will gain you access and exemptions from certain papers. These a
re particularly good for people who only have GCSE's. CAT is the ACCA own new technician qualification and so exemptions from papers from other professional bodies are currently limited.

Mature Student Entry:
Those who are qualified by experience can gain entry upon completion of a skill test; I do not know anything about the test as I do not know anyone who has ever entered using this route.

There are two areas in which accountants work,
Practice: Providing accounting services to businesses
Industry: Working for businesses directly

The work you might do is very varied and everyone experience will be different when I first began ACCA studies I was working for a small accountancy practice, as a trainee accountant. This practice paid for all my course fees and allowed one day off a week to go to college, this is fairly typical of practices that will use it as an excuse to pay you a pittance.
The job involved preparing accounts for clients and analysing performance, going to clients on Audit (which basically involves ticking and is the dullest job in the world)
Bookkeeping for clients (at the office or by visiting them)
Preparing client payrolls (another mind numbing job)
And being told to make the tea.
I didn't much enjoy my experience in practice, I found the atmosphere very stilted, the money rubbish and there was a very 'me boss, you idiot' mentality. The strict hierarchical culture and rubbish money is fairly typical in practice from my experience but the training opportunities are second to none, if you can sick it out the for long enough the money and status will come.

I couldn't stick it out so I moved back to where I started out, industry. I currently for a large autoparts distribution company as an assistant financial accountant (the difference between this and financial accountant is money). The financial accountant's job is to prepare information for organisati
on outside the company (Inland Revenue, VAT office or other companies within the group). My job deals mostly with import and export reporting, fixed asset (the stuff we own) accounting, inter-company and various other reporting tasks. The people are great, no stereotypical accountant stuffiness here, and the money is better.
Other jobs within the finance function are:
Management accountant: these people prepare information for use with the company, monthly accounts, variance reports that sort of thing. They get a lot of harassment from people who know nothing about accountancy and tend to look a bit stressed.
Financial Planner: these people prepare all the budgets for the business, big ones for big managers and little ones for little managers (these don't always say the same thing) they are wizards on a spreadsheet and stay late when they don't need to.
Project accountants: These deal with projects (durr) and will be called upon to bend their brains around the most complex financial problems the business might encounter. Most of the project accountants I know are paid a fortune and have it pretty cushy (you can see what I'm aiming for, cant you)
These are the basic job you can expect to do until you get to the big bucks jobs like financial controller and Financial Directors. Many companies give then different names or melt the different roles into one.
Here I am studying part time at the weekends and I get time of for my exams and a little study leave, the extra money compensates the extra work and the company pays all the costs. Many companies will foot the bill for a least some of the fees, though some of them you have to kick and shout for it.

There doesn't seem to be much of a 'glass ceiling' for women within this profession, at least that I have experienced or heard of. Many places will be flexible for women (and a couple of men I know) who wish to take part time hours to look after a family, this of cour
se depends on the individual company.

Salaries start at around 7K for a very junior staff member up to +40K for financial controllers and directors. Assistants get between around 10k-20k. A newly qualified accountant can expect to get between 20K-25K depending on role, experience and location.

For anyone who wants a flexible career, that doesn't require you to have had you life completely sorted since the age of sixteen I would definitely recommend accountancy. There's a lot of hard work involved, but it's worth it in the end. Also if you decide you don't like it, you can always move to do something else. Many ex accountants I know have moved into marketing and IT and have found that their financial experience helps them.

Summary: