Acca

I can't recall the exact fees but the poster above has given you the link where you can check it out. I think it's around £100 for the F papers and about £150 for the P papers but I might be a bit off there. Nevertheless, the registration and exam fees with ACCA are relatively cheap.

The course is structured into fourteen exams, nine 'Foundation' papers and five 'Professional.' The first nine are very knowledge based, the last five rely more on application. The list of subjects can be found on the link above but will include basic bookkeeping, Corporate law, Management Accounting, Financial Reporting, Tax, Audit and Corporate Finance. At Professional Level you do three core exams and then choose a further two specialisms (Management Accounting, Tax, Audit and Corporate Finance to choose from).



I wouldn't recommend it. As important as the exams with the ACCA qualification is the work experience and the two really ought to be done together. You need three years of mentored work experience to become a member of ACCA. I've known people to do the exams first but they made life harder than it had to be. ACCA is much more flexible than the ICAEW about who you work with, but you really need a qualified accountant as a mentor.

If you can't immediately start work then you could start the exams although I would recommend taking only one at a time.

When you enrol with ACCA, they don't give you any books by the way. You have to find your own tuition provider and text books. I hear good things about Kaplan and BPP most of the time (in other words I only hear bad things about them when people fail)! I must say the failure rate of people who don't get tutors is rather high and I would recommend you attend a class. If you cannot afford this, it may be worth waiting until you join an employer who can fund it for you.



2 exams per sitting is recommended, with 2 sittings a year. On that basis, it would take 3.5 years. However, you could speed things a long a little by doing the computer based F1-F3 a little quicker. If you have no tuition, one paper a sitting is realistic and it will take about 7 years. The maximum time you have to complete the exams is 10 years.



Yes and no. It's certainly a challenge and a big one at that. However, it's no harder than many other professional qualifications pitched at the same level. Don't let a qualification being hard put you off anyway, if it wasn't challenging it wouldn't be worth doing.



Just to clarify, I have not done ACCA myself. I'm a chartered secretary. I work with a lot of accountants and have attempted ICAEW papers before making the switch to ICSA.

Hi their.About the ACCA papers.Is their like a final result,like an average of all 14 papers.Or,is it seperate results for each paper?