Questions about AAT Technician level

ambitious

I'm an intermediate student with a month to go to my exams. My plan is to ultimately become a CIMA qualified accountant but I've taken a long route to get the knowledge I need. But I've had a look at AAT Technician (NVQ pathway), and a few questions have arisen in my head:

1) Is completing the AAT at technician level the equivalent of 1st year CIMA ?

2) Would it be better for me to just go straight onto CIMA rather than wait another year ?

3) I've decide to go for both Tax modules. Are these extremely difficult ? Sounds scary I must say compared to the other choices of Audit and Credit Control.

Gianni

I took the same route. Essentially completing AAT will gain you exemption from the 1st year. This is slightly misleading as it gains you exemption to the extent of the amount of time it takes you to complete the 1st stage of CIMA. If I was you, I'd complete the AAT as it's a qualification in its own right and will probably save you time if you can do the Tech level in a year.

If you think of it from an employers perspective, I'm sure they'd prefer an AAT qualified accountant as oppose someone who's on their 1st stage CIMA. It takes effort to get a qualification and employers will recognise this.

I also did both the tax modules as I thought it'd be more fitting and give me some background tax knowledge since I'm doing CIMA now which isn't really tax based. You'll be fine, just take both tax papers at once.

ambitious

Gianni wrote: »

I took the same route. Essentially completing AAT will gain you exemption from the 1st year. This is slightly misleading as it gains you exemption to the extent of the amount of time it takes you to complete the 1st stage of CIMA. If I was you, I'd complete the AAT as it's a qualification in its own right and will probably save you time if you can do the Tech level in a year.

If you think of it from an employers perspective, I'm sure they'd prefer an AAT qualified accountant as oppose someone who's on their 1st stage CIMA. It takes effort to get a qualification and employers will recognise this.

I also did both the tax modules as I thought it'd be more fitting and give me some background tax knowledge since I'm doing CIMA now which isn't really tax based. You'll be fine, just take both tax papers at once.

Thanks Gianni for your sensible reply. I just did some further research on CIMA and it looks like that completing the AAT does indeed give exemption to all 5 preliminary papers of the CIMA Certificate of Accounting stage. So were I to embark on that route I would just have to complete the Professional stage of CIMA in 2 years. Very useful to know. Sigh... Still that's another academic year away. And now to concentrate on my AAT intermediate exams. Thanks again Gianni.

Ntensity

I took my tax papers in 2 different terms but they are quite similar Im suprised the other poster never got mixed up with the 2. Ive just the audit paper left to do which Im finding a bit of a pain.