F8: Auditing - UK or Int

mark057

Hello everyone. Hope you all had a good Christmas and New Year!

I'm going to start the ACCA F8 paper this sitting and was just wondering if it is best to sit the UK or International
variant of the paper?

I sat the global variant of the law paper (F4) but not sure which is best with auditing.

Thanks

Mark

Rozzi Rainbow

Hi Mark

I wasn't sure either and ended up taking UK. I was in a minority though as at the exam, more people seemed to be taking International. At college where I'd taken previous papers, they all did International audit. The UK paper mentioned the Companies Act, so I felt more confident about that. After the exam I took, I spoke to someone who'd taken International and we realised the questions were almost exactly identical, so I don't think there's much in it. I heard somewhere that BPP actually stopped teaching UK cos International was more suitable for the larger multi-national companies.

Do you actually want to become an auditor at some point? If so, I think this is a very important decision you need to get right, but if you have no intention of going into auditing, I don't think it would make that much difference.

Good luck!

Bluewednesday

You need to take Int if you are doing international standards and UK if you are doing uK standards in the financial reporting paper, otherwise you are going to have to learn both sets of standards.

However I believe that if you take int you won't be able to get a UK auditors certificate if you are auditing under UK standards but that may or may not be important to you - it may also only apply to the advanced audit paper.

mark057

Hi Bluewednesday,

Thanks for the information about this. Its all rather confusing lol.

I think I will sit the international paper as it appears to be the way the wind is blowing in examinations these days.

I'm certainly not concerned from a career point of view because I have no aspirations to be involved in auditing. I
want to eventually specialise in taxation.

Also I have had experience of International Accounting Standards through my AAT (level 4) financial reporting paper.

Thanks

Mark

mark057

Thanks Rozzi for you help too.

Bluewednesday

mark057 wrote: »

H
I think I will sit the international paper as it appears to be the way the wind is blowing in examinations these days.

I'm certainly not concerned from a career point of view because I have no aspirations to be involved in auditing. I
want to eventually specialise in taxation.



Mark

That's what I did, I did advanced audit under international standards too as BPP didn't offer UK standards anymore and ACCA didn't bring in the rule about UK standards until after I qualified.

Rozzi Rainbow

Bluewednesday wrote: »

You need to take Int if you are doing international standards and UK if you are doing uK standards in the financial reporting paper, otherwise you are going to have to learn both sets of standards.

I actually took UK Audit and International Financial Reporting! Oops. I don't think I really had to learn that many standards in Audit, not compared to FR anyway, it was more about all the tests for cut-off, existence etc. Oh well at least I got it out of the way, and passed surprisingly. I'm definitely not touching Audit at the Professional Level so shouldn't need to worry about it any more.

Bluewednesday

That's right - it's not that disastrous as the standards are relatively similar anyway, it's just the assumed knowledge that is required