AAT vs. ACCA and the use of the word Accountant

Hello Mo,

If you want to take your career beyond accounts supervisor level you need to do one of the chartered level qualifications. Generally speaking, middle management accountants and upwards need to be chartered qualified. This would be regardless of your level of experience. This is simply the situation in the accountancy labour market.

By accounts supervisor level I mean a role where you would be managing one or two people. Middle management and upwards would have more senior work to do and would manage larger teams.

Regarding the academic level of AAT vs chartered qualifications; the AAT is a level 4 qualification, i.e. equivalent to the first year of a degree; the chartered qualifications are level 6, i.e. equivalent to a masters degree. This might explain the snobbiness you have encountered.

In my view, if you are AAT qualified, because of the breadth and depth of the qualification, it is perfectly valid to call yourself an AAT qualified accountant. I regard myself as an AAT Accountant. However, it must be recognised that the academic level of the qualification is not as advanced as the chartered level qualifications.

In my experience, because of the level of competition for accountancy roles in the accountancy labour market, candidates have to be substantially over-qualified to have any chance of getting an interview. Put another way, to get work which is subtantially below what you are academically capable of, you have to be subtantially over qualified.

Is it better to do AAT first? A colleague where I work recently said to me that he qualified with AAT, then completed CIMA. He felt that doing AAT first gave him a solid, in depth knowledge of bookkeeping that he felt was lacking in CIMA. I am also CIMA part-qualified, and I do agree with him on this.

However, if I was in your situation, I would go directly into CIMA or ACCA. Why spend 5 to 8 years studying AAT then ACCA/CIMA when you could spend 3 to 5 years studying ACCA/CIMA instead? If you feel it necessary, you could always buy AAT textbooks to supplement your ACCA/CIMA studies. The result of both options is the same, but the second option would save you 2 to 3 years.

Hope that helps.

David.

Very good topic. In my case AAT helped me with finding the first job in accountancy but if you are already there, go straight to ACCA. F1-F3 covers most of important matters from AAT sylabus so you will not miss much but will save a lot of time.
P.S... most people take at least 5 or 6 years... Exactly. If you have a full time job, kids, other commitments you will only manage 2 ACCA exams per year.

Selecting accountacy qualifications is depending on the individual. Each qualification has its own benefits and value. But only the difference is opportunities we get from a specific qualificaiton. As many said in this discussion, ACCA needs lots of self preparation & time compare to AAT. Opportunities are also more with ACCA compare to AAT.

Although I agree with burg that acca and icaew doesn't necessarily have to hold you back, not having acca certainly makes life harder. especially if you are employed and not qualified as you will find it difficult to get promotions in your 30's/40's, get taken seriously, earn more money, etc.

Even clients these days are getting more and more sophisticated about qualifications.

I would never use an unqualified surveyor or lawyer (despite only being aat)

You can achieve chartered status (with CIMA/CTA/ICAEW) but not with ACCA while being self employed with an AAT Licence.

Probably a tax qualification would be good as some clients are interested in tax.

Thank you David, that’s fantastic answer, very in depth. I’ll check CIMA,

With regard to ICAEW, they do allow students to be self-employed but they have a number of conditions:
- Maximum reward per assignment is £100.
- The services are provided to friends and family and small charities etc. only.

(See the ICAEW Statement on Engaging in Public Practice)

If you have a practising certificate with AAT then none of the above apply and you can register as an ICAEW student and continue to practice.

If you are an AAT affiliate, although they allow you to be a self-employed* book-keeper/accountant, as soon as you apply for AATQB or MAAT, you have to stop your self-employment*.

*Defined as sole trader, partnership, or director of company and holding at least 5% of shares (including holdings by family). (See AAT Glossary.)

> @Bmer82 said:
> CIMA Rubbish? CIMA is a specialist industry accounting qualification whereas ACCA is a jack of all trades qualification sitting in the middle ground between CIMA & ICAEW (kind of like the liberal democrats at one point). Also for anyone interested CIMA can now be funded through apprenticeship levy as a level 4 (Certificate in Business Accounting) and level 7 (Professional Syllabus) qualification.

I think a lot of it is down to who you are with. People want tho think that their body is the best.

I’m guessing Acca and CIMA are like ICAEW where you don’t get to become a member unless you have work experience?

If so then a lot of the time you are stuck with whichever one you management team/ accountant has qualified with.

That’s the reason I am doing ICAEW. (Lucky for me it’s the one I also wanted to do.

Almost all the jobs say you need ACA, ACCA and CIMA as appropriate qualifications for accounting jobs

Up front I'm an FCA from practice (trained in small firm) who went into big 4 corporate finance and now a finance director so I have had as my juniors ACAs, ACCAs CIMAs and AAT and had to train all of them and use them in my teams over 24 years.

i will give you my thoughts/experiences as I think you are going for an interview and this should help. So.....

I don't agree on the point re adverts as it depends on the job

It typically will be professional accountant in adverts and cover ACA, CIMA and ACCA. If we are in industry the ACA and CIMA would have the advantage. If it is audit the ACA would have the advantage

But it is a market as well and they are highly trained accountants so you would look at the person and as an employer I don't think I could be that fussy to pass on a really high scoring accountant just because they weren't ACA (I haven't I wouldn't have been an idiot to have not employed my CIMAs)

The difference between them as employees is type of experience they will have undertaken. ACA will be auditors from practice and have some big advantages in their training over the others (they are surrounded by other accountants and trainees in a firm dedicated to accountancy and training accountants. They just have had more resources put into them so their learning has been accelerated). Flip side here, in the old days the training was brutal.

CIMA are in industry and will not be as good at reconciliations and referencing and will have the habits/experiences
of a smaller number of people, but may have implemented a software system. More importantly though the cima staff member has managed staff who are non professionals. They will be more rounded managers of people immediately post qualified. You don't really get that in practice. They will have had to interact in a company not with them as their clients but as their colleagues (so will know how to say no better)

So the answer here to the why is question - is it industry or practice and above is the advantage

Now ACA vs ACCA

ACA has a big snob value attached but you have to be attached to a firm to be able to get in because you need the training contract. ACCA are not tied during their contract but I have never really seen that as an advantage to be honest as why would you switch firms in the middle for a couple of grand - you look flakey.

How much of a snob value you ask - enough that the members of the icaew would not let cima into their institute and would rather pay higher fees- I did say we were snobby but ultimately there is this marquee value for ACA. They also have to make up a certain proportion of the partners of a practice for it to be a firm of chartered accountants.

But, keep your mouth shut here, your interviewer could be ACCA or cima and will not like some ACA rubbing their nose in it. Ask for their options and look interested.

AAT as professional accountants - not really I'm afraid. The professional accountant will do the thinking in a department and set out the system. They have undertaken the more theoretical aspects at a higher level. The AAT person will follow the professional accountant's instructions

But remembered AAT is level 4 and the professional is level 7. There is a split between AAT a part qualified and a qualified accountant. But that is just showing at what level they have studied.

But AAT is an excellent grounding for the professional exams and teaches a lot of the early things in the professional exams so I wouldn't want you to think that I am doing it down because I am not, it is just the level of study between the various groups and the numbers of them (which drives their pay).

Ultimately take whatever you can to become AAT and then to become a professional and be thankful and work hard (for gods sake don't fail through a lack of revision). If you get the choice you can decide between industry and practice and i have liked both and they each have their pros and cons and they are reasonably equal and within both there are different roles to suit different personality types

Given the perfect choice? Train ACA (not sure re big 4 or small firm as small was a better grounding and made me a much better accountant but I had to win my district to go to corporate finance which was handed on a plate to a reasonably good big 4 trainee - i had to move mountains for that job that I would have got easily if I wasn't so rubbish at interviews at 21) then some industry experience to be able to see things from a clients perspective and decide from there.

Hope that helps

Now whilst these kind of comments can seem like a bit of a joke at times (and I am just providing a retort to an acca who is having a go at my cima deputy it would do a lack of understanding really because a couple more exams and the acca can become the aca) all of the institutes require hard work to get in and all are in short supply in the market place.

They each get you the job interview, the key part is

1 - how did you make the best use of the experience they offered. I would take a cima who can communicate well to others and is courteous over an aca who thinks they are gods gift but didn't do anything but audit a large company (I have seen that and the aca in question lasted a month with us)

2 - your professional ethics are there for a reason. How would you feel if you worked really hard for a valuable qualification and someone started calling it rubbish? It is not good practice

Really you should understand them all and how they sit in an organisation if you are to effectively utilise their skills and also to correct likely weaknesses.