Hello everyone,
I wasted 2 years studying ACCA before I came across CIMA. I am sure a lot of people have gone through that as well. At the end of the day, who really needs financial accountants nowadays? The recent emergency budget set by the UK Gvt suggest all developed economies are orienting towards cost accounting as never before.

PLUS, there are so many accounting graduates that are jobless. I mean there are jobs, but not the real accounting jobs those graduates set out to get before starting their studies. The more scary thing is that developed economies are facing the problems of high unemployment. Those economies, once branded the biggest world’s consumer, are now in decline.

So, it makes us all wonder what guarantee do we have to secure a good career at the end of our studies?

Your views and feedbacks are welcomed!

Yes, I agree that there are jobs out there but not ones that graduates aspire to, unfortunately. I does make one wonder why one puts in the effort to study so hard.

But can one not become a cost/management accountant by studying the ACCA as well? There are part 2 subjects such as F5 and F9 that are geared towards cost accounting and financial management. Additionally, in part 3 there are compulsory as well as optional papers that allow students to direct their studies more towards the management accounting discipline.

CIMA is an excellent qualification, but so is the ACCA. Some graduate schemes such as at Sainsbury’s and Heinz offer a choice between the two qualifications.

How far did you get to with ACCA before you switched over to CIMA? You should have gotten some exemptions.

I think you have quite a narrow viewpoint, am I right in guessing you work in commerce?

‘who needs financial accountants these days?’  - well how about all those self employed/small businesses out there? They don’t need someone to work out their budgets, analyse their reports etc.. They need someone to do their tax returns and give them advise on their accounts.

The ACCA qualifiaction allows you to work in commerce, but also in practice, and then also would allow you to go self employed, and like they say ‘you’ll never make money working for the man’

If you read the Accountancy press, look in the job pages, ACA and ACCA is still the qualification that the higher jobs ask for, its more comprehensive than CIMA, offers more, ie, Audit, ok as my CIMA studying colleague said to me ‘I don’t want to be an auditor’, but its not about that, all companies get audited, all companies should have good internal control, its all relevant.

I started my career wanted to work for the big firms in commerce, as I have gotten older I wish I had started in practice, I believe theres more to gain from Accountancy than just working for a firm. Im glad I do ACCA, I feel I have more avenues to chose from career wise

Right now I’d be happy whatever chartered qualification I had. I’m studying ACCA but I don’t think its a big deal whatever you have, they all have strengths and weaknesses. But to say you’ve wasted time doing one instead of the other is way off the mark…

You also need to take into account the type of personality you have - I was in a management accounting role originally, but my only excitement was the end of year rush & dealing with problems. When things were running smoothly I was bored out of my brain, so I’ve taken a pay cut to move over to practice & am very happy.