ACA or ACCA?

Jigsaw · 17-05-2007 05:24PM #1

Could someone please explain what the difference is between these two bodies and what the respective difference there is in doing either body's prefessional examinations?

Thanks

smcgiff · 17-05-2007 09:11PM

One has two Cs the other only one. Think I'm being flippant - Maybe, but only just.

ACA is 100% Irish which is good and bad. The other would have the biggest international presence, but probably not the biggest in any one country, although it's almost certain to overtake the ICAEW in the UK.

You need to get a contract with a Chartered firm to undertake study with ACA. You don't even need a job to start taking ACCA exams.

ACA would be most considered a practice qualification, but because of its long standing status in Ireland it's members have taken up top jobs in industry.

ACA has a very high pass rate and you study with the ACA, which can't hurt. ACCA would be considered one of the hardest exams to pass.

ACCA would possibly allow greater career choice, but I don't see how going for a job with an ACA qualification could harm you!

patsyh · 18-05-2007 11:37AM

smcgiff wrote:

ACA has a very high pass rate and you study with the ACA, which can't hurt. ACCA would be considered one of the hardest exams to pass.

I personally think that that is bullsh!t, and im sick of hearing that ACCA exams are harder than ACA exams, do you think maybe that the reason for a high pass rate in ACA is because the majority of people who do ACA exams have University degrees and must be working in practice(otherwise you cant do the exams), therefore they are better prepared for accountancy exams whereas alot of the people who do the ACCA exams don't necessarily have University degrees and dont have to be working in the industry to do the exams.

Big 4 firms(who attract all the top accountancy trainees, ie you need a good 3rd level qualification) encourage ACA exams, therefore having a knock on affect that the brighter students do ACA and not ACCA(and I'm not knocking ACCA as a qualification I'm just responding the statment about ACCA exams being easier than ACA)

loadabollocks · 18-05-2007 11:45AM

I am working in a practice and i am doing the ACCA. From what i can see, the only difference is the structure of the courses. When you qualify in either, there really seems to be no difference in what employers look for. In the firm i work in we have people who are studying or have studied ACCA, ACA, CPD and CIMA, and its a small firm with only 23 people.
I think maybe 5/10 years ago there was a mentality that ACA was more prestigious, however i think this mentality may be gone now. I do hear people say however that ACCA is more geared towards industry and ACA towards practice, as said above. However i couldnt say if this is true.

smcgiff · 18-05-2007 12:15PM

Hi patsyh,

Have you any link to ACA papers? They seem a closely guarded secret.

I don't agree with your assertion that ACA students are necessarily smarter. Most ACCA students already hold degrees, and frankly most degrees would not be up to Prof exam standards anyway.

ACA provide the tuition for their own exams and the pass rates are stupefyingly high. Maybe ye really are that much smarter! :rolleyes:

'Big 4 firms(who attract all the top accountancy trainees, ie you need a good 3rd level qualification) encourage ACA exams,'

That may have been the case before, but I'm not so sure now. The trend certainly seems to be moving towards ACCA in the UK away from ICAEW.

chump · 18-05-2007 06:53PM

smcgiff wrote:

Hi patsyh,

Have you any link to ACA papers? They seem a closely guarded secret.

I don't agree with your assertion that ACA students are necessarily smarter. Most ACCA students already hold degrees, and frankly most degrees would not be up to Prof exam standards anyway.

ACA provide the tuition for their own exams and the pass rates are stupefyingly high. Maybe ye really are that much smarter! :rolleyes:

'Big 4 firms(who attract all the top accountancy trainees, ie you need a good 3rd level qualification) encourage ACA exams,'

That may have been the case before, but I'm not so sure now. The trend certainly seems to be moving towards ACCA in the UK away from ICAEW.

You're talking biased nonsense. If you believe it, fair play to you - but to propagate such nonsense can't be accepted.

for your curiosity attached in the prof3 Summer 2005 Fin. Acc. Exam, Solutions and Examiner Report.

http://myhome.iol.ie/~yoyoyo/prof3_rep_05.pdf - report
http://myhome.iol.ie/~yoyoyo/Prof3_sol_05.pdf - solution
http://myhome.iol.ie/~yoyoyo/Prof3_q_05.PDF - question

patsyh · 18-05-2007 06:54PM

smcgiff wrote:

Have you any link to ACA papers?

Finished my ACA 4 years ago so dont have any, but I take great offence to you saying that there is some kind of conspircay to have a high pass rate, in all my exams we never got 1 tip to what was coming up, and yes college is a piece of piss compared to professional.

smcgiff wrote:

Hi patsyh,
I don't agree with your assertion that ACA students are necessarily smarter. Most ACCA students already hold degrees, and frankly most degrees would not be up to Prof exam standards anyway.

Ya but how do you get into a good uni? A good leaving cert. In my commerce degree everyone I know except 1 person who did accountancy did ACA(and she only did it cause her dad was ACCA and that was where she was training), whereas alot of the IT graduates do ACCA because they get a load of exemptions from exams except the last set of exams and are therefore thrown in the deep end hence the high failure rates, whereas with ACA you do at least 2 sets of exam(8 exams) plus you need to get 55+ in your degree to be exempt from the 1st set.

All im saying is that its bull that ACA are easier than ACCA, I'm not discrediting any qualified ACCAs I'm saying that the standard of people enrolling to ACCA is lower and they'll get filtered out along the way same as with the ACA

smcgiff · 19-05-2007 11:36AM

Chump,

I wouldn't have believed it. - The final level ACA exam contains a multiple choice section!?!

Some of those multiple choice questions are a disgrace for a final level paper.
Take question 10 part 3. Do you honestly think that's a final level question?

I've not looked much at the other questions, but from the outset you're only looking for 30 marks out of 80!

You're right - ACA's are smarter. You'd want to be mad to take the ACCA exams.

spaceballs · 19-05-2007 01:39PM

smcgiff wrote:

Chump,

I wouldn't have believed it. - The final level ACA exam contains a multiple choice section!?!

Some of those multiple choice questions are a disgrace for a final level paper.
Take question 10 part 3. Do you honestly think that's a final level question?

I've not looked much at the other questions, but from the outset you're only looking for 30 marks out of 80!

You're right - ACA's are smarter. You'd want to be mad to take the ACCA exams.

Who said that was the final level paper? It's a Prof 3 paper, that's the level before the FAEs and the first set of exams that the majority of people coming out of college would do.

As for question 3 part 10, I think at this level that is a very good question, a lot of people wouldn't think of taking the margin into account when calculating the number of days sales held in stock. It's a practical question which someone who had spent months studying from books and know standards backwards might not pick up on. Also, it's easy to look back on these questions once you're qualified and say they're easy, I know I've done the same, but you have to remember that you didn't have half the exeperience then that you have now, most people sitting these papers would only be around 9 or 10 months into their training contract.

It's funny actually, you only thought some of the questions were a disgrace for final level papers, does that mean that you considered some of the questions to be final level standard?

As for the debate about which is the harder set of exams, to be honest I don't have a clue, and I don't think anyone can say until they attempted both. I do believe there is a lack of structure in the ACCA exams though. I've a few friends who are doing ACCA (just to note, one wanted to do ACA but didn't meet the requirements, the other didn't want to commit to a training contract), and they are constantly complaining about doing exams every 6 months and the varying quality of the ACCA courses.

I said on a thread somewhere here before that I think the place you train in is much more important than what institute you're a member of. I'm a manager in practice and whenever we get CVs in the most important thing is the experience not the qualification. If you actually think about it, on a CV you've one line saying what institute you're a member of, and then a page or two saying what experience you have.

There's a lot of very good ACAs and there's a lot very good ACCAs. It's as a result of the person themselves and the on the job experience they have though, not which exams they did.

Unfortunately there are some very bad members of both too, but that's a different debate.

chump · 19-05-2007 01:45PM

smcgiff wrote:

Chump,

I wouldn't have believed it. - The final level ACA exam contains a multiple choice section!?!

Some of those multiple choice questions are a disgrace for a final level paper.
Take question 10 part 3. Do you honestly think that's a final level question?

I've not looked much at the other questions, but from the outset you're only looking for 30 marks out of 80!

You're right - ACA's are smarter. You'd want to be mad to take the ACCA exams.

Hah, there's people with bad attitudes and complexes in both professions too!

Good luck

smcgiff · 19-05-2007 03:19PM

spaceballs,

I only gave a cursory look at the questions, but my eyes were immediately drawn to the multiple choice. Even for Prof 3 which I imagine is something similar to ACCA mid level exams multiple choice is a joke.

I had no intention of starting a pissing contest between ACCA and ACA. I thought my opening post to be very balanced.

Also, CIMA are now moving to three exam sessions per year at the behest of its students. Thankfully ACCA have two.

I looked into ACA a few years ago as my boss was ACA, but I would only have been able to take my exams at the end of the contract and not before, which proved the decider and I went with ACCA. So, swings and roundabouts.

spaceballs · 21-05-2007 11:00PM

Your first post was quite well balanced and sorry if I came off a bit strong, it wasn't intended. But when you say the ACA have a higher pass rate compared to ACCA it could be taken as cheapening the qualification, something which I'm sure wasn't intended.

Whilst it is true that the % passing is higher, I think it is due to the quality of the candidates that attempt ACA compared to ACCA. If you look at the people coming out of college, 90% of the strongest candidates are all picked up by the top 10 or so firms in the country, nearly all of which encourage the ACA exams over the ACCA (a big reason for this is probably because they can tie people into 3.5 year contracts rather than because the institute is better).

Likewise, there is a much higher percentage of ACCAs training in industry compared to ACAs, whilst this is fine for anyone who wants to work in industry, I think training in practice gives you more exposure to certain areas which come up in exams, ie. not too many trainees in industry would get much experience doing consolidations whilst in practice you could do one a month. The same with things like deferred tax and FRS17 etc. I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with training in industry (if that's where you want to work it's obviously the best place to train), just in practice you get to experience the accounting issues which affect a number of companies across a number of industries rather than just the company you work for, which can't be a bad thing when sitting exams.

I'm sure the quality of the people that pass either institutes exams would be similar, just not necessarily the quality of the people attempting the exams.

zappb · 23-05-2007 03:51PM

I'm the greatest Pokemon trainer ever!!!

smcgiff · 24-05-2007 11:58AM

zappb wrote:

I'm the greatest Pokemon trainer ever!!!

Pokemon is so ACA, Yu-Gi-Oh is were it's at now! *

*Runs away

kluivert · 24-05-2007 05:10PM

smcgiff wrote:

Pokemon is so ACA, Yu-Gi-Oh is were it's at now! *

*Runs away

Remember what the OP's question was. What is the difference, not which is the greatest.

Newaglish · 01-06-2007 02:43PM

The way I would sum it up?

Both are relatively equally recognised.

Both are of a relatively similar standard of difficulty.

You get more time off to study for ACA exams.

You don't have to work in an accountancy firm/sign a training contract for ACCA.

The higher failure rate for ACCA I think is very clearly attributable to the quality of candidates; a large percentage are not accountancy graduates, and also the top level of accountancy graduates study ACA through the Big 4 (that's not to say that strong student's dont study ACCA!)

scoot on · 02-06-2007 12:32AM

Not to re-open the ACA v's ACCA debate again but...

I'm doing ACCA exams and working in industry.

My friend is doing ACA exams and working Top 4.

I had a job, Top 4, but decided to go for industry because the idea of practice didn't appeal to me (this is just to clarify the post above where the poster seems to think that everyone wants to get into Top 4 when they come out of college). I didn't think that i'd enjoy auditing. And I still maintain that opinion.

But...

When my friend and I were comparing our first set of exams I was taken aback. We were both doing Financial Accounting exams and one day before the exams we were talking away about what we were studying. She told me there was no Consolidated accounts in her paper. That you don't do that until the next phase. I couldn't get over it. For people coming out of college who supposedly are top of their class in Commerce, Business Studies and Accounting to sit a paper without Consolidated accounts is unreal. But that's just my opinion!

chump · 03-06-2007 03:09PM

scoot on wrote:

Not to re-open the ACA v's ACCA debate again but...

I'm doing ACCA exams and working in industry.

My friend is doing ACA exams and working Top 4.

I had a job, Top 4, but decided to go for industry because the idea of practice didn't appeal to me (this is just to clarify the post above where the poster seems to think that everyone wants to get into Top 4 when they come out of college). I didn't think that i'd enjoy auditing. And I still maintain that opinion.

But...

When my friend and I were comparing our first set of exams I was taken aback. We were both doing Financial Accounting exams and one day before the exams we were talking away about what we were studying. She told me there was no Consolidated accounts in her paper. That you don't do that until the next phase. I couldn't get over it. For people coming out of college who supposedly are top of their class in Commerce, Business Studies and Accounting to sit a paper without Consolidated accounts is unreal. But that's just my opinion!

it's great having an opinion but the fact that depending on what 'exemptions' you have depends on whether you start at Prof3 or Prof2 level. Many people would start at prof3 which does have consol. in it.

Newaglish · 03-06-2007 07:04PM

scoot on wrote:

I had a job, Top 4, but decided to go for industry because the idea of practice didn't appeal to me (this is just to clarify the post above where the poster seems to think that everyone wants to get into Top 4 when they come out of college). I didn't think that i'd enjoy auditing. And I still maintain that opinion.

I wasn't suggesting that everyone wants to get into the Big 4. What I meant was that the better graduates do tend to join the Big 4, for better or worse. But the biggest contributor to the ACCA failure rate is the number of non-accounting/business graduates sitting the papers.

And about the consolidated accounts; whatever course your friend did, didn't cover enough financial accounting for her to be exempt from the Prof 2 exam. The Prof 3 covers consolidation in great detail.

Surely the fact that she does an extra exam would give her a better knowledge of financial accounts?

scoot on · 03-06-2007 10:08PM

Newaglish wrote:

I wasn't suggesting that everyone wants to get into the Big 4. What I meant was that the better graduates do tend to join the Big 4, for better or worse. But the biggest contributor to the ACCA failure rate is the number of non-accounting/business graduates sitting the papers.

And about the consolidated accounts; whatever course your friend did, didn't cover enough financial accounting for her to be exempt from the Prof 2 exam. The Prof 3 covers consolidation in great detail.

Surely the fact that she does an extra exam would give her a better knowledge of financial accounts?

I'm sorry if I didn't say it clearly in my first post. But we both did the same degree, majored and minored in the same subjects and had very similar results. She started in Prof 2 ACA, I started in Prof 2 ACCA. I'm just saying that in ACA prof 2 there is no consolidated, in ACCA prof 2 there is consolidated.

And as fair the pass/fail rate. I think the biggest contributer to the fact that ACCA has a higher fail rate has nothing to do with the quality of graduates but the fact that people doing ACA generally work in practice and get a lot more time off for exams.

Newaglish · 05-06-2007 08:02PM

scoot on wrote:

I'm just saying that in ACA prof 2 there is no consolidated, in ACCA prof 2 there is consolidated.

I apologise, I simply thought you were implying that ACA exams were les challenging.

Otherwise the Prof 2 paper is a bit of a moot point? Given that Financial Accounts is examined at Prof 2, Prof 3 and FAE level.

Might I ask what course you did? It seems unusual that you wouldn't get Prof 2 exemptions if you had already covered the topic in good detail in college. If the syllabus was covered in your course and there's no exemption for it from ACA then that's a sign of a poor course leader!

man1 · 06-06-2007 11:30AM

My wife is an accountant and is an ACCA member. We are looking to move to Australia and have found out that ACCA is not enough to automatically qualify for a visa but ACA is!!!
She will have to do extra exams when she gets there for it to be recognised.
ACA members are recognised there.
BTW she reckons they are almost the same anyway.

Jigsaw · 06-06-2007 02:28PM

man1 wrote:

My wife is an accountant and is an ACCA member. We are looking to move to Australia and have found out that ACCA is not enough to automatically qualify for a visa but ACA is!!!
She will have to do extra exams when she gets there for it to be recognised.
ACA members are recognised there.
BTW she reckons they are almost the same anyway.

That's quite a surprise. I was always under the impression that one of the main benefits of ACCA was it's international status, as opposed to ACA with are geographically defined (ICAEW, ICAI, ICAS etc). Seems I got it wrong!

Still, have an interview on Friday for a trainee accountancy position where I would be going for ACCA. Quite nervous, but up until now I've only been talking about this planned career change. This first interview is going to make it seem a lot more "real" and I guess that is scary.:eek:

loadabollocks · 06-06-2007 03:31PM

who cares i just failed 2.3

TragicJohnson · 07-06-2007 10:41AM

All this heated debate about ACA or ACCA, I was always under the impression that these 2 bodies play second fiddle to CIMA?

Newaglish · 07-06-2007 02:48PM

TragicJohnson wrote:

All this heated debate about ACA or ACCA, I was always under the impression that these 2 bodies play second fiddle to CIMA?

I've heard good things about CIMA but again, i'll re-iterate my points;

1) It really doesn't matter which one you do! They're all the same.

2) It's your experience that employers will look at.

3) CPA isn't very good

scoot on · 07-06-2007 10:30PM

loadabollocks wrote:

who cares i just failed 2.3

Join the club!

It was a nightmare of a paper wasn't it??

The CT questions and Income Tax question were like they were just pulled out of thin air!

scoot on · 07-06-2007 11:49PM

man1 wrote:

My wife is an accountant and is an ACCA member. We are looking to move to Australia and have found out that ACCA is not enough to automatically qualify for a visa but ACA is!!!
She will have to do extra exams when she gets there for it to be recognised.
ACA members are recognised there.
BTW she reckons they are almost the same anyway.

I've only just thought about this now, but I think this is incorrect. My ex-supervisor left Ireland recently to go to Australia as her partner is an aussie. She had no problem getting a vise and I know for a fact that she is ACCA qualified.

hivizman · 08-06-2007 12:32AM

scoot on wrote:

I've only just thought about this now, but I think this is incorrect. My ex-supervisor left Ireland recently to go to Australia as her partner is an aussie. She had no problem getting a vise and I know for a fact that she is ACCA qualified.

In Australia, the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia (ICAA) is the body that assesses the qualification status of accountants for immigration purposes. The Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland (ICAI) is an Approved Overseas Accounting Body, and ACAs can apply for membership of ICAA by doing some additional 'bridging studies' in Australian Tax and Company Law. ACCA is only a partially recognised overseas accounting body, and it is necessary to study Australian Tax and Company Law formally at an Australian university to be able to apply for membership of ICAA. So ACCA certainly has lower status for getting a visa to emigrate to Australia. The ex-supervisor probably qualified as a family member of an Australian citizen rather than for her accountancy qualification.

See http://www.charteredaccountants.com.au/A117138529 for details.

Kinetic^ · 08-06-2007 11:47AM

Another thing, prof 2 for ACCA is different from prof 2 at ACA.

Thank fcuk I don't have to deal with any of this crap anymore!!!!

loadabollocks · 08-06-2007 12:12PM

scoot on wrote:

Join the club!

It was a nightmare of a paper wasn't it??

The CT questions and Income Tax question were like they were just pulled out of thin air!

the dividend stuff in the CT question really threw me. didnt know where to put any of it! and the single assessment in IT wtf! hasnt happened in years! where was the tough partnerships question that i spent ages practicing and eventually had them down!
as regards to the theory -- farm avergaing wtf! i studied sub-contractors, revenue adit, PSWT, employees, badges of trade cos every other year you are GUARANTEED to get ONE of them! but no not this year.

so so disappointed i was really confident going into this. depressing.

ACA or ACCA?

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