Broadening your Global Reach: CA (India) to ACCA

Thanks to Nidhi Nagori, many of you shared your amazing aspirations and career goals with me, and many of those revolved around ACCA. Some frequently asked questions were - How to pursue ACCA, the time is required to complete the course, my study schedule, if it is worth the time and money invested, and also quick and easy tips to get a highly esteemed professional qualification under your hat.

Getting inspired by yourselves, I have penned down my research and experience and prepared a precise and detailed write-up on how to start your ACCA journey as an Indian Chartered Accountant and put in some quick tips which would be helpful for you as you further progress in this professional journey!

This article will cover the following in detail –

1. Steps?
2. Processes?
3. Costs?

• Application 

The first process is to see whether you are eligible for exemptions on ACCA Applied knowledge and Applied skills papers and to get started with it, I have put in a link for your reference below -

ACCA Exemption calculator - https://www.accaglobal.com/an/en/help/exemptions-calculator.html

You have to fill in the institution name, the year of your graduation, and the level up to which you have completed the course. For instance, for someone who is a November 2017 pass-out (CA), they should select “ICAI, FULL COURSE COMPLETION – GRADUATES TO DECEMBER 31, 2017”. On clicking ‘Next’ you will be able to see the total number of exemptions you can avail and you can get the exemptions emailed to you by clicking “Email my exemptions” and filling in the required details. The ACCA team is quick to send in the detailed list of exemptions within 1-2 working days.

Once you are sorted on the part of the exemption, now is the time when you need to register as an ACCA student (link below) – https://www.accaglobal.com/acca-registration-intro.html

This link gives you an idea of what are the documents that would be required at the time of filling the application. Once you have all the documents in hand, you can start your application and provide your name, e-mail, address, qualification, as well as your identification documents, your graduation mark sheets, and your exemption-related certificates as well – for instance, CA Membership certificate. Once all documents are provided, you will need to send in your first payment to ACCA for registering yourself as a student.

(A): Initial Fees –

A summary of the fees chargeable to ACCA students in India is provided in the link below –

https://www.accaglobal.com/ie/en/qualifications/accountancy-career/fees/fees-charges-india.html?countrycode=India

The initial registration fee is currently ￡30 (reduced from ￡89) along with an annual subscription fee of ￡112 to help keep the status of a student active.

(B): Exemption fees –

If you are eligible for exemptions, you will still need to pay ACCA for allowing you to forgo the examinations. The first ideal step would be to pay off the exemption fee and then go ahead to pay your exam fee for the applicable exams.

The exemption fees for the exams are divided as under –

1. For applied knowledge exams, the exemption fee is ￡84 for each paper. There are three papers in Applied knowledge level exams – 

·       Accountant in Business (AB)

·       Management Accounting (MA)

·       Financial Accounting (FA)

2. For the remaining papers which are called Applied skills exams, the exemption fee is ￡111.

Please note, these are all the fees stated as of 20th March 2021.

• Examinations –

For Qualified CA’s, there are four strategy professional level exams that are required to be given. These exams are the last set of exams before becoming an ACCA affiliate.

Out of the four papers, two of these are essentials which means these are the non-optional papers - Strategic Business Reporting and Strategic Business Leadership. Strategic Business Reporting or SBR is equivalent to the Financial Reporting paper of the CA final exam in terms of concepts, knowledge, and syllabus. It consists of both practical and theoretical questions on IFRS as well as UK GAAP (UK FRS). Strategic Business Leadership or SBL, on the other hand, consists of various topics combined, which include - Professional code of conduct, Risk and risk management, corporate strategies, Change management, Project management, and Information technology. The SBL paper is more on the theoretical side and helps students in developing the ability to lead all the aspects of a business. 

The fees for these papers are slightly higher as compared to the optional papers and are mentioned in the link provided above. For the optional papers, ACCA provides the students an option to select two out of the four optional papers, which are -

1. Advanced Financial Management (AFM)

2. Advanced Performance Management (APM)

3. Advanced Taxation (ATX)

4. Advanced Audit and Assurance (AAA)

In my opinion, Advanced Financial Management or AFM is similar to SFM (CA Final paper), APM is similar to costing and Advanced Audit and Assurance or AAA is similar to Audit(CA Final paper) in terms of knowledge, concept, and syllabus. In Advanced Taxation, one has the ability to choose taxation laws for a specific country from the country variants available - UK, Ireland, Singapore, Malaysia (applicable as of June 2019). I specifically chose AFM and ATX - UK version, because I believed my numerical ability and sum-solving are much stronger as compared to my writing skills. 

ACCA Advantage

ACCA provides flexibility to the students such that one can give as many papers as one wants in a particular attempt. This means that you are allowed to give at least one paper or at the most, 4 papers in one attempt. In my case, I gave two papers ( AFM and ATX) in one attempt and two essential papers (SBL and SBR) in the other attempt. If you are interested to know the study schedule I had while working in a Big 4, please drop a comment or DM and I will provide my detailed timetable. 

Apart from the written exams, one is required to complete the EPSM. EPSM or Ethics and Professional Skills Module is advised to be completed before starting the Strategic Professional exams. The module is segregated into case studies and tests integrity, professionalism, objectivity, and qualification-discipline amongst other ethical concerns. The current fee for completing this module is ￡65 and can be found on the link provided above.

• Useful tips while preparing for your ACCA Journey –

A. Books

I ordered all of my books from Zamzam books based in Chennai (through the website linked below) and I chose Kaplan after consulting my mentors at Zell Education, which is an ACCA Approved Gold Tuition provider.

https://www.zamzambooks.in/product-category/acca-study-materials/kaplan-publishing/

I ordered the below set for each subject: 

1. Complete Text – The book per subject ranges between 1,500 – 1,650 Rupees (essential to understand the concept – similar to study module from ICAI)

2. Exam Kit - The book per subject ranges between 1,000 – 1,250 Rupees (essential for solving questions that have appeared in previous exams - similar to practice module from ICAI)

3. Pocket notes – I got these as my LMR notes for the day before the exam and I think they were worth the money, unless you have a habit of making your own short pocket notes, in which case these are optional and they have a purchase price of 500 Rupees (as on 27th December 2020).

B. Free resources

One of the best things I found while appearing for my ACCA exams was ‘OpenTuition.com’

https://opentuition.com/acca/

Open Tuition provides concept-wise videos, short concise notes, exam technique articles, forums where subject tutors can solve doubts of the students, discussion forums for students, study guides, examiner guidance, subject timetable, etc. for FREE. Yes, there is no cost that one has to pay to the website and their YouTube videos have been my go-to for solving various concepts, I would definitely recommend the website to you.

 C. Is Tutoring beneficial?

Everyone: Why would a Chartered Accountant need it? We have enough knowledge already!

Me: Because we are Chartered accountants and Money Matters!

Would it be a surprise if I told you that you would end up investing the same amount of money if you chose self-coaching over tutoring?  Everything I write here is purely based on my research and experience to date of why tuition providers give us a competitive edge and have divided it further on the following pointers:

1. Total fees

2. Resources

1. Total fees – This is something I understood only when I spoke to an approved learning provider or ALP, in my case – Zell Education. 

Let’s take the example of studying ACCA via an ALP –

Benefits –

1. Exemption fees are reduced from ￡950 (Non-ALP student) to as low as ￡180 – Benefit through an ALP is ￡770.

2. One-time Registration fees are waived off (Non-ALP student pays ￡89 for the same) – Benefit through an ALP is ￡89.

3. Yearly Subscription fees are waived off for a year and a half (Non-ALP student pays ￡112 per year for the same, i.e. ￡168) – Benefit through an ALP is ￡168.

4. ALP like Zell Education provide materials for studying the course as well so the cost of buying books (Kaplan/BPP) is reduced by ￡128 (Rs. 3240/subject – Study kit, Exam kit, Pocket notes) – Benefit through an ALP is ￡128.

Total benefits arising from choosing an ALP - ￡770 + ￡89 + ￡168 + ￡128 = ￡1155 (Rs. 1,15,500) and that is the exact fee that they would charge you for providing tutoring services to you - in my case, Zell Education. Thus the above benefits take the form of fees that are charged by ALP for providing tuition, materials, assessments, etc.

And thus, I said that you would have to pay the same amount of fee to ACCA even if you choose the self-coaching part, why not invest it in a tutor, avail the benefit of coaching, study material, and a bit of motivation from the tutor for the same price? 

2. Resources:

E-Tec has grown in the market and so has the competitiveness amongst the ALP’s in building their brand name and attracting top-notch students. ALP’s like Zell Education provide their own materials which help students narrow down their focus on only a certain set of books and resources which reduces the cost of buying expensive books and the hassle of relying on multiple books at a given instance. 

I hope reading this post didn’t take much of your time and you found something relevant to take away from here. If there is anything you want to ask me or want to know what my study timetable was while working, shoot me a message on LinkedIn. 

Thanks for reading till the end and if you feel this benefitted you, feel free to share it and help others!