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Dear friends,
I’m sure there are lots of us who don’t work for a company which is in the list of ACCA Approved Employers.
Therefore these students/affiliates have to find a workplace mentor who approves the achievemnet of objectives required by PER.
ACCA stipulates that the workplace mentor has to be “a qualified accountant recognized by law in your country”.
I`m not sure what do they mean by saying recognized by law. I kindly ask opentuition team and those students/affiliates who considered this issue to clearify this for me.And one more question. In what way does ACCA check that the mentor chosen by you meets this requirement?
Thank you in advance! 🙂
I am afraid you are ill informed about the qualification of work place mentor. Your work place mentor need not be a qualified accountant recognized under relevant law of the country of your residence. If your work place mentor is someone who is not in a position to certify your job and not capable to advise on the need for improvements, for eg., if you are reporting directly to the MD of the company, who is not an accountant and his profile is not exclusively handling the accounting and finance of the company (not necessarily be a qualified accountant), then your PER can be certified by the auditor of your company or a qualified accountant providing consultancy services to your company.
A qualified accountant recognised by law of your country of residence means those individuals who are members of an accountancy body set up by the act of government in your country or a body/institute recognized by the government, whose members are authorized to conduct audit of financial accounts, issue audit reports and certify financial statements of a company.
There are mechanisms in place for ACCA to verify whether or not your work place mentor meets the criteria set by ACCA. If your work place mentor is a qualified accountant in the country of your residence, then ACCA may verify his credentials with the local body. The certification process is through your work place mentor’s personal/ /official mail ID that would be sent directly to ACCA, which you have no control of. The section where your work place mentor register for this, have fields to fill in to establish the qualification with reference that ACCA may use to counter verify if the need arises.
In my case, I have been working with various organisations as head of finance and accounting for the last 15 years and therefore my PERs were certified by the respective auditors (a qualified accountant as per law of the country of my residence) of those companies.
I hope this helps.
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sathjyot, thanks a lot for your kind reply above!
You have mentioned that the auditor was the one who signed your PER? I have actually very similar situation to yours. Those days when I was indeed a trainee in the accounting practice are 10+ years ago 🙂 and ACCA is not my very first accounting/aud qualification. And in my case, realistically, I see only two options to proceed with my PER – either to ask to sign it one of the Company’s NED (she is a qualified accountant) or go begging the Company’s auditor. But it was my understanding that if you go this way – this is not your “Workplace mentor” but a “Trainee supervisor” and unlike a workplace mentor, your trainee supervisor does not have an online access to your ACCA account but signs a paper copy instead (which you should keep in the case of the audit)But in myACCA I only see an option to enter a workplace mentor and no option to enter a trainee supervisor… Did you enter your auditor as your workplace mentor and allowed him an access to your account or they signed a paper copy? And in the case of a paper copy option, did you just entered in your myACCA the date of completion and signing or did you email ACCA a signed copy/scan as well? And also regarding the date of the signing off – do you think it’s appropriate to sign all the PO the same date? I would greatly appreciate if you could share your experience on this matter.
The statutory auditor of the company was my work place mentor and he certified all my PERs and he had access to my account. The process in my case worked in following way:-
Step-01 : Got the Auditor registered as my work place mentor upon my request.
Step-02 ; I answer challenge questions and submit
Step-03 : Auditor receives my answers
Step-04 : He discusses it with me for certain clarifications
Step-05 : He Sign off the answers and the mail goes directly to ACCA
Step-06 : I receive a confirmation mail from ACCA that my submission is signed off by my work place mentor.
Step-07 : In a day or two relevant performance objective element is shown as achieved against it on the ESR.
Step -08: Once you complete all the performance objectives the progress to membership section on ESR will show that practical experience – completed.I am unable to comment on the paper submission as I haven’t done that.
I do not see any inappropriateness in signing off the PER at one go, if you are experienced and your auditor closely work with you, who is very well aware of your expertise, abilities and knowledge prescribed in the PER.
My PER was signed off by a single auditor, who was the statutory auditor of my company where I was working during the completion of my PER. I did not see the necessity of going back to previous work place mentors, as what is important is whether or not the present work place mentor is supervising or happens to be in a reasonable position to know what you are doing in the company where he audits. The natural process of this situation will be during the audit procedures, as most performance objective elements are a testing component in a statutory audit as well. If you are heading finance and accounting of a company, the natural choice would be the auditor, I believe.
Regarding NED, I doubt she may agree to this first, and secondly it may be inappropriate to choose an NED as work place mentor, as they do not involve themselves in the day to day affairs of the company, except be present in board meetings and audit committee meetings or other matters that may deem fit an normally do not have reporting subordinates. Going by this meaning ACCA may not accept this as suitable work place mentor, I believe.
I hope this helps.
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sathjyot, thank you so much for your kind detailed reply! Highly appreciate it! I agree that NED as a work place mentor may not be accepted by ACCA, that’s why I thought of the option “trainee supervisor” (especially considering that we often discuss tax, accounting, reporting issues) don’t know… may be its really easier to consider the auditor… Anyway, thank a lot for your help!
hy
is it possible to achieve and sign off all the performance objectives in 18 months if am working with a cpa firm?
i know i will have to work for another 18 months to be an acca member.
am asking because i have started to work in a cpa firm and am intending to shift to commercial industry in jan 2017
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