Practical Experience

Practical experience is unreliable until it is rigorously testified by intellect. In other words, experience is a neutral factor to pass the examination. More important, particularly at the professional stage, is a critical mind in learning and understanding the so-called model answer. From today onwards, always ask ‘why’ and ‘why not’. Don’t be complacent on what the study materials and the model answers tell you.

You may start with each skill mentioned in the practical experience questionnaire. For each skill, you try to get 1 to 2 examples from your practical experience and show how you tackle them with the respective skill. Try to make specific description.

There are two separate issues here:

1. 3 years experience.
2. PER questions.

Whilst they are likely related, they are very different.

3 years experience.
When you fill in your annual report, you say how much related work experience you have done in the year (normally 12 months, but part time and temp jobs could reduce this).
The first time you do this, you have the opportunity to enter MORE THAN 12 MONTHS (eg if you have 2 years experience before your first annual report, you’d enter 24 months).
If you have any trouble with this, I assume it’s easy to fix. Call up ACCA and explain and they can likely edit your info.

PER questions.
The big one.
Very easy.
Or I should say, Very easy – Once you’ve started. Before you’ve started they look impossible!
My advice: Take them one at a time.

Starting:
1. Go through and pick a question you can answer now.
2. Read through all the requirements and think of ways you’ve met the question.
3. Start writing.
4. Send a copy (either through the ACCA system or via email) to your mentor.
5. Your mentor should read it through and either:
a. Say its fine and be happy to sign it off.
b. Say it needs some work – hopefully telling you what and where.
c. Say it’s rubbish and offer no help (in which case; get a new mentor, as this one’s crap!)
6. If you need to redo it, keep going until they are happy to sign it off.
7. Then copy and paste it into the system and send it to them.
8. As they have already reviewed it, they should quickly check it and then sign it off.
9. One questions done.
10. Repeat until done. ?

Basically, you need the questions signed off. Meaning you have to write enough content to satisfy your mentor that you’ve met the experience requirement and so they will sign off the question.

I was amazed how long the first question took me (about 2 years of on-off attempts, planning, re-writing, updating etc) compared to finishing all of them (completed all questions in 2 months after the first was done)

I found the input screens VERY annoying. I spent a long time going through copy and pasting all the questions and parts into a word document (I was told these questions can change over time but it’s not very frequent, if ever). I’d also advise MAKING A COPY OF ALL YOUR WORK! I was told (years ago when it came out) the system cannot lose your data. Well it did. And they couldn’t get it back. So I was VERY glad I’d made a backup!

Also NOTE not everything HAS to be financial related. I was a quality auditor in my company and the experience from that role helped some questions more than my finance role (I think this is especially relevant to people in finance departments, as accountancy firms seem more likely to move you around to get the experience)

Hope this helps!

hi
can any one tell me where do i find a list of the acca approved employers in UAE?

Hey Everyone,

I am a little confused with the new professional experience record tool.

In the old system, I have recorded 35 months of work experience as an accountant. Do I need to link a supervisor to this claimed time? Because in MyACCA, in the Experience Record module, if I click on the Claim Time tab, I see that this 35 months are “import approved”. However, to the left on this page, I can see that “To claim this time you need to link a supervisor to this role”.

Adding to the confusion, the status report says that I have 36 months time in a relevant role, but I maximum have 35 months of experience (as stated above), the remaining 1 month was recorded in the new PER module, and my supervisor has not approved it yet.

I am having my last exam (P7) in December, and I wouldn’t like to delay my admission because of the experience record.

Thanks a lot in advance.

In the old system you self-certified your time in a relevant role. I think In the new system you get it approved, it only need to do so for the portion after the new system went live.

I hadn’t more than 3 years when the new system launched and never had to get my time signed off.