Signing accounts as a ACCA member

Hi,
This also depends upon the regulation of the country you in which you are residing and intend to practice in because countries have their own local accountancy bodies as well and they have their own regulations in terms of signing off. Since you have not specified the country, I won’t be able to give a specific answer.

There are countries which are part of Joint examination Partnership. In which case you get the membership of the local body of that particular country on getting the membership of ACCA. https://www.accaglobal.com/my/en/footertoolbar/contact-us/jes.html

Then in other cases, you need to give some extra exams or some particular ACCA papers of specific variants in order to get the practising certificate
.
Like if you would like to obtain UK or Irish Registered Auditor status then you will need to take the UK/Ireland variants of the Corporate and Business Law (LW), Taxation (TX), Strategic Business Reporting (SBR) and Advanced Audit and Assurance (AAA) exams. If you are awarded exemptions from the Corporate and Business Law (LW) and/or Taxation (TX) exams but your degree/qualification does not cover UK or Irish tax and law you will need to pass the UK or Irish variants in order to be eligible for a practising certificate and audit qualification.
The above is from the ACCA website and you can find it here
https://www.accaglobal.com/ca/en/help/exam-sessions.html
under the heading “If I want to achieve UK Registered Auditor status, do I have to take any particular exams?”

And then finally, there are countries with local bodies that unfortunately do not authorise ACCA members to sign off because they have given that authorisation to their local body professional accountants only. In that case, one may have to get the qualification of that local professional body too if they wish to have the authorisation to sign off.

Some additional link for help
https://www.accaglobal.com/an/en/member/sectors/smp/practising-certificates-and-licences/apply-for-an-acca-practising-certificate.html

Hope this helps.

I can see you have asked

@supermessiah said:
if ACCA members can prepare and sign and stamp financial statements for clients

I am sure you just meant signing off and authorising since preparing the financial statements and then authorising them would be a self review threat to objectivity and independence of the auditor which must be avoided and safeguarded against the threat. Also the preparation of the financial statements is the clients’ job.