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Hi all,
I’ve been at ACCA exams for 2.5 years now. I’m due to start my first P in March. It’s been a rocky road, littered a few failed exams. I’ve been doing some pretty tedious trainee accountant duties (Acc Payable/Receivable, some month end accruals, quarterly reporting prep etc) and despite passing F7 a couple of weeks back, I felt little by means of joy and just found myself asking myself “what am I doing this for”.
In short, I dislike accounting and have no intention of working as one even should I qualify. I have always been clear & vocal about this since day one and have been reassured by people that “it’s a great qualification to have”, “you can work in all areas of business with the skills from it” etc. etc.But I’ve found myself envious of people in departments around me actively using skills to fix things and solve problems (IT skills mainly: programming etc) while meanwhile I feel I have barely (needed to) use my brain in the 3ish years I’ve been working there. I’ve thought of moving jobs, but I doubt any trainee accounting role will make me tick much. I’ve considered going back to Uni to do IT or something technical, and with intakes from September 2018, should I just pack it in and go for it? I’m conscious of “the grass appearing greener” but i’m just frustrated and wonder if I’m wasting my time doing ACCA when I’ve no intention of working as an accountant.
Sorry if that was overlong, I’m in a bit of a cloud atm… Thanks for any advise/help that can be provided..
Then why started it in the first place when you weren’t really interested working as an accountant/business executive?
I really doubt it if you can land an IT job with just ACCA.
You should do more research regarding the IT professions before making decision, ask the people who work in these roles to know if their jobs are what you really want to do. If yes, you should make a change.
I understand your frustration, but as you say, you’ve only been doing basic junior work, mostly in the the area of financial accounting by the sound of it. Plus accounts payable, which isn’t really accounting at all.
As you’ll know from your studies, there are more areas to accounting than just financial accounting. Perhaps you need to do something slightly different but still within the accounting sphere.
I’m in a similar position, having done financial accounting for just over 2 years and having just passed my first P paper. It’s been good development to do financial accounting for those 2 years and if I look back at what I knew in 2015, when I didn’t know what debits and credits were, I’ve come a long way. But now I’m starting to get a bit bored of it and I want to put some of those skills I learnt in F2, F5 and F9 to use. So I’m trying to get a transfer within my company to the management accounting team.
Even if you decide you don’t want to go into accounting, I do think having the qualification will be useful to you. Think about what the average person thinks when you tell them you’re a chartered accountant. They’ll probably think you’re:
– intelligent
– hard-working
– determined
– good with numbers
– have great attention to detailThese are all great qualities to have in most positions within a business. People will take you seriously if you have the qualification. If you quit now, what was the point in doing it for 3 years? You can certainly do something different after you qualify if you want to, and learn IT skills etc. Personally I’m not sure if I’ll end up being a pure accountant in future, but I know the qualification adds value to my CV and is something I can fall back on if I need to.
I think you should try to stick it out and finish your exams if you can. If you’re bored with your current position, that’s understandable but you can fix that without quitting ACCA.
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