Retraining as an accountant - good or bad idea?

[pollyname]

Am looking for advice from accountants - is it a good profession to train in?

I currently have a toddler and am a SAHM and feel I've done all I want to in my previous career (a creative industry).

Is it terribly family friendly, can I get much flexibility? I'd only need to be earning £1k a month, would there be many part-time roles available? We have no family nearby, so no care for holidays or after school so I would either need to be flexible or pay enough to cover the care.

Thought I'd give this a little bump for you as I'm planning the same change. I've completed my level 2 AAT and plan to continue on to level 3 and then look for a finance role to get some experience

Im not an accountant but my ex husband was CIMA qualified management accountant. I'm proposing to start with AAT to give me as one new skills. I think there are enough options for part time basic accounting jobs to make it worthwhile. I'm looking to do AAT level 2 as an added skill for some admin work. My previous industry (food manufacturing) doesn't caterer well for part time working.

You generally don’t get well paid while training and unless I’m missing something my professional body requires 3 years of work experience while training. After that it depends what sector you are in. I’m sure you could find something part time.

It depends what kind of accountancy really. Practice and industry are quite different, practice is more tax returns and book keeping type of work, whereas industry can be quite varied and can include business partnering and advising businesses on how to manage themselves.

I work in industry and no one could pay me enough to do practice, so if that's what you're looking at I'm probably not much help. Part time roles are available in both areas more so at lower levels in industry I would say from what I have seen, if you have your own practice obviously you can set the timelines.

Regarding £1k a month it's hard to know what that equates to as you haven't said how many hours you would be prepared to work?

Also I would go against the grain and I wouldn't recommend AAT for most people. IMO it elongates becoming qualified if that is what you want to do. It was a good route for a friend of mine who did an apprenticeship first but she didn't have to pay for any exams or take time off for study as a result because it was all included.

Re-training for accountancy sounds like a very good plan. Good luck!

I'm currently doing this, and am nearly qualified (ACA and CTA). Retraining in practice (where most training roles seem to be), but planning to move to industry fairly soon. The study is time-consuming, but should be doable with children if you have a supportive partner. You will have less flexibility regarding hours while training, but beyond that there do seem to be a good range of part time roles around.

I'm going to be doing similar, but in bookkeeping via the ICB courses. My plan is to eventually be self employed to work around ds/school etc, and focusing on the finance packages that small businesses (who may not employ a full time accountancy/bookkeeper) use.

I’m a chartered accountant.

I agree with OrcinusOrca’s view that AAT isn’t really worth it. She’s right, it does elongate your training time.

I think that accountancy is a great career, but you need to be aware of some things:

1. The competition for jobs is considerable. I’ve been recruiting around the £35k mark recently (north of England), which will get you a part qualified or just qualified person, and there are loads of CVs. I think that the huge increase in the number of people with degrees has propelled more graduates into what they think is a safe career. The quality isn’t brilliant, but it makes it harder to stand out.

1. You don’t say how old you are. It’s unusual to see somebody over 30 training as an accountant. That’s not to say you shouldn’t do it. The early years can be quite hard going, because it’s quite a hierarchical profession in some ways, especially in practice: the people slightly ahead of you had to do the photocopying and the dull work and crikey are they going to make sure that you do it so that they get a chance to boss somebody about in their turn. I was 25 when I started my training and I found that hard to deal with because I’d worked in a different field before joining one of the big four.

1. It’s only really worth training if you do so whilst working in finance, even in a junior role. Not because of your employer funding the training and giving you day release etc., even though that would be nice, but because any decent institute wants to see that you can put the skills into practice before admitting you to membership. That means that anybody funding their own training is at an automatic disadvantage.

1. It’s going to be much easier for you to do ACCA or CIMA than it is to do ACA. The latter requires you to be on a three year training contract, usually in practice, and is expensive for your employer to sponsor you through. ACCA is probably the most accessible, but I’d rank the qualifications in order ACA - CIMA - ACCA.

1. All of the exams are challenging, so you need a decent maths brain.

1. Part time jobs do not abound in finance. You’ll mostly find them in transactional roles, for which you don’t necessarily need a qualification but which are lower paid. Depending on your role, you may need to work long hours at certain times. I’m a group financial controller and I and my management accounting team need to stay late at month end to meet reporting deadlines. Most businesses try to be family friendly, but it’s not really on for one person to say, “I’m just off to pick up my children, see you!” at 4 pm whilst the rest of the team know that they’ll be there until 9 pm and will have to pick up the slack. The board are not going to wait for their reports. Don’t flame me for this: this is how it is, whether anybody admits it or not.

1. Finance roles suit tougher personalities. You can’t be a shrinking violet. You need to be able to say “no” to people. You also need to be sceptical about what people tell you. It is not a profession where you can float around on a fluffy pink cloud. You are in the firing line when things go wrong in a business. There are loads of bullshitting men in the profession. These are important things to know when choosing a career.

Good luck, and I hope you make the right choice.

I am an accountant, qualified over twenty years ago.

I have spent most of my working life in industry (multi nationals) and no, I do not think it is conducive to flexible working or work life balance. It is long hours, that are unlikely to be paid overtime and there are periods when it is excessively busy. I have rarely come across anyone with flexible working arrangements, would be the kiss of death to a career. On the other hand it can be very well paid and I have been on six figures since my early 30s.

You may get more flexibility if you are thinking more about working in a small office doing largely transactional / processing work. However in this case, I think pursing ACCA or CIMA would be an over investment. These exams are not easy, I have a maths degree but my accountancy examinations were the hardest exams I have ever passed by a fair mile - they are marked strictly and you are studying and working full time and in your case being a mother as well.

So I think that AAT has a value if you are looking at fairly low level book-keeping, accounts payable type of work and from within a setting of small, family sized companies. But otherwise, as a qualification I agree with others, that it would not be of any interest to a corporate.

In a nutshell, I would hesitate to recommend this to you.

I'd say there is plenty of scope to be self employed in bookkeeping/accountancy working for small businesses, self employed etc, and being flexible to accommodate your children. I have several friends do this type of work, some go into companies 2-3 or more days a week, others work flexibly from home and pop in to companies to collect their paperwork for processing.
Two ladies I know have gone on to do their AAT, one sadly is too ill to work at present but the other, after working for herself for years, has landed a good job in a medium sized local accountancy firm and gone full time as her kids are now teenage, I've lost track really as she lives away from me now but I think she's enjoying it.

How many businesses, small or otherwise, are going to entrust their numbers to a self employed person (ie could bugger off at any time leaving a trail of chaos) who isn’t qualified? I assume that’s what the PP meant when she said that two of her friends have ‘gone on’ to do AAT.