CIMA...... Just got started

Very relieved today, passed all Strategic Level at the first sitting so have booked myself onto the case study now and the lessons start next week. Bit strange with the results though as the only one I was pretty sure about having passed was my lowest mark (E3), the other two I was much less sure about but managed a fairly comfortable pass in both.
 
You studying with Kaplan? I did strategic with them but since there course starts in like 2 days and I am away i think i'm going with BPP for T4, their course doesn't start till 30th or something
 
Yep, Kaplan for me at the moment and I've got to say I've been fairly impressed with them for the most part although I don't have anything much else to compare it with. It'd be nice though if they didn't give you the textbook plus the "condensed" study notes which are in fact almost as long now as the full textbook - I actually think it might be quite handy if they either gave a CD copy of the notes so that you could refer to it without needing the whacking great book or if there was too much risk of piracy there then an online copy linked to your CIMA account since you've got to keep up membership anyway.
 
Anyone get results today? Passed my Case Study Exam so no more exams for me! **** yeah.

Just got to start filling in my experience record now :(
 
Congratulations daver on passing T4. Same boat here although I've made a start on my experience record as if I hadn't I'd have forgotten half of it - I'm in no huge rush to get it handed in though. I'm sure the results were later today than they've ever been before as it was about 08:30 when I got the email and I was already on a train up to Liverpool. Do you happen to know if they give a breakdown of the marks for T4 as they've started doing for the earlier exams? It doesn't make much of a difference but morbid curiosity makes me want to know.
 
Congrats to you as well :) I think we get a breakdown but not sure how detailed it is. Yeah i still haven't had my email off them with my results but the mark is up on the mycima thing. Luckily i had heard they don't come out till later in the off sittings so didn't lay awake all night waiting for the email like normal.

I probably need to get my experience thing done asap as it will give me a better foundation for pay negotiations and/or looking for other jobs.
 
I thought I may as well revive this since I've just passed T4 today. I submitted my PER last week so this should be signed off in a couple of weeks. All in all it's a bit of a relief to be done. It hasn't been easy as I had over a year off in the middle due to my wife having a miscarriage before one set of exams. We then followedthis with a daughter who has kept my hands pretty full since then :).

Career wise I have grown a lot in the time I've been studying. I now work for one of the biggest companies in the UK which presents huge opportunities for me to progress. CIMA has helped enormously in preparing me for my role in the company and has not limited me to just finance.

Best of luck to those still studying, be it CIMA, ICAEW, CA or ACCA, I'm sure you'll get there in the end if you put in the work.
 
Accountants are ten a penny on the job market at the mo. CIMA etc are just too easy to pass and are really considered the bare minimum these days for a proper accountant position. The questions all you ambitious folks should be asking yourselves are: what's next, and how do I differentiate myself from the hundreds of other jokers with a professional accounting qualification.

Carve a niche for yourselves and reap the rewards! Don't slave away hoping you'll get promoted based on your pleasant demeanour and jack of all trades professionalism. Identify a specific area and learn the **** out of it. You are not a doctor or a lawyer; you are what doctors and lawyers do when they fail school.

Here endeth the lesson :D.
 
You sound like a bitter accountant yourself :p

Completing the studies is a means to an end. The simple fact is that no matter how capable you are, in order to be considered for future development you need to qualify. Do I differentiate myself from other accountants where I work? Without a doubt yes. This is a beginning, I am by no means finished with my development.

As a footnote I have never wanted to be a lawyer nor am I selfless enough to be a Medical Doctor (although their selflessness hasn't extended to ash cash) :)
 
Participant said:
Identify a specific area and learn the **** out of it. You are not a doctor or a lawyer; you are what doctors and lawyers do when they fail school.
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This oozes regret.

I think your lesson is just plain common sense and applicable to a lot of industries, doctors and lawyers are not guaranteed jobs either, they need training contracts and eventually will also specialise. Yeah, it is the bare minimum if you want to go anywhere (one of my colleagues is hot stuff on capex and fixed assets balance sheet reporting but until she qualifies she won't make manager), there are only so many positions out there which look for QBE. Fortunately, the specialisation part comes from working in different industries, employers are very happy to employ accountants who come from a similar industry.

Like speedfreak said, for me - it was a means to an end, I had nothing better to do in my evenings so I started studying whilst working.

Also accountants will always be in demand (unless there's a nuclear apocalypse -then you're screwed) - if they were ten a penny on the job market, it would be difficult to get a job interview (which it isn't as I'm hunting at the moment). They're important in the expansion of any company.

Good luck to you all. I'm ACCA qualified now but I am currently a management accountant at a charity. Don't be negative. Your job title may repel women but you're still human. :)

My advice to anyone looking to develop themselves - learn how to use excel properly, I mean VBA coding and learning to use other functions that aren't pivot or Vlookups. If you can build a financial model (other than linear regression), you are hot property.
 
My gf is doing the ACCA, 1 exam per month as she's also working. She's passed 8 papers and waiting on the result of her 9th. After that she has 5 more to do, she tells me it's getting pretty difficult for her now,
 
Certainly my qualification is a means to an end. If I want to move jobs there's no way I would even get considered for anywhere without the qualification.

I agree with 00bob00 the things I am valued for by my company and the things that will get me jobs elsewhere are things like IT skills, e.g. being involved in implementing new systems & setting up the information systems to get data out of them or skills gained from experience like being involved in the selling & purchase of group companies, covering for the FD whilst away etc.
 
00bob00 said:
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Thanks for posting. The previous post you quoted got me a down a little bit. I've just finished AAT and will be starting ACCA this September. I am always teaching myself and learning more Excel but unfortunately in my current accounts position I do not have the ability to "learn" more at work with Excel.

Are there any decent ways of learning more Excel? I am confident with pivots, V&H lookups, and a bit of coding but I would love to learn more. Are there seminars to go to that would help? Or advanced courses you can recommend?
 
wingman said:
Are there any decent ways of learning more Excel? I am confident with pivots, V&H lookups, and a bit of coding but I would love to learn more. Are there seminars to go to that would help? Or advanced courses you can recommend?
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Always try and be practical in your learning, going to seminars and attending advanced courses will improve your knowledge but it's the application of that knowledge that counts.

Create an opportunity - my knowledge has increased exponentially over the last couple of years (you will find this happens, one day, you'll be chugging along doing simple accounts/tasks, then somebody will ask you do something and everything snowballs after that). Here's the story:

However I contribute a lot of it down to this. One day I was on twitter and a small independent metal music company I followed was looking for accounting advice - I was still a student, so I offered my help, we got chatting and we discussed what he wanted.

He wanted more money for himself. So I made him a model. It was a really simple model, money in, money out, overheads, production costs for making music, his different income streams etc. I did a quick cashflow to see if there were periods where he would spend more money. When I was doing it, I would google for the answers. Other people must be in a similar situation. It was as simple as that. I did it in my spare time. It was great because you would read up similar scenarios and ultimately their advice in the same situation. Development of knowledge.

So either find an opportunity or mess about with dummy figures. Think about the information you deal with on a daily basis and ask yourself how could you automate the tasks you currently do (macro?) - is there a better way to present it?

Just remember, if you're doing your exams, it's just the beginning. You're a mercenary for hire. Your skills are wanted out there.
 
Yeah I'm amazed the amount of people that do not realise the power of google. Anything I don't know how to do I google and usually find the answer, the only things I usually can't get answers for are to do with obsure or bespoke systems. Part of my job includes providing IT support for the group and google probably solves about 70% of my problems for that.

I would say being able to understand database structures is a key skill for an accountant these days
 
robgmun said:
My gf is doing the ACCA, 1 exam per month as she's also working. She's passed 8 papers and waiting on the result of her 9th. After that she has 5 more to do, she tells me it's getting pretty difficult for her now,
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How is she doing 1 per month? As far as i'm aware ACCA exam sittings are only June and December.


I've just sat 2 of my ACCA exams and all going well i'll have 4 left to do which *should* result in my last exams being June 2014.

Currently i'm a Systems Analyst so as you mention its very IT based and database related implementing improvements etc.
 
robgmun said:
My gf is doing the ACCA, 1 exam per month as she's also working. She's passed 8 papers and waiting on the result of her 9th. After that she has 5 more to do, she tells me it's getting pretty difficult for her now,
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I don't know precisely how ACCA is structured and it may depend on her abilities and inclinations for particular facets of the learning but it's not always the case that it gets more difficult up to the final exam(s). In CIMA for instance P2 is probably thought of as more of a threshold paper than any of the others. There's occasionally something to be said for trying to tackle the difficult papers as you go along rather than leaving them towards the end when your motivation might be lower.

daver said:
Yeah I'm amazed the amount of people that do not realise the power of google. Anything I don't know how to do I google and usually find the answer, the only things I usually can't get answers for are to do with obsure or bespoke systems. Part of my job includes providing IT support for the group and google probably solves about 70% of my problems for that.
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Google may not always have the answer but it's often a whole lot better than the Microsoft help functions and even if you don't find precisely what you need it can point you in the right direction so with a bit of thinking you'll be able to solve the problem.
 
Personally thought that on ACCA 2 out of the 5 papers aren't particularly difficult being P1 and P3. The others though are a nightmare i would have to agree :(

Luckily for me i passed all of mine first time except for the last one...................typical
 
I'm studying for my ACA Advanced Stage exams in July (or at least I say studying, I should probably start soon... :p). I can't wait to qualify so I can get out of audit, I'm getting more sick of it by the day.

Participant said:
you are what doctors and lawyers do when they fail school.
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And doctors and lawyers are what astronauts become when they fail school, I'm not sure what your point is :p
 
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