Nozipho is a South African ACCA trainee who has worked for the Auditor General office/SAICA accredited audit firm, which is registered with IRBA, since she started her ACCA studies four years ago.

Nozipho has successfully completed all of the PER requirements under a SAICA training contract. Her practical experience was documented in a SAICA approved document and signed off by her training officer. This document is equivalent to the ACCA PER recording tool. Nozipho has already completed the two Essentials exams from the Strategic Professional level. However, Nozhipho still needs to complete two of the Options exams in order to complete her ACCA studies. Nozipho is interested in obtaining the ACCA SA AQ and is looking to further progressing her career in one of the big audit firms in South Africa.

The first step for Nozipho is to obtain ACCA membership. In order to do this she needs to complete two Options exams from the Strategic Professional level. When choosing the exams, Nozipho takes into account her career aspirations as she wants to become a registered auditor in the future. Considering this, Nozipho needs to meet the requirements for ACCA’s SA AQ. This means that Nozipho needs to successfully complete the International variant of the Advanced Audit and Assurance (AAA) exam together with a competence based submission. In addition, Nozipho needs to successfully complete either the Advanced Financial Management (AFM) exam or the South African variant of the Advanced Taxation (ATX) exam. Nozipho has previously passed the South African variants of the Corporate and Business Law and Taxation modules from the Applied Skills level, therefore, there are no further requirements in relation to those exams.

As Nozipho is still an ACCA student, ACCA’s CPD requirements are not yet applicable. ACCA members are required to comply with the CPD requirements from the year following their admission to membership date.

Once Nozipho decides that she wants to apply for ACCA’s SA AQ, she needs to ensure that, at the time of her application, she is fully compliant with ACCA’s CPD requirements. Nozipho will be required to successfully complete the Advanced Audit and Assurance exam together with the competence-based submission. This will demonstrate that her technical audit knowledge is up-to-date, which is an essential requirement in order to obtain the SA AQ. Therefore, Nozipho can apply for the ACCA SA AQ as soon as she gets admitted to membership based on her successful exam completion, the completion of the Ethics and Professional Skills Module and the already obtained and verified work experience.

In addition, Nozipho needs to document her work experience in the relevant training record and demonstrate that she has met the required nine audit competencies as specified in Annexure 4 of the RPL. The training record must be verified by a suitably qualified principal* who has detailed knowledge of Nozipho’s work.

* A principal is defined as an appropriately qualified member of a professional accountancy body who has overall responsibility for supervising the training of individuals towards ACCA’s practising certificates (and audit qualification) and acts as guarantor to ACCA that individuals have reached the required standards. In order to be eligible to act as a training principal, the individual must be a registered auditor in South Africa.