To complete your PER you'll need to complete 36 months' supervised experience in a relevant accounting or finance role.
What is a relevant role?
Ideally, this means that you have a job where your time is spent on activities and tasks that are accounting, finance, audit and assurance related, or in other related technical areas such as taxation, insolvency and forensics.
Experience can be gained prior to registering with ACCA, while you are studying for the exams or after you have completed the exams. However remember that you will still need to get this prior experience signed off by a practical experience supervisor at the employer where you gained the experience.
Where can I work?
ACCA trainees can work in any sector and size of organisation - you don't have to work for an ACCA Approved Employer.
Your experience doesn’t have to be gained in a single role or in one continuous period and you can gain your experience in different roles and with different employers. You could also gain experience by doing voluntary work for clubs, charities or associations.
It's important is to look for the opportunities to help you meet your PER and to obtain a total of 36 months' experience in a relevant role or roles. It's also important that your work is appropriately supervised and that the time you complete towards your 36 months' experience is signed off by your practical experience supervisor.
We recommend you use the range of career resources in ACCA Careers, to help you gain a relevant job.
You can gain experience working on a part-time basis or in a role where your job includes only some accountancy and finance work.
When you record your employment details in My Experience you will be asked to provide details about your role, including the number of hours you work and the percentage of your time spent on accounting or finance related tasks. The tool will use this information to calculate the amount of time you can count towards the 36 months' requirement.
For example, if you only spend 50% of your working time on accounting and finance tasks you can still use this experience towards your PER, you'll just accrue time more slowly. So in this example you would gain six months PER in a 12 month period.
PER is based on the time you’re gaining relevant work experience - not just the time you are in paid employment. So if you're taking an extended break from work but will be returning at some point in the future (for example maternity leave, taking time off to care for a relative or a long-term illness) you can't count this time towards your 36 months.
You should add an end date to you role and can add a new role with a new start date when you begin working again.
It is important to ensure that your PER record is updated and that your practical experience supervisor has signed off any performance objectives or time you have achieved when you change roles. MyExperience will prompt you to get your time signed off when you indicate you are leaving a role or when you reach 36 months in total.
You will then need to achieve the remainder of your time and any remaining performance objectives in your new role.
If you are not working in a relevant accounting or finance role then you should still update MyExperience to record details of your employment. Time you spend in this role will not count towards your 36 months' relevant experience, however if your work is supervised by a suitably qualified person then you may be able to achieve the following performance objectives while working in this role:
2: Stakeholder relationship management
3: Strategy, innovation and sustainable value creation
5: Leadership and management
If you work for an Approved Employer, you will still need to complete a minimum of 36 months in a relevant role.
You'll still use MyExperience to record your employment information to let ACCA know that your role is with an Approved Employer and you’re planning to claim the performance objective exemption.
Use the ACCA Career Navigator to understand how the ACCA Qualification is relevant to a particular job role, the sector you work in. This tool will help you discuss your current skillset with your employer and can help you think about your future career and which other roles in finance and accountancy you might be interested in.
