Yes. You can use experience from previous job roles (before or after registering as an ACCA student) to help you claim performance objectives. There is no specific time limit. However, a workplace mentor must be available to review and sign off the answers to your challenge questions. Also, as the profession continually evolves, consider carefully if experience gained more than five years ago is still relevant.

Once you are a registered student with ACCA you can access My Experience - ACCA’s online tool where you can record the details of your previous relevant experience. Find out more about ACCA’s Practical Experience Requirement (PER).

Initial fees

When you register, you need to pay the following fees to complete your application:

• Initial Registration (one off)
• Annual Subscription (yearly)

See our fees and charges page for details of current pricing.

Annual subscription enables you to stay on our register as an ACCA Student. You will also be able to enter for exams and fully benefit from wealth of online resources.

Exam fees

An exam entry fee must be paid for each exam you enter. We have exam sittings in March, June, September and December. Exam entry starts roughly four months before each sitting.

Read more about registration and subscription fees

You also need to consider costs for your learning and this will vary depending on what method of study you follow and which learning provider or providers you use.

ACCA is not a learning provider, so you will need to contact these directly to find out what their tuition costs are, whether this is for face to face or online tuition.

Find out more about approved tuition providers

If you are already working in an Accounting Technician role, you may well be getting financial support from your employer for the costs relating to your professional body and for your tuition fees. You should speak with your employer to clarify what financial support they are prepared to contribute towards the costs associated with your studying and taking ACCA exams.

Each employer has its own policy on what financial support they provide for employees who are studying for professional qualifications. You may find this means you share the costs with your employer or your organisation will meet all these costs. If you are not in a finance role/training scheme or in paid employment you will be required to meet all these costs yourself.

Yes. On your way to ACCA membership, there are other qualifications you can achieve along the way. This is a great way to show your knowledge and skills to employers and helps keep you on track and motivated. You can achieve:

• an Advanced Diploma in Accounting and Business from ACCA
• a BSc (Hons) degree in Applied Accounting awarded by Oxford Brookes University

Find out more about these qualifications and what’s involved.

Visit out Tuition Provider database to find out where you can study. We recommend you study with an Approved Learning Partner.

Individuals who have completed AAT Level 4 are eligible for exemptions from the three Applied Knowledge exams. 

Like all examinations for professional qualifications, ACCA exams are rigorous and demanding and do progress in degree of difficulty as you progress through the syllabus.

The standard of the examinations for the Advanced Diploma is equivalent to the standard of the exams set for a UK Bachelors degree. Similarly, the standard of the examinations for our Professional Level is equivalent to the standard of the exams set for a UK Masters degree.

However, because you will have completed the AAT Qualification syllabus, you will have a firm grounding from which to develop and progress through the ACCA examinations.

In the event you are not successful in an ACCA exam, you simply re-take it at a future examination session. ACCA’s exam progression rules are flexible and in most cases, you should be able to re-take an ACCA paper (if required) without this affecting your ability to study and sit further exams within the syllabus, and so delay your progress.

Find out more information on ACCA exam progression rules.

Should you fail any exam, it is more important that you, first, understand where you went wrong and identify why you were not successful. From this point you will be able to think about how you approach re-taking a failed exam and take the necessary steps to avoid the same outcome in the future.

ACCA provides a number of resources to help students with their exams such as examiners’ interviews and reports which include pointers to the common areas within an exam where students have underperformed, as well as more specific resources designed for students who are re-taking an exam.

Visit our ACCA study support resources today.

No, ACCA students are not permitted to engage in public practice, even if a practising certificate is held from AAT.

For details about the professional activities ACCA students are permitted to undertake, see our rules and regulations for students

Yes, book-keeping work is allowed. What ACCA considers book-keeping is highlighted below and in Am I in public practice? (PDF). The limitation is that students can’t be in public practice; this is explained further in Am I in public practice? (PDF).

ACCA students are permitted to undertake work directly in their business in the following areas, as long as they do not stray into public practice. They can:

• prepare accounting records to trial balance stage
• maintain clients’ records in respect of payroll and employment taxes
• maintain basic sales tax/VAT records.

The following extract from guidance materials explains this in more detail.

Preparation of accounting records to trial balance stage

In the context of maintaining a client’s books of prime entry and ledgers, this may lead to the production of a trial balance.

Book-keeping software will often enable the user to generate reports without any further processing of the data, and without the need to exercise additional professional skills or judgement. In such cases, book-keeping services may extend to the generation of such reports but, of course, advice or comment based on those reports must not be offered.

Where data has to be further processed in order to produce reports for management, this is only permitted under certain circumstances. For example, with regard to the preparation of management accounts, where the management accounts are to be used solely by your client for internal purposes, the conversion of the trial balance into management accounts (or other management information) falls outside the definition of public practice. However, where the management accounts are to be passed to a third party, most commonly a bank, this is public practice work, regardless of whether the third party is aware of your involvement.

Where a client seeks to send the accounts to a third party, you must try to dissuade your client from forwarding them, and if your client ignores your wishes, you should protect yourself and consider resigning from the engagement.

Payroll services

When considering the payroll services you may provide without having public practice authorisation, it is necessary to remember the principle that book-keeping services do not extend beyond the recording of basic accounting data in order to maintain the necessary financial records. Therefore, calculating statutory and voluntary deductions from gross wages and salaries and summarising the results would meet this principle.

Only ACCA members with public practice authorisation are permitted to provide taxation advice. For example, to recommend tax-efficient remuneration methods to a client would be considered to be a public practice activity.

VAT and other sales taxes

Advice concerning the VAT rates attaching to certain supplies, the benefits of voluntary VAT registration or the advantages and disadvantages of different VAT schemes would be deemed to be public practice. In addition, to make decisions concerning the way in which output tax will be declared or input tax will be claimed would be to make management decisions, and beyond the range of services considered to be basic book-keeping.

However, students would be allowed to generate certain reports relating to sales taxes arising out of the recording of basic accounting data. Such reports may be generated by the accounting software used, and may include summarised figures suitable for inclusion on, say, a quarterly return. Alternatively, figures may be summarised manually for inclusion on a quarterly return. As a routine exercise, this would be deemed to be basic book-keeping.

In subsequently transferring the summarised figures onto a VAT return and submitting the return to the tax authority, an assessment must be made that the figures appear reasonable. Such an assessment may only be made by the client or an accountant authorised to exercise such professional judgement. Therefore, you do not require public practice authorisation in order to be able to transcribe figures from a management report onto a statutory return, so long as it is clear that your client has considered the management report and approved the figures that have been incorporated into the return prior to its submission.

Remember: public practice work will include:

• producing accounts that a third party relies on
• preparing personal or corporate tax returns (even where the client submits them directly to the tax authorities)
• preparing a report or certificate concerning a person's financial affairs that will be seen by a third party (including, for example, confirmation to a potential lender of a person's income).

Please do ask and read up on this area, as this guidance just provides a basic overview.