Guide to Accountancy Qualifications
To the uninitiated, the range of qualifications and levels of skillsets in finance can appear quite complex.
Anyone in the UK can call themselves an accountant or book-keeper even if they have had no training or don’t have a professional qualification. If you are seeking to recruit a qualified accountant, you will need to check to see that your applicants have passed all the stringent exams set by one of the professional institutes.
The main qualifications are:
There are also qualified tax specialists: CTA & ATT:
These are highly respected accountancy qualifications but they do not equate to the ACA, ACCA CIMA or CIPFA.
*There can be some confusion with the CAT qualification as it stands for Certified Accounting Technician, which is offered by the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, but it is not the same as being qualified ACCA.