Student Chartered Accountant Review

I am trainee student chartered accounting, hoping to become fully ACCA qualified in 4 years times. On a day to day basis, I would go out to clients (industry, charities, schools and OMB's) and assist the senior/manager in completing an audit. Usually, I would be tasked with a few audit areas like Cash & Bank, Wages& Salaies, Fruad, Commitments and contingencies, statutory records, income and revenue etc to complete by myself or to complete a section of it. I would be interacting with audit seniors (partially and fully qualified) and/or managers. My responsibillities are to complete working papers in a timely manner with sufficient information on them, set up work papers for others to complete or assist in any other way.

I am currently undergoing my AAT Level 3 training and will progress up to Level 4 by early 2015. After that, if all goes well I should be proceeding to the ACCA qualification. My company has arranged internal training courses, called Skills for Business, which concentrates on what it means to be an auditor and the specific procedures that we take to an audit amongst other business skills. Any skill as regards to how an audit works and how to properly present your work is a new skill learnt. Also, learning to work with others and interact with different clients every week has been a new experience.

I enjoy working with different teams every week and meeting new clients. It enables me to network will like-minded people and to learn from their experiences. As regards to new clients, it always interesting to learn how their business works and how they have made their business what it is today. It's surprising how many different methods there are to achieve the same result. The company is very friendly and occassionally you get to meet colleague from other offices too, which again widens the amount of experience you can gain from talking to people. Audit is not quite as I expected but it has been a nice surprise and I do enjoy my time at work.

There is a lot of involvement in tasks and audit. To a certain extent you get thrown into the deep end when there is a new audit. Recognition is through appraisal sessions with my appraisal manager, and this is to set objectives for the next few months and go over some feedback from colleagues about how to improve my work.

The programme is well organised. It's easy to get support of any kind and to ask questions about any problems I may have.

Lots of support is given to me, my training provider is always availble to contact.

Lots of support from my employer, the HR team are always on hand as a first port of call. Otherwise, audit seniors and my line/apprasing manager will always be happy to answer any questions or queries I have.

As I had to relocate from London to Birmingham, my pay package has been a little low to pay for rent and other expenses. I am still slightly reliant on my parents for the more expensive but necessary expenditure. Travel costs are always claimable from Mazars but there is a timing lag therefore cashflow isn't always smooth. Location wise, prices in Birmingham are much cheaper but I still need to consider whether some costs are really necessary or not. Also, I believe that I am working just as hard as the graduates in my year but are getting paid less purely becuase I have no degree.

I don't tend to get involved in man Mazars activies but on occassion will go to business parties.

Yes

Friendly place to work and lots of support.

Be yourself and be honest.