Friday 28 June 2013

ACCA procedure of claiming your Practical Experience Requirements (PER)

To become an ACCA member and to call yourself a qualified accountant you need to complete practical experience. You should prove that you are able to apply in the work place the knowledge which has learned in your exams. It helps to demonstrate your potential employer that you have practical skills, not only knowledge and ethical behaviour.

You can gain your PER before, during or after completing your exams. It would be great advantage if you complete your PER at the same time with your exams as it reinforces what you learn for the exams.

What is PER?


PER is a guidance for you which includes 36 months practical experience and 13 performance objectives (POs) requirements. POs are closely linked to the exams syllabus. It would be a benefit to coordinate your study and achieving POs to gain the most from both.

What is the relevant experience?




You can work in any sector and size of organization to obtain 36 months in a relevant role or roles.

Your job should includes the activities and tasks related to accountancy, finance, audit and assurance, taxation, insolvency and forensics.

If your job includes a small amount of relevant work, you can still claim these time spent of relevant activities.

Who is relevant workplace mentor?


Workplace mentor is a professional who supports and helps you to gain 13 POs and signs off them either in paper form or online via My experience section. S/he works closely with you and knows the type of your work and also the quality of your work. This will be your line manager or whoever you report on particular projects or activities.

To be relevant for this role, your workplace mentor should be a qualified accountant:

  • an ACCA member, or 
  • a member of accountancy or audit body recognised by law in the country in which trainee works.


If your workplace mentor is not qualified accountant, you need a "training supervisor" who is qualified and can act as a counter signatory.

You may have more than one workplace mentor.

As your training supervisor can't accept online My experience section, you need to print you challenge questions and answers to sing off and keep them. The sign off forms may be selected for a PER audit.

Performance objectives

You are required to achieve 13 POs:

  • all nine essentials - PO # 1-9
  • any four optionals - PO #10-20

Each PO contains three challenge questions. You answer them and then submit to your workplace mentor for review. S/he signs off them or approves online.

I think it will be great to take both variants of approvement online and paper form.

After completing all 14 exams, Ethical module and PER, you can apply for ACCA membership. If ACCA selects you for a PER audit, you can prove you PER by paper forms.

Five myths about ACCA's performance objectives





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