If you are an ACCA student, you will eventually have to complete PER aka Personal Experience Record. This is compulsory in order to qualify as a Chartered Accountant with ACCA.
There are also 13 exams to pass, 36 months of a practical experience and Ethics Module to complete.
It all seems very daunting and Exams are hard enough, so having all the other requirements it becomes super complicated and it gets pushed off of the priority list. However, if you end up leaving this until the very end of your study journey, it will become very difficult to complete and might even prolong the period before you can fully qualify.
Having passed 13 exams alone will only get you as far as becoming an affiliate. This, however, means you still are unable to use ACCA letters after you name or say that you are fully qualified accountant.
So in this post, I wanted to break down the PER’s for you in a step by step guide on how to complete the PER for ACCA and how to fill it in as myself I remember struggling with it at the time I was getting those done.
I will try to cover what I consider to be relevant, however, if you have any more questions please don’t hesitate to ask in the comments below as they might be relevant to other readers.
The purpose of PER
Let’s start off by explaining the purpose of PER.
The ACCA website has the whole guide and definitions but I just wanted to explain it from a student’s point of view.
ACCA would like to prepare you from every angle so that when you qualify and go off working as a Chartered Accountant you have all the experience, knowledge and skills required to demonstrate that you have the best set of skills for the job. Hence the PER is to check and ensure that you follow the set programme and prove that you are gaining those skills and training required to qualify.
Can you get away with it?
Yes, only if you do happen to work for an Approved Employer.
Those employers are registered with ACCA and follow strict rules to ensure they comply with the PER’s objectives guidelines. Basically, they ensure you go through a programme where you follow certain training to cover the Essential and Technical subjects that otherwise you would need to complete via PER record.
Also, you would need to fill in the Approved employer PER confirmation form in order to claim the exemptionsExemption.
If you decide to leave the employer while on the programme you would still need to fill in this form so you won’t lose any of the training and PER’s you have managed to complete while employed.
In any other case i.e. if you are working in any other employment, you need to complete all 9 PER’s.
Before you begin… I have a little video on PER for you to watch:
Step by step guide on how to complete PER for ACCA
Step 1
Log into you myACCA website.
Step 2
In your Dashboard, select Record your Practical experience.
This should take you to the PER/ work experience record page:
The below screenshot shows that the student has already recorded 66 months of employment. For the purpose of this post, I will only be demonstrating the second next thing- Personal objectives.
Select View Objectives:
Step 3
The next screen will allow you to navigate between different objectives and select which one you want to choose.
You must complete 5 of Essential objectives plus 4 out of 14 Technical objectives.
You don’t have to do them all at once. It can take you as long as you need really, however, I would recommend working on those as you go along your study/ working journey as it will allow you to avoid delays and stress later.
Select any of the below objective you like to complete first:
Step 4
For the purpose of this guide, I have selected the very fist one – Ethics and professionalism.
Once selected, click on the Start Objective option:
Step 5
You will be able to read a guide on each objective in the tabs below:
- Description– tell you more about the objective
- Examples of activities– gives you examples of what kind of activities would be suitable
- Linked exams– provides information on exams relevant to the objective
You need to achieve all of the Elements as listed by clicking Claim.
Step 6
Each time you select an Element – it puts it for you in a basket. Once you selected all of them you would have 5 items in a basket.
Step 7
Now it is time to write the Statement
The statement is where you give an example backed up by your personal work experience that demonstrated you have achieved your objective. You are only allowed 200-500 words here so you cannot over every Element of the Objective. However, you need to describe what exactly did you do that matches the Element that you are Claiming. It can be one or two examples. I really wouldn’t recommend covering more as you will run out of words, or won’t be able to fully explain how did you achieve given element in a very few words.
Things to include:
I would recommend the following:
- Start off explaining what kind of role were you in during the experience
- Include the vocabulary from the elements (like I have highlighted below)
- Be descriptive of the scenarios you are using but don’t go into too many details (especially if the information is confidential such as specific numbers or names of particular people)
- Avoid jargon and abbreviations
- Be concise
- Avoid copying from other people as ACCA does audit those answers and can investigate further if they find you copied someone else’s answers or anything seems suspicious
Once you are done with the Statement you need to Save it and Submit for a review to your Supervisor/ Mentor.
Here is a guide on how to add a Supervisor
Once you have the Supervisor, you then select it from the list to submit your Objective for a review. If you haven’t got a supervisor, you will have a similar message as below:
So ensure you first have the supervisor for you to select from the list.
Step 8
Once you have done it all and submitted it to a supervisor, they will receive an email to sign off the Objective.
Be prepared that they might reject it if they think you have not covered enough information or it is not relevant to the objective.
You should now see next to your Objective a Started bar that would not have been there before.
Once the Objective is approved and signed off, you will get an email notification confirming this, also you will notice the circle chart will now show one Objective as completed and the sign below it will change from O completed to 1 Completed.
What’s next?
Once you are done with the first Objective, move to next one until you complete all 9.
Don’t forget to also record your work experience as you go along. This is a similar process, only that you don’t have to do any statements but it does need to be signed off by your mentor.
Every experience will be listed under the Employment section and you will see the similar circle chart showing how many months you have completed.
Below you can see the student has completed 66/36 months already and will no longer have to record the work experience. Once you are done with 36 months you do not need to carry on recording your employment details.
Conclusion
I hope you have enjoyed this complete PER for ACCA students guide and found it useful. Please remember that regardless of how long it will take you it is so worth staying on this journey. It is very rewarding and brings tons of opportunities once you qualify.
I would invite you to read my related post about ACCA studies:
Reduce Exam Day Stress and be at Your Best Capacity- 10 tips
6 top tips on how to study having kids
How to keep motivated after exam failure!
8 Most Essential Tools for Professional Student
Just wanted to give a shout out to my friend Daly C. who has helped me put this post together.
Thank you Daly and also I wish you very best of luck on your ACCA journey.
Please let me know how far are you on your ACCA journey and if you are interested in any other matters study-related let me know and I will try to cover it in my next post.
Thank you so much for reading.
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