Latest accountancy graduates are soaring to high-flying career

THE latest students from the UK’s first degree to include work as a chartered accountant have landed themselves high-flying careers.
It is graduation time at the BA (Honours) Business Accounting and Finance (known as the Flying Start Degree programme), offered jointly by Newcastle University, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW).
This year saw the second cohort of students graduate, and almost all of the graduates now have careers with PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, either in the Newcastle office or in other offices around the UK. The students can expect to qualify as chartered accountants in the next 12 months.
The degree is the first of its kind in the UK and combines academic study with paid professional work experience and an accelerated route to qualifying as a chartered accountant.
Dr Raymond Madden, the ICAEW’s executive director of learning and professional development, said: “Flying Start is an innovative degree programme that links academic theory with real business.
“Today’s graduates now have an excellent foundation to build a career in professional services and graduates can take an accelerated route to qualify as a chartered accountant (ACA).
“The ACA is one of the most prestigious and technically-demanding professional accountancy qualifications internationally. Students will join around 130,000 members in over 140 countries.
“Two-thirds (67%) of FTSE 100 qualified accountants acting as finance director or chief executive officer have the ACA qualification – more than four times the number holding any other single qualification – making this the qualification for business leaders.”
Rob Jones, director of studies, Newcastle University Business School, said: “We have worked closely with our colleagues at PricewaterhouseCoopers and the ICAEW.
“The input of all sides results in a programme that helps students develop their academic, personal and professional skills. As a result graduates from the degree have a real advantage once they start their careers.”
Paul Woolston, senior partner, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP in Newcastle said: “PricewaterhouseCoopers believes in fostering and retaining the region’s graduates along with supporting the local community which we believe will help to further strengthen our practice and our local expertise.
“It is wonderful to see so many of our Flying Start students graduate and achieve the success they deserve.”

By Iain Laing, The Journal

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CIMA First Professional Accountancy Body To Offer Islamic Finance Global Qualification

CIMA (the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants) is the first professional chartered accountancy body to offer a global qualification in Islamic Finance, which the CIMA Centre of Excellence is launching today (05 December).

The Islamic finance industry is thought to be worth between £150bn and £250bn, and is growing at an estimated rate of 15 – 20%. In an exciting new development in meeting the needs of its employer and student stakeholders, CIMA today launches a global qualification in Islamic Finance. We believe that this is a first for a professional accountancy body. To date, few courses are available in this area of finance and normally comprise of short 1 – 3 day events. CIMA’s self-study qualification has been developed alongside the International Institute of Islamic Finance, with detailed input from its CEO Dr Mohd Daud Bakar, a renowned Shari’ah Scholar.

Robert Jelly, Director of Education at CIMA, says:
"CIMA has identified that there is considerable demand from the global business community to develop the knowledge and skills required to service this increasingly important market. The CIMA Islamic Finance qualification is the first to be created in conjunction with an Advisory Group made up of academics, practitioners and scholars of Shari’ah, and will assist employers in the City of London and other major financial centres throughout the world in equipping their employees to develop financial products."

CIMA’s new qualification is available at Certificate level and comprises four modules: Islamic commercial law; Islamic banking and takaful (insurance); Islamic capital markets and instruments; and accounting for Islamic financial institutions. It is estimated that a student can complete these modules in between 2 – 6 months depending upon prior experience.

The qualification is available across the globe as a series of study guides, revision kits and a microsite and provides students with a thorough knowledge of the theoretical and religious aspects that underpin Islamic finance. On completing the Certificate, students will be comfortable with the array of Arabic terminology used throughout as well as the regulations which govern Islamic finance in practice.

ACCOUNTING - IT’S IN EVERY ONE OF US!

Kieran Lyons, director of publishing, talks with June Menton, author of a new ICAI text, on her mission to simplify book-keeping and accounting standards for the general public An oft-repeated accounting story concerns three hopefuls being interviewed for an important position. The accountants are asked one key question: “What’s 2 plus 2?” The first candidate answers, “It’s 4, of course,” and is told, “Don’t call us, we’ll call you.” The second answers, “Well, most of the time the answer is 4, but sometimes it’s 3 and sometimes it’s 5.” The third interviewee thinks before replying: “What do you want the answer to be?” Guess who got the job? According to June Menton, that’s often the perception of accountants by those outside the business – bean counters who can sometimes get creative depending on the time of year and the whim or clout of their clients. In her role as financial controller of The Irish Sports Council, she’s had to throw light on the profession and its procedures for a wide constituency of non-finance professionals and volunteers. In 2004, she wrote a guide which showed the demand for a clear, uncomplicated book on double entry and accounting concepts. So, many late nights and working holidays later, Crack the Books: Accounting for Non-Accountants, will be launched to the general market next month by ICAI Publishing. For June, the key hurdles to understanding are jargon and fear. “If you’re trying to simplify the basic elements of accounting, there’s no point lecturing non-accountants about accounting standards and audit procedures.” She finds that once the numbers are put in a real-life context, people quickly grasp the principles. “The penny drops when you tell clients that when they make entries in their cheque books and fill out their tax returns, they’re carrying out an accounting function. As finance professionals, we sometimes forget the same is true of us too. When we sign a mortgage on our home we should understand the accounting method the lender uses to calculate the interest charged in each loan period.” Broadening out the theme of simplifying the profession for a wider base of sole traders and people starting their own businesses – especially as audit exemption thresholds change the nature of the auditing profession – the need to explain the theory of accounting and finance becomes even more pressing. “Individual investors and businesspeople have to understand some accounting rules in order to figure out the return on capital invested,” she says. Every organisation, profit-motivated or not, needs to know how it stands financially. Put simply, accounting supplies all that information. June says showing clients how to prepare basic financial statements won’t mean that practitioners are teaching themselves out of business. Rather it’ll make life simpler if accountants equip their clients with the tools to help themselves, as opposed to having them arrive on their doorstep panic-stricken on the 30th of October with bursting shoe-boxes of receipts and invoices under their arms. In terms of other financial reports, again it’s real life scenarios that are the best tutors. People have their eyes opened when they see how a profit-and-loss account summarises the inflows of assets from the sale of products and services during the period as well as the outflow of assets for expenses – leading down to the final profit or, heaven forbid, loss for the period. “Clients are seriously interested in the bottom line,” June says wryly, “particularly when you explain that the bank or their financiers will pounce on this as evidence of viability.” Understanding the profit and loss account is also crucial if non-accountants are to determine a business’s revenues, and June goes to great lengths in her book to offer simple, clear examples in graphs and illustrations. Taken together, the balance sheet and profit and loss account constitute the hard core of data for people without a financial background who need to stay informed about their business’s or activity’s financial affairs. June has particular sympathy for those people involved in start-ups. “They have invested capital in the business, or the business owes them money and, obviously, they have an emotional as well as a financial interest in how well they’re doing.” Once they come to appreciate how key financial statements are absolutely essential to help them control the performance of a business, identify problems as they arise, and plan the future course of a business, she finds you can feel the waves of relief. “In effect, they come to see accounts as the drivers and the watchmen. You can’t stress enough to people outside the profession, that the internal controls provided by a basic understanding of financial statements are the gram of prevention that’s worth a kilo of cure.” Crack the Books also treats double-entry bookkeeping, and not only for the general public but for those practitioners who have qualified with a less-than-perfect appreciation of its importance. The need for this topic was identified by ICAI past president Cecil Donovan, who helped steer the book’s outline and review the text. Although the importance of double entry has been highlighted in the new ICAI syllabus, some contemporary thinking argues that, in an IT age, the teaching of debits and credits is a waste of training time. For instance, Rick Elam of the AICPA has stated that “traditional double-entry bookkeeping is becoming the Latin of business school - interesting to study and useful from a historical perspective, but not in demand in everyday practice.” Despite such criticisms, June firmly believes double-entry accounting remains crucial. Taking the language analogy, she maintains it offers the key foundation. “Although Latin and double-entry accounting have been derided as immaterial for everyday business, both provide a knowledge platform. Even though few people speak Latin today, it’s the basis for many western European languages, including English, French, Spanish and Italian. Having a firm grounding in Latin can only enhance your ability to master these languages. Similarly, accounting IT is rooted in double-entry accounting. It provides the bedrock for understanding the workings of virtually all accounting information systems.” For June and Cecil, double-entry accounting is not an artificial, historic construct but the natural representation of business events. The fundamentals of accounting are the same whether a manual or computerized system is used. “A euro amount is assigned to each impacted account; the processing system aggregates all those transactions that affect particular accounts. When processing is complete, balances are determined and presented as financial statements.” They are correct in saying that the accountant should be in command of the system, not the system in command of the accountant. One of the themes of the books is that accounting software packages aren’t and shouldn’t be treated as "black boxes" that produce analyses and financial statements. Even though debits and credits may not be formally used in many computerised systems, software developers are all too awar that double accounting are the traditional systems used by organizations to accumulate, analyse and present financial information. They must understand its theoretical underpinnings, as must chartered accountants. So, nobler mission to teach the world aside, how did she dream up the title, Crack the Books and what does it mean exactly? Like any sound businesswoman, June smiles and tells us we’ll have to buy the text and read the introduction. Suffice to say, it’s a phrase uttered by a complicated, fictitious businessman with a mixed portfolio of activities, who quite literally had his final outing in a dramatic television show earlier in the year. Was he an exponent of double entry? “Well, he understood that when you give with one hand, you take with the other!” Something for all budding accountants to think about. Crack the Books: Accounting for Non-Accountants will be available in Eason’s and all good bookshops in the New Year. It can also be ordered at www.icai.ie

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Accounting Salaries Keep Climbing

Salaries of accounting and finance personnel continue to increase, according to a new survey.
Accounting personnel saw their average salaries rise 3.5 percent compared to last year, while finance personnel received a 4.2 percent boost, according to a survey of 1,587 organizations by Watson Wyatt Data Services. That beat the 3.1 percent rise last year for accounting personnel and 3.2 percent for finance employees over the previous year.

The biggest boost of 7.8 percent or more went to five jobs tracked on the survey: top strategic/long-range planning executive; chief financial officer/top financial executive; top financial analysis executive; top shareholder relations executive; and shareholder relations administrator.
The Northeast, Southeast and West Coast regions experienced a 3.6 percent increase in salary, while the North Central and South Central regions saw a 3.4 percent hike. Average total cash compensation in the Northeast went up the highest, by 4.6 percent.

Source: WebCPA
Rochelle Park, N.J. (Nov. 16, 2007) By WebCPA staff
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