Thank you for your reply, as advanced user of excel I know it is possible to make it work for double entry system, but I got unswer for the main question, than you for your post!

Thank you for notice, could you please suggest a good bookkeeping software?

I with Peasie and would recommend VT Transactions.

For ICB exams, I believe that any dedicated accounting package will do as long as it can produce various Ledger, Accounts, Supplier and Customer reports but in general, the exams are based around Sage, so I would suggest  Sage Instant for use with ICB exams and tutorials.

Bill

syllabusrider, yes you can use Microsoft Excel or any other spreadsheet (OpenOffice is free and runs on a Mac too). There is no legislation in the UK about what you can or cannot use, but as Bill says, to pass exams you may need to become familiar with a particular brand.

Bill, thank you sharing your knowledge; I appreciate all your suggestions, as I noticed here is everything around Sage. Is it really so good, for example if I have plenty of clients, is it ok for fast entries? I have experience with Compac, once I saw Sage presentation, seems it is more analytical stuff, not businesswise for providing service for huge amount of companies, if you understood what I mean.

-- Edited by syllabusrider on Wednesday 4th of August 2010 12:17:17 AM

Peasie thank you, it is so cheap..  Does it suit with ICB exam requirements?

And one big question to everybody - in my country we don't divide bookkeeping and accountancy, so it is hard to understand.

Where is the difference in service? As I understood, bookkeeper cant give financial advice and represent company in investigation. Is it really all?

-- Edited by syllabusrider on Wednesday 4th of August 2010 12:57:51 AM

Peasie wrote:

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syllabusrider wrote:

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Peasie thank you, it is so cheap..  Does it suit with ICB exam requirements?

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I don't know what the requirements are for the ICB exam. I'm doing a distance learning course with Ideal Schools (Glasgow). They supply a fully licenced copy of Sage Instant Accounts with the course so I'll be using that for the exam. But you can only use one company at a time with this. With VT Transaction Plus there is unlimited companies so I'll be using that in the real world.

 

 

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Thank you very much showing this possibility!

Wella wrote:

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Syllabusrider

Do you already have qualifications in accountancy? As this may get you some exemptions from membership by examinations.

It may a good idea to check with the ICB if VT Transactions is an acceptable application (Maybe ICBUK can let us know for future reference?)

If you can use Sage (The basic version is Sage Instant and suitable for the exams), it will give you an advantage as it is more or less the standard for a lot businesses in the UK.

I am not a big fan of Sage and it is not the easiest software to use but if you can master it, it will help you understand a lot of the other software applications that are available. 

Bill

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I am doing now ACCA and got exemptions from F1;2;3;4 papers as I have Diploma in accountancy.

I just requested information from ICB about VT Transactions, so I ll let you know about that.

About Sage, yes that is what I meant, it is not useable for fast enough data entry. For me VT Transactions seems much more faster, but what can I say before I start working..

 

Hi Syllabusrider

Best to fill in the trial period form over the week, as the accountant/ bookkeepers suite trial version is set up by the team.

Dont worry about going over the trial period; we tend to extend the trial period by two weeks to bookkeepers and accountants who had proactively assessed (during the trial month) the system but require more time to decide whether Arithmo is the right one for their practice and clients.

 

Dalbir

Wella wrote:

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Hi Syllabusrider

You seem pretty well sure the route to qualifications you are planning to take.

Are you intending to be employed or to work for yourself? The reason I ask is that there will be some restrictions to what you can do from both ACCA and ICB if you are going self employed, until you are fully qualified.

Bill

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I am going to be self-employed and take a part time job in employment at the beginning stage for a support in the beginning.

 

Wella wrote:

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Hi Syllabusrider

You seem pretty well sure the route to qualifications you are planning to take.

Are you intending to be employed or to work for yourself? The reason I ask is that there will be some restrictions to what you can do from both ACCA and ICB if you are going self employed, until you are fully qualified.

Bill

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Bill, could you be so kind and define these restrictions wich you was talking about?

 

Wella wrote:

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This isn't an area I am too familiar with but I will try.

With the ICB, if you are a member, you can only work self employed after being issued a Practice Licence from the ICB. They will only issue this if you have reached the minimum level required (currently level 2 manual or computerised but this is changing to level 2 manual and computerised). This will basically determine what you can do as per the syllabus. The more levels you pass, the more you can do.

You will also need Professional Indemnity Insurance

You can see these here on the ICB website (ICBUK will be better placed to tell you more)

http://www.bookkeepers.org.uk/Syllabuses

ACCA membership (where's Shaun when you need him? He knows more about this) will not let you do anymore than trial balance and VAT, until you have qualified with them, even if you are fully qualified through ICB.

Bill



-- Edited by Wella on Thursday 5th of August 2010 12:23:03 PM

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I appreciate your time answering me, thank you.

As I understood reading all these regulations, I can do everything if I don't mention about ICB and ACCA in my practice, before I get qualification.

Actually things what I need is register with money laundeging sheme, data protection, insurance.

Dalbir wrote:

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Hi Syllabusrider

Have you looked into obtaining mentoring/ work experience from a local bookkeeping or accountancy firm (with a bookkeeping arm), while studying for your ICB exams?

Once you are qualified and have some good experience and some inside tips, you are more likely to make a success of your own practice.

Dalbir

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I have worked for one year in UK as an accounant, previously in EU 6 years. I did 4 years bookkeeping before (not in UK) so for me the main thing is to find all regulations, where do you look up for questions and how you approve your action. I just want to go though all these qualifications, firstly to not miss something and secondly - it always looks nice that you are qualified by some certificates.

Hi!

Be aware, I did not come across much UK specific regulations in my ICB studies.
Same as you I did some bookkeeping in another EU country before and apart from VAT (what you can learn yourself without ICB - not big deal - you will learn from HMRC guidances anyway when in practice) and self assessment tax returns (again, you can learn it from HMRC manuals) there isn't much of a UK legislation in the studies.
If you register with ICB you will not be allowed to do SA returns unless you pass the relevant exam. You can find on their website the syllabus of each qualification and they will let you to do in practice whatever is covered in the syllabus. If you do not register with them, you are allowed to do whatever you want. You can have a look at IAB, they are good as well.Don't be tricked by any of them, nobody really will recognise these qualifications!
And you are part qualified ACCA what is already a higher qualification than any of the bookkeeping bodies (in my opinion)
It has been stated before, the only complication can be your ACCA studies in terms of restrictions. If they only let you work up to trial balance unless you fully qualified, you might have to join a bookkeeping body but you should have a look at IAB as well as ICB to be able to compare, talk to both of them, check out where can you get the most exemptions.
Hope it make sense!

Good luck!

Last time I checked you could work at home without paying business rates provided your business was not public facing. Eg. as soon as put a Nameplate on the front door and invite in the public, you have a 'change of use' and will invite lots of attention ;). A quick phone call to your local council will clear it up for you.

Hello,

I have just had a day of meetings, come home and I'm on this forum, I didn't think it would get me but it did

I'm not an educational man, so don't ask me the specifics, but ACCA skips a lot of the entry bookkeeping ICB syllabus. Maybe I can pursuade one of the others to post on here some details.

I belive the ICB gives exemptions from Level 3 if you have ACCA, but not Level 1 or 2.

Shamus are you an ICB member? Did you do ACCA followed by ICB exams?

James

Hi James,

yes, I'm almost fully qualified ACCA and joined the ICB to get MLR cover so that I had a second string to my bow.

By profession I work in back office operations in banking but saw the writing on the wall a few years back so did the Open University course B680 followed by ACCA from scratch even though I could have claimed exemption from the first three papers.

A couple of years ago I realised that holding down a quite high profile career, single parenting and studying at the advanced levels of ACCA wasn't exactly the most sensible mix so decided that as the ACCA would allow me to do bookkeeping to trial balance, VAT and payroll that it wouldn't be too bad an idea to have bookkeeping as a backup and decided on the ICB.

Without any revision I did level 1 and got 99% and then level 2 computerised and got 98% which was enough to get me PII insurance, a practicing certificate and through that MLR cover.

In January the ICB moved the goalposts by stating that we also needed level 2 manual in order to have a practicing certificate. Initially we were told that most members would be able to retain their practicing certificates through other study. Later however the ICB seemed to go back on this and for those who had accountancy qualifications we were told that accountants don't knowbookkeeping... Which seems somewhat at odds with the fact that I'm an expert on here and I got such good scores in the two papers that I had taken.

I looked at the IAB but they've had a bit of bad press on here recently so after thinking long and hard about matters I concluded that the bookkeeping side of my business never really made any money as the worries related to the banking side of my work only partially materialised and I've managed to keep a steady stream of work coming in from that side which has now become a six month contract position.

Due to this I decided not to renew my practice licence this year and as that's the primary reason for having ICB membership I'll be allowing that to expire next january.

I do want to develop the accountancy side of my business but it will be under the ACCA side of things once I've qualified as an accountant rather than offering only bookkeeping services.

Currently I'm not offering bookkeeping or accountancy services at all. It also looks as though I'm going to miss this winters ACCA sitting due to my current contract which is a bit of a bad one as this one could potentially be the last sitting for me. My STR is already fully signed off so it will just(!) then be a matter of getting two years post qualification experience and then setting up on my own.

Back to the question at hand though, I really think that the ICB need to review their statistics in relation to those with accountancy qualifications.

For example, do the statistics differentiate between those who are doing their finals and those who have signed up to study ACCA bu then dropped out because it's too difficult?

As far as the ACCA qualification is concerned the old paper 1.1 (now F3) covers the entire ICB sylabus for levels I, II and I believe III. The style of questions is a little different but you still need to work through the same double entry to get to the answers. Maybe what the ICB should do is get the people making the decisions to sit the euivalent ACCA and CIMA exams in order to realise how wide ranging the sylabus is.

Also, with the ACCA when you've finished paper 1.1/F3 you don't just forget your learning but the later papers all build on carried forwards knowledge so it's not the case that someone at the advanced levels will have forgotten the basics.

I do wish the ICB the very best but as you will appreciate, in my case it's actually an unneccessary overhead as I'm not actually offering bookkeeping services even though I do continue to offer advice to other bookkeepers through this site... Which is atually advice that often originates from ACCA and AAT study texts.

Could I perhaps make one final suggestion for the ICB. That you incorporate the study of the IFAC code of ethics into your sylabus. Without going into all of thethical requirements every person working in finance should have at their core the ethical principles of Integrity, Objectivity and Independance regardless as to whether they are working as a bookkeeper or senior auditor.

I do feel that people such as myself are one's that the ICB would want as practicing members but due to the stance over accountancy qualifications we are the one's who are feeling alientated by the changes that the ICB have implemented.

I'm not on here every day at the moment so please don't misinterpret a slow response for ignoring you and I always respond to messages eventually.

I've had a quick read through the above but if any of it can be construed in two ways the way that it's meant is the freindly and constructive one.

Ooh, that turned into a bit of an epic didn't it! Sorry about that James.

Kind regards,

Shaun.