PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE REQUIREMENT (PER)
As part of your journey to become an ACCA member, you must demonstrate relevant skill and experience within a real work environment. This is what ACCA's Practical Experience Requirement is all about. To complete PER you'll need to achieve 36 months of supervised experience. This should be in a relevant Accounting or Finance role. You'll also complete nine performance objectives - all five Essentials and four Technical objectives.
36 Month's Practical Experience
What is relevant role?
Ideally, this means that you have a job where your time is spent on activities and tasks that are Accounting, Finance, Audit and Assurance related, or in other related technical areas such as taxation, insolvency and forensics.
Experience can be gained prior to registering with ACCA, while you are studying for the exams or after you have completed the exams. However remember that you will still need to get this prior experience signed off by a practical experience supervisor at the employer where you gained the experience.
Where can I work?
ACCA trainees can work in any sector and size of organization - you don't have to work for an ACCA Approved Employer.
Your experience doesn’t have to be gained in a single role or in one continuous period and you can gain your experience in different roles and with different employers. You could also gain experience by doing voluntary work for clubs, charities or associations.
It's important is to look for the opportunities to help you meet your PER and to obtain a total of 36 months' experience in a relevant role or roles. It's also important that your work is appropriately supervised and that the time you complete towards your 36 months' experience is signed off by your practical experience supervisor.
Performance Objective
Performance objectives allow you to demonstrate your knowledge, skills and techniques in the workplace.
As part of the practical experience requirement (PER), you'll need to achieve performance objectives. The performance objectives and exams are closely linked. This means that the knowledge you'll develop through your studies are also relevant to the skills and techniques you'll use in the workplace.
Performance objectives are the benchmarks of effective performance. They describe the types of work activities you'll be involved with as trainee accountants. They also outline the values and attitudes you should demonstrate.
You'll need to achieve nine performance objectives in total:
all five Essentials objectives, and
any four from 17 Technical objectives.
You'll demonstrate your achievement of the performance objectives by performing activities in the workplace. You'll then write a statement to provide examples of your experience which demonstrates to your practical experience supervisor that you have to achieved the objectives.