Host
Orkhan Freeman ACA
Guests
- Jas Rayat ACA, Financial Accountant, EDF Trading; Chair, ICAEW Student Council
- Pratik Kanani ACA, Business Development Manager, ICAEW
Transcript
Orkhan Freeman: Hello and welcome to ICAEW Student Insights. My name is Orkhan Freeman, and today we’re discussing how getting into good habits will set you up for ACA success. Exams are an important part of the ACA qualification, but there are other milestones you’ll need to meet along the way to becoming an ICAEW chartered accountant. Today, we’ll be sharing top tips for completing your online training file and six-monthly reviews. I’m joined today by Pratik Kanani, ICAEW Chartered Accountant and Business Development Manager, and Jas Rayat, Financial Accountant at EDF Trading and Chair of ICAEW Student Council for 2024/2025. Thank you both for coming in.
Pratik Kanani: Thank you for having us.
Jas Rayat: Hello, thank you so much for having us.
OF: So Pratik, I’m a student, I’ve just signed up. What happens from day one? What do students have available for them to make sure that their path is a success?
PK: I think the key here, Orkhan, is to find a routine once you’ve registered with the Institute, once you’ve got your student registration, student ID, and your training files all set up. In terms of the next steps, you’ll obviously reach out to the tuition provider, work with your employer – the way you’re going to study, whether it’s face to face, virtually – what route you’re going through, etc, etc. But in terms of the balance, you need to work out for the next three years what lies ahead.
And the beauty of that is, you would have one of us – whether it’s myself or one of my teams – who would reach out to your employer to offer this student induction, which essentially means we’ll be sitting down with the student – whether it’s virtually or face to face – to say, right, this is what your next three, four, five years looks like, depending the length of your training agreement, and this is what’s required for you in order for you to become a chartered accountant, to talk over the different elements of the training file, all the resources that are out there.
And then it’s on you as a student to find out the balance and what works for you. And you will need to find a routine that works for you, because it’s not going to be easy. Doing the full ACA qualification, working, having a social life, having a home life – there’s a lot to juggle, but the beauty of becoming a chartered accountant is demonstrating that you’ve juggled everything and got to the end of it and made use of all the resources and been able to put those letters after your name, I guess.
OF: I think you summed that up perfectly. Jas, in terms of having that balance, Pratik obviously mentioned your social life, your training file, your six-monthly reviews. How did you find all of that, and how did you manage it all?
JR: So in the beginning, it was quite a big responsibility to go from college to then have a full-time job where you’re working, say, 40 hours a week, and then studying for the ACA qualification on top of that. So what helped me was actually creating a revision timetable, and it actually eased a lot of stress off of me, because I could clearly see how my week or how my month was going to look like. And so I wasn’t rushing homework or assignments or training logs or anything like that. So creating a revision timetable to help me organise when I was going to cover certain elements of the syllabus.
But then it’s also very important to incorporate times for rest and recovery, and time with family and time with friends. It’s extremely important to make sure that that isn’t neglected, because you can only go so far as how well you’ve looked after yourself – you can’t give if you have nothing left to give. And then the other thing is to develop a healthy relationship with your employer professionally, so that you feel comfortable enough to approach them when things are getting difficult. Perhaps I was very lucky, but I made sure from the beginning to try and foster those lines of communication. So I took responsibility to organise catch-ups, so the six-monthly reviews I also used as an opportunity to let my manager know how I was getting along with the training file.
OF: You touched on many things there. I think we had similar stuff where I was working in audit at the time, and I was studying for my chartership, and we had our diary available six months in advance, so you knew when the exams were coming up. You knew what exams were coming in, and you knew what work was going to be put on your plate, to put it as such. So you can have that conversation to see how you can best manage a diary, and if things can be flexed or things can be moved around, just to help with both. The sooner you can have that conversation, the easier that becomes. Things like holidays, socials – you knew what was coming up a lot of the time. There were obviously some sacrifices we had to make. It is a tough qualification. It’s not going to be easy, as you’ve said, Pratik. So sometimes you can’t do everything, but you do need to find time to do things, otherwise you can go into a bit of an overload.
In terms of some of the best strategies, some resources, just to finish on that point, what would you both recommend?
PK: There’s actually an ACA students section on the ICAEW website. So initially, if a student goes to that, then they can follow the relevant links that will help them accordingly. And then if you really want to speak to someone, we have a dedicated student support team that are there for students to answer any queries that you have. So plenty of resources, from the ICAEW point of view.
OF: Perfect, thank you for that. And what about yourself, Jas – any strategies, any resources that you’d recommend?
JR: I would say the question bank, which is available in digital format now – I utilised that a lot for when I was preparing for my exams – and then exploring what your tuition provider offers, because sometimes you cover things in class, but then there are actually extra questions which are supplementary, but not always talked about. So take some time to really research what your tuition provider is offering. I would also say, don’t be afraid to reach out to people that you work with who have also gone through the ACA, because they have some really good advice – they’ve just been through it.
And if you are able to try and develop professional relationships where you can just have, you know, a casual chat with them and see what their experience was like and see what advice they have for you. Sometimes people have actually created really good resources. So it could be a really good way to record the professional development ladder, or it could be a really good way to record their work experience. So just reach out to people and have those conversations.
PK: I think you hit the nail on the head. I think the beauty of this is, it’s almost passing back onto the next generation. So a bit like yourself, you’re qualified, you’ve been there, done that, know how valuable the qualification is and the effort that needs to go into it. If you had a student who was approaching you, I’m sure – I don’t want to speak for you, but I’m sure you’d be more than happy to say, you know what? Do this, do this; absolutely this works; this doesn’t work. Whether they take that or not, it’s up to them, but it’s just passing on to the next generation. Because you know how valuable the qualification is.
JR: I would strongly recommend that you look out for who your local ICAEW Student Society is and join them, because it is a wonderful network of other individuals in a similar position to you, and they’re all ACA students, and they’ve all been through the same things, and it’s very lovely to have the support network, both in and outside of the classroom. So I strongly recommend you research who your local Student Society is and join them if you can.
OF: I would definitely echo that. We had something similar from our perspective in Bristol, doing our studies – our diaries aligned because the exams are always happening at the same time, so free periods came around the same time. So if we were doing things outside of work, it would always align. And it was a great way to kind of console people, because they’re going for the same challenges, same exams, same training profiles and things like that. So I appreciate you raising that. So Pratik, a key part of the qualification is the training file. Could you just explain why it’s important and what it is?
PK: Yeah. So the training file is essentially something which sets a student up which they need to update regularly throughout their training agreement in order for them to apply to become a chartered accountant. So the whole purpose of this training file is, it’s split up into different sections and it’s an opportunity for the student to demonstrate they’ve met each one of the requirements sufficiently and regularly, which has been approved by the employer. So when they get to the end of their training agreement and training agreement end date, they will be able to then apply to become a chartered accountant. So it’s a key, it’s a mandatory requirement. It’s not optional. It’s something which needs to be completed every six months or thereabout and to a sufficient manner which your employer then approves on a six-monthly basis.
OF: How did you find managing all of that, and how did you prepare for your reviews effectively with your employer?
JR: On first glance at the training file, when I was just starting out, it felt like quite a lot to do, and so what I did was just break it down into manageable chunks. So you have the four elements to it, and I just tried my best to organise it in a way which was practical and in a way that worked for me.
So for example, you have to log your work experience, right? And usually, in practice, you have something called timesheets. But sometimes the way the process of exporting those timesheets to then record them isn’t always user friendly, depending on what software you have and those sorts of things. So I actually found it was better to break it down into manageable chunks. So at the end of each week, I would spend 10 to 15 minutes actually reviewing my training file, updating it, adding what I did for that week.
And the professional development ladder – what I would do for that is I would read through it and familiarise myself with some of the experiences it wants you to have. And so if I was with a client, if I was doing something and if I could recognise, oh, hang on a second, this is actually an example that can be used for my development ladder, or this meets this criteria, or is an example of this skill, I can make a mental note of it and at the end of the week write it down whilst it was fresh in my head. Otherwise, it can be quite a big task to do it, say, every six months or at the end of the year, because it’s very difficult to remember every single interaction you’ve had. So I found it was much better to do it regularly and consistently, rather than leaving it all towards the end.
OF: That sounds very organised, and that sounds like you kind of came into that knowing you’re going to have to be organised to make sure you stay on top of those things. Did you know that was going to be the case because you’d spoken to people? Did you know that because people have come into work and they’ve told you that’s going to be the case?
JR: I would say it was something I learned as I was going along. So probably in the first six months, I wasn’t really doing these things because I didn’t really know about them. I learned what didn’t work and I learned what worked, and for me, I just liked knowing that if I set an expectation for myself at the end of every week, I’ll spend 10 to 15 minutes doing this, then that’s going to help me a lot more. I actually would take responsibility for my training file, and I would schedule regular catch-ups with my manager as well to ensure that we were on track for things, because there were certain elements of my training file that they had to approve for it to be added. And during those interactions, I remember saying how my current approach wasn’t quite working. What I actually needed was to be able to just spend a couple of minutes at the end of each week to just purely focus on my training file and update it as and when needed. And they were very supportive with that. So it was again, speaking up to your employer with where you need support, where you need help. And in my case, I got the support that I needed.
OF: So Pratik, what about students who are also completing the audit qualification as well?
PK: Sure, the audit qualification is a qualification that sits on top of the ACA, so it’s not part of being a chartered accountant. It’s something that you can have on top. So it essentially is for those who are gaining experience in audit, and there’s a certain requirement to get the auditing qualification, ie you need to gain 240 days of practical work experience in audit, and out of those 240 days, 120 has to be in statutory audit. But the beauty of that is, again, there’s myths out there that I have to have experience in audit in order to be a chartered accountant. Preferably, yes, if you do; but if you don’t, that’s also fine. It’s just for those who want to get the audit qualification on top of your ACA.
OF: Agreed. To your point earlier, Jas, around sort of trying and failing for the first six months, as I was going through my audit qualification, I thought six months down the line, let me worry about the audit qualification then. So I pulled that over my timesheets, and you have to have some context to the work that you’ve done. Going forward, then, I then thought about doing it on a weekly or a monthly basis or on a regular cadence. It does add up, but it’s worth it at the end, because I stuck around in order and it was really helpful.
PK: Brilliant. And again, a quick tip is, as part of your six-monthly reviews, that where the onus is on the student to actually book those in, because you’ve got an employer who’s backing you to do the ACA, which is great – fantastic. It’s on you now to see it through to the three, four, five years, whatever it may be, but the onus is on you to book in your six-monthly reviews. And part of those six-monthly reviews, if you have gained days in audit, that’s when it’s your chance to bank those days, get them approved and speak to whoever’s doing your six-monthly reviews, whether it’s a counsellor or QPRT [qualified person responsible for training], whatever it may be. But it’s on you as a student to book those meetings in and to bank those days.
And I think you hit the nail on the head, rather than realising later to say, oh, I haven’t done it – again, principles. As long as you’re staying consistent and what works for you and what being organised, it just makes your life easier when it comes to the end of the three, four, five years, however long your training agreement is. But the key here is the audit qualification sits on top of the ACA; if you’re getting experience in it absolutely bank as many of these. If you’re not, that’s absolutely fine as well.
OF: So let’s talk about the six-monthly reviews, Pratik. What are they and what role do they play in your qualification?
PK: So essentially, it helps for a student to monitor their progress, as well as an employer, to see how far along they’re getting along their qualification. So it’s breaking down their qualification into manageable goals. So every six-monthly period, so you have a six-monthly review, which you update your training file and the different elements of your tech training file adequately and sufficiently, which then essentially gets signed off by your employer.
So when you get to the end of your training agreement, your training file is complete and it’s been signed off by your employer, which then enables you to then apply to become a chartered accountant. It’s the stepping stone to essentially apply to be a chartered accountant. In order to have the training file regularly updated, which is mandatory – it’s not like you can leave it for three years and update it in one go as a minimum – the six-monthly reviews gives a chance for yourself as a trainee, your employer to see how you’re getting on, and us as the Institute, because we have relevant teams at the Institute, you keep on top of the trainee’s training file to make sure it’s ticking along.
The six-monthly reviews, what I would say is that it’s a two-way street. So in terms of – it’s not just for the employers to see how you’re getting along. It’s for you to pass your feedback onto your employer as well, to saywhat’s working well, what’s not working well, what could work better for the next six months, to assist you in order to for you to tick along to become a chartered accountant. So it’s a two-way street. And again, in order to train as a chartered accountant, every firm has to be an authorised training employer. It’s not like you can go into any organisation to do your ACA. And the beauty of that is these employers that you are working for – in order for you to have a training agreement, they’ve already become an authorised trainier so they’ve met the threshold in order to be authorised to train ACAs. So they’ve given the go ahead, they’re going to give that support to the trainee, but it’s on the trainee to get that support as and when they need it.
And remember, it’s not just the employers that are given the support. You’ve got ICAEW here, we’re here to help; we’ve got a dedicated Student Support Team, and they’re there to support students. And then you’ve also got tuition providers, so your partners in learning, so they’re there to support you. So you’ve got varied resources, and it’s for a student to know that it’s not only my employer that can support me; I’ve got other avenues which I can go down, should I need it. And we’re here to help you, because we obviously – we want you to pass as well.
JR: Yes, I fully agree with everything that has just been said. And when it comes to – just touching back on a previous point – when it comes to the training file, I took responsibility to book in regular meetings with my manager and for the six–monthly reviews. So I took it upon myself to look at, OK, when are they free? Let me send this invite. Let me organise this. I used the six-monthly reviews as a chance to catch up with my training file overall, to let them know if it was in a position that I’d expect it to be in, or whether there were some areas I needed to gain some experience in.
And I also used it as an opportunity to get approval for certain experiences I had noted down in my professional development ladders, because you can add it to your file, but your employer needs to approve it for it to actually go through properly all the way.
OF: I found what was really important with the reviews as well is, for us, where I was working at the time, we had six-monthly performance reviews; so having regular reviews on top of that, such as the six-monthly reviews, but also condensing those into quarterly or monthly reviews as well, gave us a better opportunity to sort of track the work that I’m doing outside of just studying. So, for example, going through the audit qualification, whilst being in audit, we were managing my timesheets and understanding what work had been done, and also at the same time, discussing what could be done better going forward and how relevant it is to the work that I’m doing.
So you could condense all of these meetings into kind of one big performance review that doesn’t just help you with your training file, but also your performance in work. And that was always really useful. And we did it really casually. So it doesn’t have to be a meeting in a meeting room to sit there for an hour to two hours to discuss something that’s on your laptop. We went to a coffee shop and we’d have a, you know, a relaxed half an hour, 30 minutes, regularly, just to get to know each other a bit more as well. So it’s always an opportunity to get to know your line manager as well, a bit more talk about future goals and things like that, to get their experiences. So we tagged all of that into these reviews.
PK: I think another tip here is when you’re updating your training file, the majority actually gets approved on the day at the time of the meeting, so at no point does your counsellor or QPRT have to go into their training file and approve a certain element apart from the audit days. That’s when a relevant person who’s got the AQ has to update the audit days. The other elements of the training file is actually done on the day, or feedback is given, or something sent via email; it’s all actually done on the day.
But I think some tips that I give to students is we have a download PDF function within our training file. So if you update as a student, if you update your bits, download the PDF along with the timesheet, send it to whoever is carrying out your review a week in advance, so they have a week to review it, see what you’ve updated. So when you then actually have the meeting, it’s more efficient, and they’ve already had a look at what you’re looking to update, etc, etc, and that meeting tends to be more efficient. Again, you do not have to, but it’s one of the tips that I do say for students, which they have said has absolutely worked. So update the bits that you need to update. Obviously, there’ll be certain elements of your training file to say, I confirm that my reviewer has approved it. Well, you can’t tick that because the reviewer hasn’t approved it, but as long as you update your bits, save what you need to save, download it as a PDF a week in advance, along with a copy of your timesheet, which backs up the day that you want to log, your reviewer then has a week or so to review it, and then when you come into the meeting, hopefully it will be more aligned and more efficient.
JR: Yes, yeah, exactly. So actually, because I like to update my training file regularly, for example, if I came across a situation at work and I thought, actually, this is a really good example to use for one of the professional development ladders, I would write it down, and within my six-monthly reviews I would share that with my line manager, and in there, and then she could give her approval or not, or ask me any questions or reword it or whatever it was, and we could sort it out there and then, rather than a back-and-forth email chain. So it’s about preparing for the meetings that you have and making sure what’s most important. So it could be questions about your training experience, any professional development ladders that you’ve got situations for that you want approval from, or anything else, and just having that ready to go before the meeting, so that once you get into that meeting, you can just tick things off and do it as best as you can.
OF: What advice would you give to yourself if you were to go back and go for that file again?
JR: Be prepared in terms of organisation and try and stick to it, but also to allow for things that are inevitable, such as if your manager is away for holidays, or if you’re away yourself, or sometimes there are really peak exam periods where there’s actually not much to add to the file, actually, and to factor that in. There are a lot of moving parts to that file, and it’s easy to sometimes miss something, but as long as you’ve tried your best and that it is caught somewhere, then that’s OK. You don’t have to – it doesn’t have to be militant, and everything has to be updated in a really strict fashion. It could be, you know, like you’ve also said, you just have a casual meeting with your manager and you discuss what’s going on.
So my key advice would be organisation, preparing as best as you can, and also reaching out to other peers – so that might be somebody within your company that has gone through the same thing, or somebody in the classroom, if you’re doing a tuition-based classroom with a classroom provider. I would also say reaching out to ICAEW if you really need support and taking time to actually explore their website.
PK: So in terms of learning materials, obviously you’ve got your tuition providers, learning materials, physical copies, whether you’re studying virtually or face to face, but remember, we’ve got ICAEW’s bookshelf, online, digital learning materials, because ICAEW actually put together the syllabus and the exams and the skills. Our content used to be physical copies that we used to provide to the student. Because of the carbon footprint, sustainability, all our learning materials are now on the go. They’re all on ICAEW – it’s called the ICAEW Bookshelf platform. So make sure students get familiar with it. Make sure they know they’ve got two lots of resources that they can reach out to to study. Of course, you’re going to have have your tuition providers, materials that you’re going to go through in class, but you’ve got the other materials there.
OF: So there’s lots available for students to get stuck into. We’ll put a link to all of those resources that you’ve mentioned throughout the episode in the show notes, so they’re easily accessible. Finally, I want to say thank you both again for coming in. Jas, Pratik, thanks so much for your time.
Make sure you visit ICAEW Student Insights for ongoing support during your studies. On the Student Insights hub, you’ll find resources for completing the ACA qualification and ICAEW CFAB, as well as inspiring stories of students and recently qualified members. It’s all available on icaew.com/studentinsights. Finally, if you found this podcast useful, then please subscribe so you never miss an episode – and let us know what you think by writing a review on your podcast app. Thank you for joining us today. Bye for now.