How to Gain Practical Experience for ACCA PER Without an Internship

The ACCA Practical Experience Requirement (PER) is the key step that enables you to become a qualified ACCA member. It goes beyond mere exams; it gives a chance to gain the required knowledge and experience in accounting to flourish in the world of professional practice. An internship has mostly been a way of getting experience, but not everyone gets this opportunity. There are, without doubt, ways to meet the ACCA Practical Experience Requirement without an internship.

This guide will walk you through actionable steps, enabling you to secure your ACCA practical experience and reach your performance objectives even without the traditional internships.

What Is the ACCA PER?

The ACCA Practical Experience Requirement (PER) is a structured framework initiating where students need to:

Complete a total of 36 months of relevant accounting or finance experience.

Achieve a total of nine performance objectives; that is, five must-have performance objectives plus four technical objectives.

PER is how you apply the theoretical knowledge you gained with real-life accounting-job exposure, showing an accountant’s skills and ethics as expected of a professional.

Why Practical Experience Is Important

The ACCA practical experience requirement ensures you can tackle real-life challenges in accounting. In the process, it benefits you by:

Building professional skills.

Creating exposure to a range of other career options.

Making you set for membership qualification with the ACCA.

But what if you unluckily cannot bag an internship? Well here are brilliantly alternative ways to identify how to achieve the PER without it.

Alternative Ways of Attaining ACCA Practical Experience

1. Freelancing in Accounting Roles.

Freelancing is a very flexible way of gaining experience and building a good network within the accounting profession; you can offer:

• Bookkeeping to small businesses or individuals.
• Use your knowledge to assist clients to prepare financial statements and submit their taxes.
• Work part-time in accounts for start-ups.

Freelancers can get the same credit toward the ACCA Practical Experience Requirement for work done as internships if there is relevance and supervision by an accredited professional. 

2. Voluntary Work

Full-time jobs are highly elusive jobs, while some of the non-profit organizations require accounting assistance but do not have the means to hire full-time staff. While working various accounting assignments, they give opportunities to:

• Increase experience in the director of the financial operations, account reconciliation, or financial reporting.
• Help achieve performance objectives such as governance and risk management (PO4) or stakeholder relationship management (PO2).
• Keep a supervisor on hand who can validate your experience before the certification board.

3. Part-Time Roles in Finance

If a full-time accounting role isn’t feasible, consider part-time jobs like accounts assistant or payroll processing roles. You can explore data entry jobs or internships with accounting firms. These types of jobs will provide you with crucial experience and will build towards your acca practical experience.

4. Gain Accountancy Experience at Your Current Job

If you are working already but your role does not fall within accounting, incorporate accounting experience into what you are doing:

• Offer your services in respect of budgeting, cost analysis, or partaking in the auditing process.
• Negotiate with your team supervisor about undertaking accounting work within the team.
• Discussions with your manager about aligning such activities with ACCA service objectives are also welcomed.

5. Remote or Contract-Based Work

Accounting jobs on remote working and contract jobs may flourish more. In Upwork and Fiverr, you work in areas of finance reporting, tax planning, or audit functions for international clients.

• This is excellent exposure in building a diverse portfolio of accounting work experience.
• To ensure that the PER documentation is right and proper, keep a note of your work and achievements.

Recording Your Practical Experience

For the successful passing of exams by ACCA, proper recording of practical work is must:

1. Documenting your work: Using ACCA’s My Experience tool, record your employment details, performance objectives, and statements of work.
2. Your practical experience supervisor: The supervisor would be a qualified accountant who does the following:

• Review your progress.
• Signs off on your performance objectives.

3. Select the right objectives: Choose your work tasks in accordance with the nine ACCA performance objectives, so as to be suitable with your role. 

Tips for Finding a Practical Experience Supervisor

If working in a traditional accounting environment, then obtaining a supervisor becomes very much of a hard task. Consider:

• Reaching out to differing firm staff members that happen to be very senior, most probably becoming ACCA members.
• Networking through the likes of LinkedIn and professional events.
• Asking freelancers or consultants you had previously worked with to supervise your work.

Examples of Relevant Roles

1. Bookkeeping for Small Businesses 

Such tasks as working on invoices, payroll processing, bank reconcilements, etc., are good experiences in accounting; through these, preparing candidates gets to meet any of the performance objectives such as PO6 (record and process transactions and events).

2. Tax Preparation Services 

Those individuals and small enterprises could really use such help when there’s a tax return case. Therefore they also tie in nicely with performance objectives like PO15 (tax calculation and assessments) or PO17 (tax planning and advice).

3. Budget Management for a Non-Profit

This creates so much in terms of planning and control performance and governance, risk, and control, as managing budgets or writing financial reports for charity constitutes a kind of experience.

4. Financial Analysis for Small Enterprises 

Financial analysis and forecasting for startups and small businesses carry PDs such as PO12 (evaluation of management accounting systems) or PO9 (evaluate investment and financing decisions).

5. Audit Assistance for Local Firms 

Working hands-on with an assurance task or audit for local firms could meet you with such performance objective(s) like PO18 (preparation for and planning of the audit process).

6. Corporate Finance Projects

Corporate finance tasks, such as evaluating investment proposals or analyzing financial risks, could meet PO10 (manage working capital) and PO11 (identify and manage financial risk).

Approved Employers and Exemptions

Working for an ACCA Approved Employer makes it easy:

• Gold or Platinum Approved Employers generally undertake structured training exempting any student from identifying the recording of any performance objectives.
• Check the directory for Approved Employers if your employer meets the criteria. In case he is not, then you can’t record your experience and have it signed off  by your supervisor.

Leveraging Online Resources

Internet resources may supplement your on-the-job experience. With sites such as learnsignal, one can access structured learning material curriculum-guided study plans and mock exams that bridge the gap between theoretical comprehension and practical implementation. Such resources keep you on the path of attainment of performance objectives until grasping real-life situations.

This path after this is where it narrows down further. There is a wide array of other schemes that can be chosen to satisfy the acca’s practical experience requirement, ranging from freelancing to voluntary work, jobs after school, and online resources, which would provide on-the-job training that strengthen the foundations of a successful career in accounting.

Your route towards membership is uniquely yours. With determination and an open-minded attitude, the skills and knowledge that are essential to a successful career in accounting will be achieved.