ACCA Practical Experience Requirement (PER)

A job where your time is spent on accounting, finance, audit and assurance, or related technical areas such as taxation, insolvency and forensics. Experience can be gained before you register with ACCA, while you study or after the exams, but prior experience still has to be signed off by a practical experience supervisor at the employer where you gained it.

In any sector and any size of organisation — you do not need an ACCA Approved Employer. Your experience need not be in one role or one continuous period; you can combine roles and employers, and voluntary work for clubs, charities or associations can count. What matters is a total of 36 months in relevant roles, appropriately supervised and signed off by your practical experience supervisor.

Yes. When you record a role in MyExperience you give your hours and the percentage of time spent on accounting or finance tasks, and the tool calculates how much counts towards 36 months. If 50% of your time is accounting and finance work, a 12-month period gives you six months of PER.

PER counts time gaining relevant experience, not time employed. Extended breaks (for example maternity leave, caring for a relative or long-term illness) do not count. Add an end date to your role, then add a new role with a new start date when you return.

Update your PER record and have your supervisor sign off the time and objectives achieved before you go. MyExperience prompts you when you indicate you are leaving a role or reach 36 months. You then complete the remaining time and objectives in your new role.

Still record the role in MyExperience. The time will not count towards 36 months, but if your work is supervised by a suitably qualified person you may achieve these performance objectives: Stakeholder relationship management, Strategy and innovation, and Leadership and management.

Guides and supports you: helps choose your performance objectives, sets targets and timescales, gives access to suitable work, reviews your progress regularly and signs off the objectives you achieve and the time you claim towards 36 months.

Usually your line manager. To sign off performance objectives, the supervisor must be a qualified accountant (a member of an IFAC member body). If your line manager is not qualified, they can still sign off your time, and you nominate an additional qualified supervisor — another manager, a consultant, or the organisation's external accountants or auditors — to sign off your objectives.

Avoid it where possible because of conflicts of interest. If it cannot be avoided, disclose the relationship to ACCA when you apply for membership.

An employer whose learning and development policies and systems ACCA has accredited. If yours holds trainee development approval at Gold or Platinum level, it may let you claim a performance objective exemption. You still need 36 months' experience recorded in MyExperience.

If you were claiming the exemption, complete the Approved Employer PER Confirmation form and send the signed copy to ACCA so it can update your MyExperience record. Keep the original. You then complete the remaining time and objectives with your new employer.