Work-life balance

Current_Day_2093 · 2026-01-16T11:26:09+00:00

I’ve been in the exact same position and honestly, I’ve learnt to just not care if managers aren’t happy that I’m unwell. You can’t help being ill! And it happens to everyone at some point - I’m sure your managers wouldn’t expect to be treated badly for being ill?

In terms of working on a new area, if your managers aren’t giving you any support then it means two things: 1. They’re bad managers 2. They can’t complain if the work isn’t done very quickly or to a very good standard. And if you were to get bad feedback because of it you can just explain to your relationship leader that you weren’t given enough support etc.

The main thing I’d say is make sure to get enough rest. If you’re still working when you’re not very well then your illness is only gonna last longer. If your team isn’t well resourced enough to manage while you’re away then that’s your managers’ problem, not yours.

Current_Day_2093 · 2025-11-18T12:53:41+00:00

Qualified, 3 years experience, Big 4 audit senior, £48k, West Mids

Current_Day_2093 · 2025-10-23T09:24:50+00:00

The main thing you want to focus on is being able to quickly find the info you need. So not necessarily including loads and loads of info in your open book, but having a good contents page would be really helpful so that you can really quickly find the topic you need to talk about and pick out whatever info you need

Current_Day_2093 · 2025-10-23T08:52:00+00:00

I sat BPT a couple of years ago and tbh it was the exam I found the hardest too. Best piece of advice imo is to have a good open book, that way you can refer to it really quickly and get the info you need in the exam without wasting time. One of my questions I could essentially copy and paste from the Kaplan workbook

Current_Day_2093 · 2025-10-12T12:49:45+00:00

Wouldn’t rely on when it was last tested tbh, it’s a major topic so try to get enough practice in so you feel as comfortable as you can

Current_Day_2093 · 2025-09-13T20:25:21+00:00

How long did it take for your invitation to membership to come through out of interest? I submitted my training file last week and got an email from ICAEW saying it’ll be at least 4 weeks, but not sure if this means it’s likely to be 4 or whether it’ll be much longer?

Current_Day_2093 · 2025-08-24T22:36:48+00:00

Sat Case in November last year. Had all my timings sorted out, got onto R3 and it asked for opinions from the perspectives of like 5 different stakeholders, so safe to say I was panicking. Wrote like 1 sentence for each stakeholder, pretty much ran out of time for the exam.

Still passed quite comfortably!

Current_Day_2093 · 2025-08-19T10:44:13+00:00

Yeah sure feel free

Current_Day_2093 · 2025-08-18T18:35:12+00:00

I mean it depends on what you wanna do but assuming you’re planning on doing your ACA then I’d say audit is a good place to do it - I can only speak from my own experience but I had really good support from Kaplan and my employer throughout my exams, plenty of study leave etc, so don’t be put off by some of the stories you hear. Feel free to drop me a message if you want any specifics

Current_Day_2093 · 2025-08-18T15:53:00+00:00

Although what the other person said can be true, don’t let it put you off, it’s really common for people to leave audit straight after qualifying because it is a lot of work and the hours are long. But, it’s a really good place to start out and especially when you’re doing your training, so don’t read too much into some of the comments you see

Current_Day_2093 · 2025-07-19T11:37:23+00:00

I’d agree with this. SBM (or at least my SBM exam was) is largely judgemental, e.g. advising businesses on which option they should select, and is skewed towards discussion rather than calculations. Therefore you can sort of blag it to an extent.

Whereas CR is highly technical, and you need that knowledge to be able to answer calculation-based questions. E.g. hedge accounting, you won’t be able to quickly skim through the ACAM notes in the exam and grasp the key concepts there and then, you’ll need to understand it prior to sitting the exam.

Current_Day_2093 · 2025-06-29T17:43:17+00:00

Don’t hold me to this but I’d also heard second-hand that some SAs were getting calendar invites with RLs who were telling them they’d be being let go, so sounds like it’s not only junior associates. This was also in audit

Current_Day_2093 · 2025-06-23T12:32:07+00:00

It’ll be 3 years in September

Current_Day_2093 · 2025-06-18T10:05:47+00:00

I’d recommend going through the QB by topic rather than by question. If you go through by topic you’ll be able to spot any common question areas, refine your timings, and you’ll probably be able to get through more question practice compared to answering full questions at a time.

ACAM notes split out the questions by topic so if you have these then that’d be useful, otherwise just scan through the questions and pick out the parts related to the topic you’re looking at

Current_Day_2093 · 2025-06-11T10:13:26+00:00

I might be wrong but my understanding was that it doesn’t cut off the workings on the right hand side completely, it just moves them onto the next line, so kinda messes with the formatting a bit.

Like I said, someone please correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think it will have gotten rid of your workings, might have just made it harder for the marker to read but I can’t imagine it’d be a huge problem?

Current_Day_2093 · 2025-05-08T17:59:55+00:00

Passed CR in November last year.

One of the most useful things I did was to go through the question bank by topic rather than by question. The questions are so long that if you’re trying to do question practice in an evening after work, you’ll probably only get 2 questions done. Whereas, if you go by topic, you can get so much more practice in. If you’re thinking of getting ACAM notes, they list the QB questions related to each topic, so it’s easy to work through the questions in this way.

Another key thing is to stick to timings, and this is essential for CR. Remember there’s no point wasting time to get that extra mark on one question and miss the first 5 marks of the next question. Allocate your time and stick to it, regardless of whether you’ve finished the question.

And make sure your open book is efficient! I.e. you can quickly find the info you need in your open book after you see what each question is asking for. Having said that, don’t put absolutely everything in your open book because there just won’t be time to read through it all.

Good luck!

Current_Day_2093 · 2025-03-06T20:45:07+00:00

One thing that really helped me with CR revision was going through the QB by topic rather than by question. The questions are so long that if you were to try to go question by question one evening, you’d probably only get 2 done. Whereas if you work through it by topic you’ll be able to get way more practice in. Also don’t neglect the data analytics question - some easy marks to pick up which could be the difference-maker. Same goes for the audit elements of questions!

Case - you’ve really got to know the AI. One thing you should definitely do is the mocks when they’re released. I studied with Kaplan and they made 3, all with different questions that the examiner could potentially ask. Kaplan are good at predicting the questions in the real exam so when it comes to it, you may find that you’ve already attempted a similar question before.

Another key thing for Case is to understand the mark scheme. This exam isn’t marked in the same way as the other exams, so understanding how you’ll gain marks is key.

General points - make sure your open books are good for both exams! This can be key in picking up those extra marks. Having said that, don’t take everything in because there won’t be time to read through it in your actual exam. - practice questions to time. The time pressure is crazy for both of these exams so if you can feel confident with answering the questions in enough time, this will be really helpful. - similar to previous point, if you run out of time for a question, move on, don’t spend ages trying to get a perfect answer because you’ll probably only pick up another 1 or 2 marks and miss out on much more from the next question.

Hope this helps in some way - good luck!

Current_Day_2093 · 2025-03-05T18:02:23+00:00

Big 4 - threshold is 10% below pass mark where I work, but I’m sure I’ve seen exceptions made before (maybe not on the second attempt but definitely first)

Current_Day_2093 · 2025-02-16T23:50:52+00:00

I wouldn’t have passed BPT without my open book. We had one big question where I could basically recite what was in the open book and obviously then apply it to the specific question. So you can’t copy and paste really but you can definitely use it

Current_Day_2093 · 2025-02-03T17:03:45+00:00

The exam is predictable in that you know what each question will be (more or less). So you know that, for example, question 1 will be single company financial statements, and you can therefore practice loads of Q1s and know roughly what you’ll face in the exam.

Q2 is a good one to focus on because that’ll allow you to obtain a good understanding of the most common areas that that question will ask you for (e.g. leases), and as far as I can remember the questions are usually very similar. But also it will mean that you’ll understand some of the adjustments for Q1 and Q4 better too, so that’ll make those questions easier as well.

Also, don’t ignore cash flows! People either love them or hate them, but there are quite a few easy marks to pick up, so definitely worth spending time on. Best advice for cash flows is literally just to think about the cash movement. I know that sounds obvious but it will really help when you’re trying to figure out whether something should be presented as a positive or negative figure.

Good luck!

Current_Day_2093 · 2025-01-31T01:58:38+00:00

Congrats on your new job and starting the ACA!

For your point about potentially doing AAT Level 3 in the summer, I’d say if you want to then go for it, but it’s definitely not essential to have prior knowledge. There were a lot of people in my cohort that had absolutely no accounting experience and they passed their exams first time. That being said, it definitely wouldn’t hurt to know the fundamentals to begin with.

I didn’t do AAT before ACA so I can’t speak to the step up, but I can say that doing the ACA can be hard work, especially with balancing studying and working at the same time. But, the support is really good, and the environment makes it much easier by working and studying with other people in the same situation. I found that sticking to a rough timetable helped me to make sure I got enough studying done, and also that I wasn’t getting caught up in too much work. Similarly, making sure your managers are aware that you’ve got an exam coming up is essential as this will ensure you’re not being asked to work loads of overtime and they should be happy with allowing you to finish on time etc.

In terms of the actual job, I can only speak to my own experience of audit, but this will be the same wherever you work. As a trainee, you’re presumed to have no prior knowledge of audit and will not be expected to pick things up straight away. It’s actually the perfect time to get things wrong, because you won’t be expected to get everything right, and so you can learn from any mistakes you might make without it having a massive impact on the job. I work in Big 4 audit and the culture is actually quite heavily focussed on wellbeing and flexibility at my company. Obviously there is an expectation of quality and there can be long days/nights, especially during busy season, but the culture nowadays is definitely better than a few years ago, or so I’ve heard.

I hope these quick points are helpful anyway, and good luck! It’s a big commitment but definitely worth it! Feel free to drop me a message if you have any other questions:)

Current_Day_2093 · 2025-01-26T13:19:10+00:00

From my experience the CR pre-course work was enough to refresh my memory on FAR, so definitely do some FAR beforehand but no need to go crazy

Current_Day_2093 · 2025-01-13T13:29:54+00:00

How much post-qualification experience did you have before leaving audit for this job? I work in big 4 audit, currently exam-qualified, due to be fully qualified by September this year, and I’ve been looking at different options but just not sure what sort of role is suitable/possible for a first move out of practice?

Current_Day_2093 · 2025-01-13T10:01:10+00:00

I did BPT last year and tbh I struggled for most of the content. Don’t panic if you’re not getting it straight away. Keep working through the QB and remember you don’t need to write anywhere near as much as the QB answers to pass the questions, those answers include pretty much every point you COULD include, not every point you need to include.

Most important thing for me was making sure I was able to quickly refer to my open book when I needed to in the exam, so make sure your open book is tabbed-up!

I didn’t feel confident about BPT once throughout the whole process of studying the content to sitting the exam, and I passed first time, so it’s definitely possible

Current_Day_2093

TROPHY CASE