Part way through my history degree, I decided I wanted to be an accountant instead. I had formative roles in the TV industry and in property development which I enjoyed immensely, but when my first daughter was born, I wanted more time with my family, so I started my own practice. 

I was confident about making the transition from industry to practice. When you work in property development, it's common to set up a different company (an SPV, or special purpose vehicle) every time you deal with a new development. It takes away the risk from each company so if that one property development doesn't work out, the other companies are not at risk. I was dealing with up to 20 companies with all the year ends internally so I would see it right up to the very end working closely with the external accountant.

However I found out that when you set up a practice there's so much you don't realise that you need to do if you come from an industry background – like getting codes for each type of tax from HMRC to become an agent – and you only realise it when you come to take your first steps which can be embarrassing if you've already been approached to do some work or worse if you have done the work, and submission needs to wait until that said code is received. The need to have an ACCA practising certificate if you're an ACCA member was one of those things for me when I looked into submitting accounts. Fortunately, an ACCA practitioner I was connected with was able to take care of my clients whilst I applied for my ACCA practising certificate.

When you're working in industry, you tend not to come across other ACCA members or certainly not those in practice and it was never mentioned to me as a student that practising certificates were needed to be in practice, so I didn't know. That may change with the introduction of the new ACCA qualification from 2027 and the reduced experience requirement for those taking certain optional employability modules except where the audit qualification and practising certificates are involved.

I read the Practising Certificate Experience Forms (PCEFs) very carefully and spent quite a lot of time thinking about how my experience could demonstrate that I had the skills that the forms were asking about. There were some examples in the form which provided a starting point for me to interpret into what I'd done that was similar that I could adapt. 

For the element in the PCEF about assisting clients to understand and evaluate their options for raising finance, I thought about how I would work with the Finance Director to source senior bank finance to fund development of buildings to remove the full risk landing on the investors' funds. We would meet with finance brokers and lenders, responding to information requests and preparing the financial and due diligence information required, including cash flow forecasts, business plans and KYC documentation. I would then analyse the funding proposals received and produce a comparison of the lenders' offers, highlighting the financial and commercial implications of each option in a clear and accessible format which allowed the directors to make an informed decision. 

For another element about determining the risks and benefits associated with business/investment opportunities, I was able to use my experience working with our acquisition partner who would regularly send me sites he had found for me to run an appraisal to see if it was worth bidding on. He would provide the site price, suggest a cost of the build per room, a sales valuation/yield, and I would assess other costs such as the professional fees of architects etc based on other sites we were building on, before entering the amount required from investors and a senior lender. I would look to see if the target IRR could be achieved, whilst also taking into account investor relations, and what they would be happy with considering the outlook on the value of the current sites at that time.

You can see samples of Sam’s successful application and the accompanying confirmation from his principal in the useful links section below.

I was using experience from four to eight years before which made it more challenging, but I was really fortunate that my line manager from that time was willing to sign off my forms. He had retired and was no longer a member of a professional body, but he was at the time he supervised me, so he met the criteria to be my training principal and sign the forms. I was also fortunate that he was my supervisor for the whole 36-month period of experience that I needed for the practising certificate, so I only had to complete one set of forms.

When the ACCA Authorisation Officer came back to me requiring changes to the form, I thought I'd done a bad job, but I've since found out that almost every applicant has to make some changes so don't be disheartened if you're asked to do so. I was asked to provide more information on my personal involvement in work examples that I had given because I'd referred to what "we" as a team had done whereas ACCA needed to know what I had done and what my impact had been. They wanted to know at a granular level each step that I had taken in the process so it's very detailed and takes time to fill in the form properly. 

The ACCA Authorisation Officer assigned to my application was amazing – her emails were really helpful and having the same person responding to me each time made the process much easier, and I felt like she was trying to help me so that was really encouraging. 

As a new practice owner, it was invaluable having a network of other practitioners that I could talk to. I'm part of an informal group of other practice owners at a similar stage of the journey and we meet regularly. We're of the same mindset and we share ideas and which technologies we're using. Everyone is so willing to share their experiences and help each other.

Top tip: You don't have to take up a practising certificate once your Practising Certificate Experience Form is approved - you can bank the experience until you need to apply for your practising certificate.