Variants and Options choices

As you complete the ACCA Qualification you will have the choice to take some exams which reflect where in the world you want to work and what areas of finance you want to specialise on. You can read more about these choices on this page.

Variant exams

Tax and law variants

In a number of countries, you have the opportunity of taking exams based on national tax and law – referred to as variant exams.

Variant are available for the following exams:

  • Corporate and Business Law (LW)
  • Taxation (TX)
  • Advanced Taxation (ATX)
     

Auditing standards

You have the option of taking the accounting and auditing papers based on international standards or UK standards, or taking exams based on national standards in certain countries. 

The following exams are based on international standards for financial reporting and auditing:

  • Strategic Business Reporting (SBR)
  • Advanced Audit and Assurance (AAA)

Options exams - choose and specialise

ACCA is unique in allowing you to focus on the specialist areas of professional accountancy at an advanced level, giving you the chance to focus on those areas of finance which you are good at and would like to focus on in your career.

At Strategic Professional you must complete two from the following four Options exams.

  • Advanced Financial Management (AFM)
  • Advanced Performance Management (APM)
  • Advanced Taxation (ATX) 
  • Advanced Audit and Assurance (AAA).

When you are choosing your Options exam choices, think about which exams best reflect your strengths and which exams best reflect the experience you have gained or the career you want to have.

To help you reflect on where your strengths, think about how well you understand the concepts in the corresponding Fundamentals exam.

You should read the Essential underpinning for Options papers document to learn more, which can be downloaded from the 'Related documents' section of this page.

You can read a brief overview of the Options papers in the following sections.

Further information

You can use the ACCA career navigator to see how the different Options exams relate to different job roles.