36 months' practical experience

To complete your PER you'll need to complete 36 months' supervised experience in a relevant accounting or finance role.

What is a relevant role?

Ideally, this means that you have a job where your time is spent on activities and tasks that are accounting, finance, audit and assurance related, or in other related technical areas such as taxation, insolvency and forensics.

Experience can be gained prior to registering with ACCA, while you are studying for the exams or after you have completed the exams. However remember that you will still need to get this prior experience signed off by a practical experience supervisor at the employer where you gained the experience.

Where can I work?

ACCA trainees can work in any sector and size of organisation - you don't have to work for an ACCA Approved Employer. 

Your experience doesn’t have to be gained in a single role or in one continuous period and you can gain your experience in different roles and with different employers. You could also gain experience by doing voluntary work for clubs, charities or associations.

It's important is to look for the opportunities to help you meet your PER and to obtain a total of 36 months' experience in a relevant role or roles. It's also important that your work is appropriately supervised and that the time you complete towards your 36 months' experience is signed off by your practical experience supervisor.

We recommend you use the range of career resources in ACCA Careers, to help you gain a relevant job.