ACCA PER Examples Explained: Requirements, myACCA Steps and Approval Checklist

PER stands for Practical Experience Requirement, ACCA's way of checking that you can apply what the syllabus taught you. Full membership needs three things: your exams, the Ethics and Professional Skills Module, and 36 months of relevant work experience signed off by a supervisor. The 36 months is the headline number, but time alone is not enough. Across those years you also demonstrate nine performance objectives, short written statements describing what you did at work. Without a completed PER you can pass every paper and still not use the ACCA letters after your name. The reasoning is simple: employers hire ACCA members because the qualification signals workplace competence, not exam skill. Usefully, PER runs alongside your studies, so it adds nothing to the end of your journey.

There is no waiting period and no minimum number of papers. If you are a registered ACCA student with a job in accounting or finance, your PER clock is already running. Plenty of students assume they must clear the Applied Skills exams first, and that assumption costs them a year. Professionals who join ACCA after a few years in finance are better placed still, since earlier experience can count if a qualified supervisor verifies it. The 36 months need not be continuous or with one employer, so changing jobs or cities does not reset your progress. Part-time work counts proportionally, which means a 20 hour week takes roughly twice as long to add up. Internships count too, if the work is relevant and properly supervised.

Recording experience while you study is the easiest way to shorten your timeline. The entries turn out better too, because you write about work you did last month, not something you half remember from three years ago. A habit that works: open MyExperience once a quarter, update your role details and claim any objective you have progressed. If your job is only partly relevant, log it anyway, since a partial record is still something to build on. Spreading PER across three years beats cramming it into one panicked month before you apply.

ACCA looks at what you do, not what your business card says. A finance executive doing data entry all day may struggle to evidence much, while an operations analyst who builds budgets and reviews controls usually has plenty to write about. The test is whether your duties involve accounting, finance or closely related responsibilities. Most roles in audit firms, corporate finance teams, tax practices and shared service centres qualify easily. Roles outside a finance team still count if the work touches financial decisions, reporting or risk. If unsure, describe your daily tasks to your supervisor and ask which objectives they would sign off.

• Financial accounting work: preparing statements, closing the books, reconciliations and consolidation, which maps onto several technical objectives.
• Management accounting and costing: budgets, forecasts, variance analysis and internal performance reporting.
• Audit and assurance work, from planning and evidence collection to control reviews and reporting.
• Taxation work: computations, return preparation, compliance checks and advice on how a transaction is treated.
• Financial management: working capital control, investment appraisal and funding decisions.
• Advisory work guiding clients through financial decisions, which feeds the Essentials as much as the technical ones.
  
  

The nine objectives split into two groups: five Essentials every student completes, and four Technical objectives you pick to match your work. The Essentials cover professional behaviour, the parts of the job that look the same whether you sit in audit, tax or industry. The Technical ones come from ACCA's wider list, spanning financial reporting, management accounting, taxation, audit and financial management. Each objective is evidenced with a short statement describing a real situation. A strong statement explains the task, what you did, the result and what you learned. Vague statements are why supervisors send claims back for a rewrite. Choose technical objectives matching your current role, not the ones that sound impressive.

Reading a few ACCA practical experience requirement examples helps more than any amount of general advice. Take a strategy and innovation ACCA PER example. The weak version says the student contributed to business planning and suggested some improvements, which tells a reviewer nothing. The approved version reads closer to this: our month-end pack took four days because three teams sent data in different formats, so I proposed a single template, agreed the fields with each team and rebuilt the file so figures fed in directly, cutting the pack to a day and a half. Same objective, but the second version shows the problem, your decision and the result. Write in the first person, name the system or report where confidentiality allows, and keep it to a paragraph or two.

Everything is recorded in MyExperience, the tool inside your myACCA account. It is not complicated, but it rewards some organisation. You log your employer and role, add your supervisor, then submit objectives as you achieve them. Nothing counts until your supervisor approves it, so leaving it all to the final month is a real risk. You also complete an annual PER return confirming the experience you have built up. Treat it as a running log, not a form you fill in once at the end.

•    Log into myACCA on the ACCA Global website and open MyExperience, creating an account if you are newly registered.
•    Add your employment record: job title, dates, hours worked and a short description of your responsibilities.
•    Nominate your Practical Experience Supervisor with their name, role and contact details, so ACCA can send them your claims.
•    Claim each objective by writing your statement and marking it achieved once the work is genuinely behind you.
•    Submit the claim for review, then follow up politely if nothing happens in a couple of weeks.
•    Complete the annual PER return so ACCA has a current picture of your months and objectives.

Your Practical Experience Supervisor confirms that your experience is real and relevant. They must be a qualified accountant: an ACCA member or someone with an equivalent recognised qualification. They need not be your line manager, but they must see your work closely enough to vouch for it. If your manager is not qualified, a senior from another team or a qualified accountant you work with often can take the role. An ACCA Approved Employer makes this smoother, since they already run review processes ACCA recognises. Sign-off is a relationship too, so give your supervisor warning rather than dropping nine statements on their desk at once.

Most PER delays come from a handful of avoidable habits. The most expensive is waiting. Students finish their exams, then find they have three years of work to reconstruct from memory and a supervisor who left eighteen months ago. The second is writing statements that describe the objective instead of the work behind it. The third is treating PER as paperwork rather than part of the qualification. Fixing all three comes down to rhythm: small regular updates beat one enormous effort at the end.

•    Leaving it all until after your final exam, which turns a manageable task into months of chasing.
•    Writing thin statements with no detail, which supervisors reject and you rewrite anyway.
•    Focusing only on technical work and ignoring the Essentials, especially ethics and leadership.
•    Losing contact with a supervisor before they sign off your claims, which is common when people change jobs.
•    Skipping the annual PER return, which leaves your record looking incomplete at membership stage.

Can I start my PER before I pass any ACCA exams?

Yes. Experience gained before, during or after your exams counts, as long as the role is relevant and a qualified supervisor verifies it. Many students have a good chunk of their 36 months done by the time they finish.

Does my job have to be in an accounting firm?

No. Roles in industry, banking, shared services, consulting and the public sector count when the work involves accounting or finance. Your duties matter more than your employer's sector.

What happens if I change jobs during my PER?

Nothing is lost. The 36 months can be split across employers, roles and countries. Get your objectives signed off before you leave, since tracking down a former supervisor later is harder than it sounds.

Can my manager sign my PER if they are not a qualified accountant?

Not for performance objectives. Your supervisor must be an ACCA member or hold an equivalent recognised qualification. If your manager does not qualify, find a qualified colleague who sees your work closely enough to vouch.

How long should each performance objective statement be?

A paragraph or two is enough. Good ACCA PER examples cover one real situation, what you did, the outcome and what you learned, not a general description of your role.

Do internships and part-time roles count toward the 36 months?

Yes, if the work is relevant and supervised. Part-time experience counts proportionally, so a half-week role takes twice as long to build the same months.

PER is not the scary part of ACCA. It is what turns exam knowledge into something an employer can trust, and it goes smoothly for anyone who starts early and writes things down as they happen. If you are weighing up ACCA online or offline classes, checking whether your role counts, or mapping the next three years, it helps to talk it through with someone who has guided students through the full journey. The team at Finplan Edu works with ACCA students across Thane and Mumbai, from registration through to membership. Reach us at enquiries@finplanindia.com or 9029007248, or visit the Finplan Edu centre.