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• The qualification structure
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• Practical experience
  • Requirements
    • Basic experience
    • Core experience
    • Supplementary experience
    • Training in practice guidelines
  • Record your experience
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Core experience

You will need a minimum of 18 months 'hands-on' experience in this area.

Examples of suitable experience include:

2a Preparation of management accounts

• preparation, presentation and interpretation of regular management accounts and related reports; KPI's, flash reporting, dashboard, and periodic P&L's 
• comparison of actual performance with budget and/or forecast; analysis and interpretation of variances
• preparation of regular reports on capital expenditure, outstanding debtors/creditors, inventory etc

2b Planning, budgeting and forecasting

• preparation, in conjunction with line management, of annual budgets and forecasts
• preparation of departmental budgets and forecasts
• working with other departments to develop corporate budgets and forecasts
• preparation of business plans, balanced scorecards, capital expenditure budgets and forecasts, and ‘zero-based’ budgets

2c Management reporting for decision-making

• preparation of non-routine reports that analyse and interpret financial/numerical data
• evaluating alternative courses of action and making specific recommendations; following up results of reports
• preparation of briefing papers for management
• oral presentation of reports using visual aids
• assisting with the drafting of expert witness reports

2d Product and service costing

• application of appropriate principles and techniques, for example, overhead allocation, marginal costing, break-even analysis and ABC, in order to establish the current and future costs of the organisation’s products, services and activities
• identification of costs and revenues relating to specific business decisions, for example the introduction, amendment or deletion of a product or service, pricing, make-or-buy comparisons

2e Information management

• defining the information requirements of the organisation
• identifying and evaluating appropriate information systems
• managing the process of information gathering, processing, storage and retrieval

2f Project appraisal

• using investment appraisal techniques for the evaluation of capital expenditure and other projects
• evaluating other investments or acquisitions using appropriate techniques
• post-completion audit of projects and investments

2g Project management

• management of a project or working as part of a project team: for example, the introduction of a new system or procedures to the organisation, business process re-engineering or quality improvement, capital expenditure projects or any other non-routine activity with a defined output, such as the launch of a new product or an office move
• internal or external consultancy assignments

2h Working capital control

• debt collection, inventory and expense commitment control, recording and forecasting foreign currency transactions, cash-flow forecasting and monitoring
• periodic stock-takes, the identification of slow-moving and redundant stock, negotiation of credit terms with customers, suppliers and bankers
• supply chain management

2i Risk management and business assurance

• identifying, assessing and managing business risks
• disaster recovery planning

Please see the practical experience requirements brochure (PDF 318KB) for more information.

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