Practical Experience Requirements (PER) FAQs

Yes, find out more about the new PER application process.

Recordings

• Assessor's top tips for sucessful STARS - 9 June 2022
• Students - Your new path to membership - 28 April 2022
• Employers and PER supervisors session  - 27 April 2022

The practical experience requirements (PER) are an essential part of the CIMA Qualification and CIMA’s membership application process. They complement the exam assessments and demonstrate your ability to apply your knowledge and skills in the context of your professional experience. You'll need to demonstrate that you have spent enough time in a finance role, achieved core work activities and developed critical professional skills and behaviours

Your PER application will be assessed to determine whether you have gained sufficient relevant experience to be awarded Associate membership – giving you the associate chartered management accountant (ACMA) and Chartered Global Management Accountant (CGMA) designations.

We’ve had feedback from students that the current membership processes are very complicated and can be difficult to complete. We also currently have two sets of requirements that can be used and we wanted to consolidate these into one set of requirements that were up to date and relevant for the range of roles and sectors where our students and members work. We wanted to make one application process as simple to complete as possible whilst maintaining a high standard. 

Yes, both existing and updated PER processes have now closed. You should use the new PER process for ACMA membership and the CGMA designation.

More information is available here

If any part of your application does not meet the requirements, we will contact you to ask for more information, which you can resubmit.  

You will need to start a new application. You may be able to adapt some of what you have drafted for your deferred application but you must take care to ensure that the examples you choose and your write up meet the requirements and format of the new approach.

Find out more here

It will take around 8 weeks.

No. For the new PER process there are no face-to-face sessions.

Yes, your local office can support you for all PER applications, find more details here

The submission deadline for any student is 30 September of the fourth year after the year they sat and passed their final exam.

The Membership Application fee is a once-only payment; any applicant who has been deferred does not need to pay it again when re-submitting.

Applicants can submit their membership application once they have passed all three strategic level objective test exams (E3, F3, P3), or if they have been exempted from them.

Unless the assessors have specified when they feel you should resubmit your application, you can resubmit your application at any time. You will need to ensure you have read the assessor comments on your deferred application and update your resubmission application accordingly.

No, your PER is not affected by the new process, all you need to do is pass your SCS exam and you will become a member.

The online PER application will have the same structure and criteria as the current Word version. There is no change in what is required and the STAR format will still be used.

If you have a partially completed PER Word application when the online version goes live it should be quite simple to transfer the information into the online version.

We will provide additional guidance on what to do when we confirm the go live date for the new online system. We would encourage you to start to complete the forms now, safe in the knowledge that you will easily be able to transfer on to the new online version.

Please pay your membership application fee before you send in your application. The current fee can be found here

To make your payment you can either:

• Call our global 24/7 payment hotline with a debit or credit card:
  • Based in the UK — 0208 602 0861, 0844 292 0240
  • Outside of the UK — +44 0208 602 0861

• Send a cheque, money order, UK postal order or sterling bank draft.
  • Write your contact ID on the back of your cheque made payable to CIMA and send it to: CIMA, The Helicon, One South Place, London, EC2M 2RB, United Kingdom

You will need to identify someone/some people to act as your PER supervisor(s). Your PER supervisor must be someone you have worked for in the past or are currently working for. They must have direct knowledge of your work – ideally your manager. You will need one or more PER supervisors. The number you have will depend on how many you need to sign off your three years’ relevant experience and all of your professional achievements.

The only time requirement is to demonstrate three years' experience in a relevant role(s). There is no need to split this down any further.

Apportioning time is no longer a requirement. You must record time in each role to demonstrate that the overall three years’ relevant experience has been achieved but there is no need to apportion time to each professional achievement.

You need only record the overall time (number of months FTE) in each of your roles. You do not need to break this down any further by allocating time to each of the professional achievements.

All students are required to complete the same process whether they work for accredited employers or not.

There is no upper limit for the application, however here is some guidance:

• STAR templates- you should aim for 500-600 words for each of the core activities and skills and behaviours.
• Company - you should aim for a word count of 250-300 words for the overview of each role and organisation.

For more details check the Guidance document

The word count is 500-750 for the core work activities and skills and behaviours using the STAR templates.

We've set a word count to provide you with a steer on how much you should be writing and to ensure that you remain focussed on giving the right information and level of detail needed. 

A 10% variation is acceptable but any more and you risk not being specific enough/addressing the STAR template requirements clearly enough and your application may not be successful or may be returned. 

You will need to complete 8 in total - 3 core activities and 5 skills and behaviours.

Save the Word template and all completed PER supervisor forms as a single, combined PDF file. Send your complete application to membership.admissions@aicpa-cima.com

The latest membership application fees can be found here.

Yes, the easiest way to format your application (headers, bullets etc) is the write your text for a section in a Word document outside of the application form and format it as required. Then copy and paste the text into the application form box and the formatting will show on the application form.

You should choose the person who has had the most involvement and oversight of your work for the designated professional achievement. In this scenario, it may be that both have a similar level of involvement in your work and if so, you could choose either.

If your line manager covers all of your time in role and supervised all of your professional achievements, then it is fine to have only one person signing off.

We wanted to make the new, more streamlined approach available as soon as we could, and this was possible by using a Word form. We are, in parallel working on the digital solution which will be released in 2023.

Yes, we have 2 samples STAR template responses available in the resources section here

All submissions will be treated confidentially by CIMA and everyone involved in the assessment process. However, it is recognised that there is a balance to be struck in terms of company or client confidentiality and providing details of the specific examples you want to use. Talk to your PER supervisor and agree the level of detail that you are both comfortable sharing. Make sure that you do provide enough detail so that you can fully respond to all prompt questions in the STAR template. Think about how you could anonymise clients, product or projects which might be commercially sensitive or how you could express the success of a project without disclosing sensitive financial information or other metrics.

You can still use this but consider carefully whether this is the best example for you to use to complete the STAR template in full. For example, you may struggle to demonstrate the result/benefit to the business or impact of your actions if the project was cut short prematurely.

You can still use this but consider carefully whether this is the best example for you to use to complete the STAR template in full. For example, you may struggle to demonstrate the result/benefit to the business or impact of your actions if the project has not yet concluded.

Yes, but you must ensure that you write up your experience separately and focus on your own actions. Your application must be a true reflection of your own achievements and if it is too similar to someone else’s application then it is very difficult for CIMA’s assessors to verify that you personally have met the standard required for membership.

Due to the range of roles that CIMA students undertake, they may not all have the same experience during PER. A small degree of choice and flexibility is built into the assessment to ensure that you can pick the three core work activities for which you will have the strongest examples to submit in your application.

You should not write up more than three. Use your time instead to ensure that you choose the strongest example that you have and write them up as fully as you can.  

The five skills and behaviours are critical to becoming a qualified CIMA member. The level to which these skills and behaviours will have been developed during the period of gaining relevant experience is achievable by all students, by the time they come to apply for membership.

No, all applications must be submitted in English.

That is fine. The example activities listed for each professional achievement are indicative only. There are countless examples that could be used, and you will choose one based on your own work experiences.

Plagiarism software will be used to assess the originality of assessments submitted and form one of the quality assurance checks that take place before you receive your results. Your application must be a true reflection of your own achievements and if it is too similar to someone else’s application then it is very difficult for CIMA’s assessors to verify that you personally have met the standard required for membership.

Read more about originality in recording your personal work experience here

There is no need to cover all self-reflection questions or example activities. They are provided as prompts to help you identify examples you can take from your own work experience and use to write up each of the STAR templates required for each professional achievement. Simply make sure you respond in full to each section of the STAR template for the example you have chosen.

You can use examples from your day to day work for all the professional achievements. Look at the self-reflection questions and the example activities to identify how you are demonstrating the professional achievements in your day to day work/BAU. Make sure you use a specific example instead of talking generally about your role and responsibilities as this will make it easier for you to complete the STAR template.  As a simple example, rather than saying “I regularly work with different departments of the organisation on their budgets”, you should focus on a particular occasion as an illustrative example such as “In January 2022 I worked with the marketing department on their budget....”

We will only accept applications via email. Contact us if you are experiencing technical difficulties.

Our preferred option is to get a physical signature and then scan the PER supervisor form to combine with your complete application.

However, if your PER supervisor/s are unable to sign and scan the form, they should submit an email from their company email address (copying you in) to membership.admissions@aicpa-cima.com confirming the following information:

• Your name
• Their name
• Company name
• Verification start and end date.

You should then email your completed application including the PER supervisor form/s, email/s from your PER supervisor/s and your application form as 1 PDF file to membership.admissions@aicpa-cima.com

A Word template has been created for you to complete your application. Save this document and all completed PER supervisor forms as a single, combined PDF file. Send your complete application to membership.admissions@aicpa-cima.com.

The address confirmed on the application must reflect the location of the office you work within.

PER supervisors are required to make assurances to CIMA that you have met the requirements of the assessment with regard to time in role and achievement of the core work activities and skills and behaviours. To do this, PER supervisors must have good oversight and understanding of your achievements and be comfortable and confident in making those assurances to CIMA using the PER supervisor form.

In examples listed above either manager would be able to act as PER supervisor – work with your managers to agree who would be most appropriate.

If your chosen PER supervisor does not have sufficient oversight or knowledge of the examples you might be using for professional achievements then it is acceptable for you to use both, allocating individual achievements to the most appropriate manager. In this situation, it is suggested that you select one of your managers to sign off the time in role requirement (if applicable) and then each manager completes an PER supervisor form for the designated professional achievements.

You need to provide examples of three years' relevant work experience - verified by a PER supervisor. You may have several roles to include or just one — there is no upper or lower limit.

You will likely find it easier to obtain sign off for work experience and achievements acquired more recently and more recent experience is more likely to meet the updated requirements of the assessment.

You are asked to provide a link to your LinkedIn profile or, if you do not have one, to prepare a summary in table form of your full employment history, beyond the roles that you are using to claim verified relevant experience.

This section does not need to be verified by your PER supervisor. 

Your additional employment history will be reviewed if your application is marginal and may assist assessors in making a decision, which avoids the need for them to contact you for additional information.

You can still claim the experience. State in the section where you write up details of the role and organisation that the company no longer exists. If you are still in touch with your previous manager then you can contact them and ask them if they would be able to sign off. They do not currently need to be your line manager but can sign off the time in relevant role and the example activities you select if they had direct knowledge of your work at that time.

Yes, but you must pro-rata the time. E.G. if you worked 2.5 days a week, you would need 6 years of experience to be equivalent to 3 years full time.

Time on furlough cannot count towards the three years.

Yes, provided the work experience has been done under the supervision of your PER supervisor and he/she are able to sign it off.

No, all examples you use must be from your day job.

No, you can work for any employer so long as you have a relevant role in Finance.

Yes, if you have 3 years relevant experience. Leave such as parental leave cannot be counted towards the three years.

Simply record the start and end dates in the relevant experience section of the form and state "career break" in the job title field.

Contact CIMA for details of our academic route to membership.

Yes, if the role provided relevant experience as defined in the guidance and the employer can sign off the experience.

No, you need to have worked in one or more relevant role/s and be able to demonstrate the core activities and skills and behaviours in the STAR template.

As an apprentice you have a separate route to CIMA membership, for details please visit https://www.cimaglobal.com/Our-locations/UK/Apprenticeships/Epa/

All examples you use must be from your day job in finance or relevant roles?

Yes, if you work part time you can pro-rata the time so that you have the 3 years of relevant work experience in your application. Any examples you use must be from Finance or relevant activities you have undertaken and not from other aspects of your role.

We recognise that the shape and structure of organisations is changing and that many CIMA students and members will not be working within a traditional finance team, instead working within the business and embedded within project and cross-functional teams providing financial leadership and expertise. The assessment allows you to detail in the relevant experience section how you work as a finance professional within the business before going on to demonstrate how you have met the professional achievements. The professional achievements cover a broad range of finance roles.

We don't provide a list of job titles as these can vary so much from organisation to organisation. Our guidance on relevant work experience focusses on the areas and functions where you're likely to be working and the characteristics of the role you will be in. Reflecting on the professional achievements we ask you to demonstrate will also help you to ascertain that your role and the experience you're gaining is relevant.

Find out more

No, you must complete this assessment and demonstrate that you meet CIMA's requirements for membership.

You can submit one role or multiple role - the only requirement is that you record and have verified three years' relevant work experience.

There is no time limit on experience you submit. However, you will be required to have someone verify your experience and professional achievements so you should carefully consider whether you are still in contact with someone who can do that. It is also a risk that experience gained so long ago won't meet the current criteria, so you would therefore be better off on both counts selecting examples from your more recent experience.

You can be working in any industry or sector and size or type of organisation. You’re likely to be working in one of the following areas:

• management accounting
• finance business partnering
• financial accounting
• professional services and consulting
• financial and management reporting
• banking
• treasury
• financial management
• financial planning and analysis
• performance management
• business intelligence and data analysis
• audit and assurance
• risk management
• taxation

More guidance can be found here.

Your PER supervisor should be a person you work closely with, has insight into the work you do and your performance and be able to support you in managing your PER. You and your PER supervisor both play an active role in ensuring that you gain the experience and professional achievements required for CIMA membership. Together you should regularly review your progress throughout the time that you gain you PER.

Yes, you can use relevant work experience from any role that demonstrates the required core skills. However, you will need to ensure that your PER supervisor which was relevant for that role is available to sign off this experience.

It is anticipated that most CIMA students who have been in a relevant role as described in the PER guidelines for about three years will have the experience to meet the required professional achievements. It can sometimes be difficult to recognise your own achievements so work with your PER supervisor to review the professional achievements, self-reflection questions and example activities and talk about examples you could use from your own experience. Remember that the example activities are just indicative and won't cover everyone's experience. If you and your PER supervisor agree that you don't yet have enough experience in a specific area, then you can identify opportunities to gain that experience.

You can start thinking about your application at any time and keep notes on your experience and examples that you might want to include. We recommend starting to draft the form when you pass management level. To submit your application, you must have achieved a minimum of three years' relevant work experience and have passed the management level case study exam.  

Yes, you can use experience from before you registered with CIMA and/or experience gained while and after sitting exams.

It may be that one project or substantive piece of work can provide examples for more than one professional achievement. It would be permissible to use this across more than one professional achievement, but you must be careful to make sure that the write up of each STAR template is specific to the professional achievement being claimed. You must not cut and paste whole or part of responses for one STAR template to another. We would advise you to question whether the specific examples strongly represents your professional achievements in more than one area and recommend using a different example if you can to showcase the range of experience you have and avoid any unintentional overlap. Our assessors also want to see that you have gained a good breadth of experience so it would be advisable to use different examples if you can so that your application is the best reflection of all the experience you have gained.

The core work activities and skills and behaviours that have been selected for the assessment are those which are fundamental and critical to the work of the chartered management accountant and applicable across the range of finance areas where CIMA members work. You start to develop these from day one in a finance role and continue to demonstrate and improve these for many years, even after becoming a CIMA member.

The language used to express the professional achievements has been carefully chosen to reflect the threshold for professional competence in these areas (that is, the minimum standard you need to reach) in order to help CIMA students reflect and recognise how they are developing and achieving these from very early on in their career. We wanted to make the professional achievement requirements applicable and accessible to all, recognising that by this stage in your career you may not have had the opportunity to take on a leadership or management role or to be involved in developing strategy, for example. 

However, if you have had more experience or have a more senior role at the time you are applying then this should simply mean that you have more examples to draw upon for each of the professional achievements. You may choose to draw on an example from an earlier stage in your career or choose a more recent example from your most senior role(s) which demonstrates how you have developed the selected professional achievement beyond the threshold required. For example, the guidance around the leadership professional achievement does not expect that all applicants will have people management responsibilities or experience developing or leading strategy or projects at the point of completing the application, but if you do have experience in these areas then you can certainly use these in the examples you write up in the STAR template.

No, they don't need to be consecutive/uninterrupted.

Guidance specifically for PER supervisors can be found here.

The number of PER supervisors you need will depend on your employment history and which roles you will be using to demonstrate three years in a Finance or relevant role and each of the professional achievements. The minimum required is one PER supervisor. Find examples here.

You can sign off the period when you managed and oversaw the work of the applicant if this is being used to claim the three years' relevant experience and/or if the applicant is using any examples from the time you oversaw his/her work to claim professional achievements.

Yes, you do not need to be CIMA qualified or a qualified accountant, but you must have direct knowledge of the applicant’s work and have been in a more senior position to the applicant.

Yes, you can still sign off experience and examples from the time when you worked at the same company and directly supervised the applicant's work. Include your current employment and contact details in the form and state under "relationship to candidate" that you were a previous line manager at X company.

The line manager will normally be best placed to sign off experience. However, anyone who is in a more senior position to the applicant and who has oversight of the applicant's work and contribution to the business can sign off. You will need to include details of your relationship to the applicant on the form.

If you can verify the required three years' relevant work experience and all eight professional achievements (3 core activities and 5 skills and behaviours) then it is fine to have only one person signing off.

If you are still in touch with your previous manager then you can contact them and ask them if they would be able to sign off. They do not currently need to be your line manager but can sign off the time in relevant role and the example activities you select if they had direct knowledge of your work at that time.

Your line manager will normally be best placed to sign off your experience. However, anyone who is in a more senior position to you and who has oversight of your work and contribution to the business can sign off. He/she will need to include details of their relationship to you on the form.

You must find someone who can verify that you have the required three years' experience.   The following may be able to verify your role/company and that you have been working in finance for at least three years:

• Longstanding client/s
• An external accountant to your company and/or
• Your business bank manager

 In terms of the professional achievements, a client, for example, may have enough oversight of your work to sign off your completed STAR templates for work you have undertaken for them. If you have previous experience working for another organisation and are still in contact with your previous line manager then you can use examples from that role. If not, CIMA will assign an assessor to review and approve your example activity STAR templates.

Discuss the example with the applicant and provide feedback which will allow the candidate to either rework the example so that you are confident in signing off or assist them to find an alternative.

If you do not have direct knowledge of the applicant work being used for the example, then you cannot sign off. Work with the applicant to either find an alternative example that you can sign off or identify someone who directly supervised the work and can act as PER supervisor for the professional achievement.

A small number of example activities that could be used to evidence a particular professional achievement are provided in the guidance However, these are not exhaustive and applicants' own examples will of course be specific to their own experiences. Use the self-reflection questions in the guidance documents and discuss the example with the applicant to provide feedback which will allow the candidate to either rework the example so that you are confident in signing off or assist them to find an alternative.

Guidance on how to assess the application can be found here.

You cannot approve if you judge that write up does not meet all the "achieved" criteria.  Feedback to the applicant on what is missing or needs to be strengthened to aid them in redrafting before resubmitting to you.

You cannot act as PER supervisor if you are related to the applicant.

Work with the applicant to agree a level of detail that gives enough information about the particular example but maintains company and client confidentiality, for example by anonymising client or product names. The write up will focus on the applicant's own experience and contributions in response to the prompt questions in the STAR template as such do not require attaching or replicating company-sensitive documents.

You should choose the person who has had the most involvement and oversight of your work for the designated professional achievement. In this scenario, it may be that both have a similar level of involvement in your work and if so, you could choose either.

If your line manager covers all of your time in role and supervised all of your professional achievements then it is fine to have only one person signing off.