What is the ACA Certificate Level?
The certificate level is the first set of ACA exams. As should be expected, these exams are the simplest both in terms of content and exam style.
Despite being the easiest, these exams can often be challenging, as it is likely that this is the first accounting theory that you have been taught. As such, pass rates for some of these papers can be low, with the certificate level accounting exam being amongst the lower pass rates of the whole qualification .
In total there are 6 exams which make up the certificate level. These are:
ACA Certificate Level Exam Format
Each of these exams are for the most part multiple choice, however there is a long form question as part of the accounting exam.
The exam that each person gets on exam day will be different, as questions are randomly assigned on exam day from a large question pool. As a result of this, these exams can be taken at any time, which is in contrast to exams at the later stages of the qualification.
As you will learn as you progress through the exams, the key to passing these exams is question practice. Fortunately you will be given a question bank with hundreds of past questions. Master the question bank and you will have no problem passing the exams.
The papers are usually tackled in three sittings, with Accounting and Principles of Tax taken together, followed by Law and Business, Technology and Finance, with Management Information and Assurance last.
For me it was the first Accounting paper that was the most difficult and this is reflected across the board, with that paper having the lowest pass rate of any ACA exam. Looking back the content seems straightforward, having never studied accounting before it was certainly challenging at the time. I go in to more detail about the Accounting paper and each of the other 5 exams in other posts so please check them out.
