For those who want to know what’s in it for them after they obtain the Philippines CPA title, here are the hard truths about accountants.
Photo by Les Anderson on Unsplash
When I was googling Filipino accountants or Philippines Certified Public Accountants (CPA), I noticed several things.
The web contains only the bookish descriptions of an accountant. Someone who is not an accountant wrote Everything You Need to Know About the Philippines CPA Board Exam which is not comprehensive at all. In some cases, accountant blogs reflect the experiences of generation X. Or you’ll find write-ups mainly about the international accountant licenses such as Chartered Accountants (CA) or US CPAs.
If you’re a Filipino high school graduate whose parents or relatives dropped the famous scamming words “become a CPA and you’ll get rich just by signing”, you want the real facts. You will want to discover what career awaits you, really awaits you, after getting your CPA title.
What if an accountant (or several accountants) can answer the burning questions in your mind? Things like:
- Is it hard to become an accountant?
- Is the Philippines CPA an internationally recognized title?
- What skills do accountants need?
- Are accountants smart?
- What do accountants do all day?
- How many hours do accountants work?
- Do accountants make good money?
- Are accountants always stressed?
- Are accountants happy?
If you have the same questions, you can kick-start your fact-search through this blog.
I wrote this for the curious senior high school graduates who want to take up an accounting major. It’s for the accounting major students who want to know what’s in it for them after they obtain the CPA title. Even off-shore companies and international firms who want to hire Philippines CPAs will benefit from knowing what a Filipino CPA has to go through.
Based on responses from colleagues in the profession, here are the 9 hard truths about being an accountant* and everything that you need to know about the Philippines CPA.
Let’s get started?
Truth #1: Is it hard to become an accountant?
You won’t have a chance of getting hired in any of the Big 4 if you didn’t have those 3 letters at the end of your name. Unfortunately, these three letters are not recognized on the international stage. Living and working in a Big 4 overseas, I got to compare what I had to go through versus what people in first-world countries go through to get to the same level of career success. My staff only had to do 3 years of university with 13-15 hours of classes per week. The rest of their time is spent in working random jobs even before finishing a degree and this teaches them about life and adulting [which] is something we’ll never learn within the four walls of our classrooms. – Ex-Big 4 Audit Manager & Filipino CPA (Australia-based)**
Hard is relative. Any profession can be called as hard if it doesn’t show kindness or sympathy. You can be a kind or sympathetic accountant but you can’t say the same for the preparation to become one. The path to becoming an accountant requires focus and dedication. Nothing worth having is ever easy, to begin with.
This is the concept of “hard” in becoming an accountant:
- A future CPA candidate has to complete a four to a five-year accounting degree program that comes with a retention policy. The policy means that for you to continue with the course, your overall GPA and accounting subject grades must not be lower than your accounting department’s minimum figure. Most schools offering the accounting program set the minimum GPA between 2.4 and 2.5 for the overall degree and a minimum of 2.5 (equivalent to 75%) for accounting-related subjects.
- After finishing an accounting course, you have the option of taking a four-day CPA Licensure Examination (CPALE) covering these subjects (updated as of 2018 revised curriculum):
- Financial Accounting and Reporting
- Advanced Financial Accounting and Reporting
- Management Advisory Services
- Auditing
- Taxation
- Regulatory Framework for Business Transactions
Historically, the CPALE passing rates have been lower than 50%. For the past ten years, the lowest rate was 14.32% during the October 2019 exams. If you’re curious to know, check out the historical passing rates below.
If you’re an accounting major, you don’t need to be a math expert. You will use no more than grade-one-level math to solve your problems. What increases the difficulty level is the insertion of accounting-specific concepts such as “debit and credit”, “assets, liabilities and equity” and “net income”. Accounting is a language on its own with a different set of rules.
You have to gain a solid understanding of these rules. You’ll struggle more with “analysis”, “critical thinking” and “attention to details” because some problems are just meant to trick your comprehension. Once you understand what the problem is asking of you, what follows is a simple minus, addition, multiplication, or division. Good command of the English language will give you an edge more than calculus will.
Pressure will get into you as you try to meet your quotas and balance your academic requirements with other competing priorities. Don’t complain if you get multiple assignments with the same deadlines. You’ll face the same scenario at work. Hence, time management and organization are useful skills to practice as early as your college days.
When they say that college is just preparation for real life, they could not have said better. The 4 to 5 hours of sleep you had in college can be 0 to 2 hours of sleep in real life. You will just wish you had more than 24 hours due to approaching deadlines. – James Russel Ramos, Filipino CPA (United Kingdom-based)
Truth #2: Is the Philippines CPA internationally recognized?
The Philippines CPA is not equivalent to a US CPA title or any other international accountant title like CA. The closest thing you can get in terms of international recognition is the ASEAN Chartered Professional Accountant. The ASEAN CPA is the outcome of the ASEAN Mutual Recognition Agreement (AMRA). Ten member states of the ASEAN signed this agreement which enables Philippines’ CPAs to practice their profession in other ASEAN countries provided they are eligible to do so.
But even before agreements like AMRA took effect, Filipino accountants were already moving and working abroad at different ASEAN states and outside of it. Off-shore companies and international firms continue to hire Filipino accountants because they recognize the Philippines CPA title as equivalent in substance although not in form.
Truth #3: What skills do accountants need?
An accountant acquires technical accounting skills during university days. You test these skills when you take the CPALE.
What you do not acquire or you minimally get are the soft skills. Actual work experience will test these soft skills. Accountants who do not already possess these soft skills and do not make an effort to do so will perform poorly during their first year. The top skills include:
- Communication skills – ability to present both written and verbal
- Relationship-building skills – the ability to develop connections with diverse people from various background and different levels of leadership
- Adaptation and flexibility – the ability to meet change head-on and handle surprises at work
- Time/ project management and organization – the ability to manage conflicting priorities, follow schedules, and meet deadlines in an orderly and consistent manner
- Leadership and teambuilding – the ability to lead teams to achieve a common objective without sacrificing their well-being and mental health.
Regularly brushing up on these skills will earn you a fast-track promotion. But if you want to go above and beyond, you need to learn some specialized skills that can give you an edge too, not just in accounting but also other areas of life. You will wish that your university taught you the same skills. I am talking about:
- Personal branding
- Networking
- Negotiation
- Personal finance
- Professional selling.
If you wanted to be an accountant you must know how to deal with difficult people and handle difficult conversations especially if you wanted to be an auditor. I also wanted to tell you to not conform your standards with society and instead do what God wants you to do. Don’t stop dreaming on the CPA title, dream what you can contribute to society. AJA! – Maan Perez, Filipino CPA (Philippines-based)
Photo by javier trueba on Unsplash
Truth #4: Are accountants smart?
You bet. Yes, accountants are smart to a certain extent that they know their expertise and limits as well. Yet, accountants can also be dumb in many, many ways if they’re close-minded and set on their ways. Be always open to learning. [Learning] doesn’t stop in the four corners of academia, passing a rigorous exam, the office, or even the profession itself. – Auditor K, Filipino CPA (Philippines-based)**
Again, being smart is relative. A technically smart accountant knows the ins and outs of accounting standards. He/she will know the books well and can help clients navigate through their financials.
A life-smart accountant is someone who can leverage his or her soft skills to advance his or her career and the profession itself.
Whether you’re a future or existing accounting major, you don’t have to be automatically smart to finish an accounting course. But you’ll find that a lot of your classmates and future colleagues will be smarter than you. You can challenge yourself by improving every day. Aim not just for “technical-smart” but also “life-smart”.
If you’re an offshore company or international firm, it’s the same principle. Look for candidates who are not just technical-smart but life-smart. Often, simply looking at their resumes will not give you the outcome that you expect. Resumes reflect only the “technical-smart” aspects of the candidate.
Life-smart skills will not surface unless you ask their response to specific situations or how they solve problems. Revisit your hiring process. Check whether you’re filtering on the correct criteria or you may be exhibiting bias based on the technical aspects alone or the lack of it.
In Summary
In summary, these are the hard truths to becoming an accountant:
- The path to being an accountant is relative to your effort and dedication. Nothing worth having is easy.
- You might be a Philippines CPA in form but your CPA license is equally valuable on an international stage.
- You have to acquire both technical and soft skills to succeed as an accountant.
- Your skills will make you both a technical-smart and life-smart accountant.
This is just a sneak peek of what it means to be an accountant, particularly a Philippines CPA. If getting the CPA title still appeals to you after reading this, you’ll continue exerting effort to make it happen. But your efforts don’t stop there. You’ll advance the profession by equipping yourself with the right skills and attitude.
In due time, you will be shaping yourself as an accountant of the future.
In Part 2 of this 2-part series, learn about what accountants do all day, how many hours do accountants work, how much money accountants can make, whether accountants are always stressed, or whether accountants are happy with their job.
Did we miss to answer a question that you have? Email your question to tin@accountinsolutions.com or drop a comment below.
*Not all accountants are CPAs but all CPAs are accountants. An “accountant” as used in this article refers to a Philippine CPA who is licensed by the Board of Accountancy to perform accounting per Philippine Accountancy Act of 2004.
**Prefers to be anonymous
Never call an accountant a credit to his profession; a good accountant is a debit to his profession. – Charles Lyell
