Apprentice Audit Assistant Review

This apprenticeship involves working on financial statement audits whilst working your way to AAT and ACA qualifications. Audits involve corroborating evidence towards financial accounting entries and discussions with the clients over their policies and evidence provided, to ensure there are no misstatements in the financial statements. At the start of the programme there are many training courses for internal skills, however these start to decrease as you progress.

I have massively developed my communication skills with internal communications and external communications. I have also developed my excel skills as this software is used all the time. I have learnt many things to do with audit, through being booked to engagements and completing my AAT and ACA qualifications. There is little opportunity to go on external training courses

At the beginning of the apprenticeship it is enjoyable with rotating around different areas of the firm, however the reality is that you will always end up in audit, and you are not treated the same (by the top of the firm) as a graduate as they have a degree whereas you will have experience. Those who you deal with every day are extremely nice and treat you equally

The structure of the programme is well set out, however in practice it is hard to find out any information from higher up in the programme as when you speak to people they pass you around to other people or take a while to reply. The wider business does not understand the apprenticeship programme which often leads to repetition or miss-understandings.

From the apprenticeship side of the job, there is little support from apprentice managers, however when you are specialised and in your teams, you are well supported to do your job (but unfortunately are not familiar with any queries relating to the apprenticeship logistics itself). Support from the employer in relation to study is also poor for communications with it being hard to contact our qualifications team.

Most of the tutors for actual exams are very supportive with queries. However, in relation to the skills and behaviours we need to complete as part of our apprenticeship there is little to no support (there are often videos we can watch but most of time these are unsupportive and there it is almost impossible to get a response when you ask questions)

For the AAT qualification, parts of the exams and study material are well used in the job, and relate directly (however, some of the exams are never used in the job). In relation to the ACA qualification, these are directly relevant to the job we are performing and helps develop audit skills. The skills and behaviour statements are not at all relevant to the job, and in fact take time away from something we could be doing to improve our jobs.

There are many networking events and clubs to get involved with and if you want you can set your own up. There are also many social activities to attend in each department, with most often also having gatherings outside of work. Due to the pandemic there are also any activities performed over teams calls, such as a gym session.

No

Although it is an amazing atmosphere to work in, with the people being extremely nice and easy to talk to, the job is alot of pressure with little help from those higher up and little rewards. Pay is very much below average and the firm appear to value degrees more than experience.

Research into the role further and get a better understanding of the qualifications you will be completing, and to ensure you have the appropriate drive to be able to complete the exams along side working full time. Also, try and talk to as many people in the job as possible at all levels to get their experiences