Finance and accounting

The jobs it covers

24 occupations sit in this profession, on the government’s own classification. Each one is a page: what the work involves, what you decide, and how you are measured.

How you get into it

Two routes, and they lead to different places. The technician route starts in accounts, bookkeeping or payroll and qualifies you while you work. The chartered route is longer, harder and opens the senior roles the technician route eventually stops short of.

Both are earn-while-you-learn by design, which is unusual: finance is one of the few professional families where not going to university costs you very little in the long run.

Credit control, payroll and finance administration are the common first jobs, and they are genuinely first jobs rather than dead ends.

The regulated accounting and finance courses, and who awards them

Who employs it

Every organisation has finance, but the work splits in two: practice, where you serve many clients, and industry, where you serve one. People move between them, usually in that order.

Practice suits people who want breadth and formal training early. Industry suits people who want to see decisions made and their consequences arrive.

The public sector and large charities run substantial finance functions with different pressures: less about profit, more about scrutiny and the audit trail.

What to expect

It is one of the more legible ladders in professional work. The qualifications are recognised, the steps are known, and the gap between what a technician and a chartered accountant can be paid is large and visible from the start.

The routine work at the bottom is the part most exposed to automation, and the judgement work at the top is among the least. That gap is widening, which makes what you do next more consequential here than in most families.

Specialisms in tax, audit or treasury narrow the options and raise the ceiling. Most people choose one within five years, often by accident.

The professional body

Other professions