ACCA optional papers - best combinations

Throughout the ACCA qualification, candidates have to decide which papers they will attempt at which sitting. But throughout the Fundamental and Essential stages, no real choice is necessary: you may sit a paper in winter or in summer, but ultimately you will have to sit the paper one way or another in order to progress. 

That changes when it comes to the Optional stage, at which point students must choose which two of four papers they will complete. This is an important and often stressful decision for candidates to make, and so it is surprising that nowhere on the web gives a comprehensive review of each combination of Optional exams. What follows, then, is such a review. 

As a reminder, there are four papers to choose from:

1. P4 Advanced Financial Management

2. P5 Advanced Performance Management

3. P6 Advanced Taxation

4. P7 Advanced Audit and Assurance

This means that there are six possible combinations. 

Combination 1: P4 and P5

Ideal for: aspiring management accountants and financial managers

One of the great things about ACCA relative to CIMA is that candidates have the option to specialise at the end of the qualification. This combination allows students to cover the bulk of the meatier areas of the CIMA program without committing to management accounting too early in their qualification.

As a bonus, candidates who complete this combination will be able to...

Combination 2: P4 and P6

Ideal for: aspiring technical specialists

With all due respect to management accountants, after a certain knowledge base is mastered, you can't delve in too much further (this is not to suggest that management accountants and strategy advisors are not important - on the contrary!).

The tax and treasury worlds, however, offer rich opportunities for specialism. Compared to management and statutory accountants, the supply of these professionals is limited and so employees armed with this knowledge have lots of bargaining power. On the other hand, tax and treasury teams often tend to be smaller and niche, so may have fewer direct career paths to managing a large team and having direct reports. 

This paper combination will serve you well if you intend to do an additional qualification after your ACCA journey - there are a number of tax and treasury (or treasury-related) professional qualifications out there, and these papers can help you get exemptions for parts of these. 

This paper combination will also suit candidates who feel more comfortable with computations and calculations (though be aware that there are still considerable descriptive/discursive portions of the papers).

Combination 3: P4 and P7

Ideal for: externally-oriented finance professionals 

What do both financial management and audit have in common? Much of the work financial managers and corporate reporters working with auditors do is externally focused. Treasurers deal with banks and the capital markets; corporate reporters deal with auditors and externally published accounts. If you want to be involved with how your organisation is viewed by and interacts with the outside world, this is a good combination.

If you are going the auditor route, this combination can also give you the necessary knowledge to audit complex areas such as financial instruments, including derivative/hedging instruments. 

During the studying phase, this combination will also allow you to divide your time between a number crunching paper (P4) and a largely discursive paper (P7). 

Combination 4: P5 and P6

Ideal for: those who can't make up their mind

This combination straddles the division between generalist and technical a bit, and would likely make for a well-rounded accountant (rare is the management accountant who truly understands a tax computation). 

Career-wise this should keep the tax door open upon qualification, but also leave you conversant with the management accounts whenever you need to work with them. 

Like the P4/P7 combination, during the studying phase candidates will get a nice mix of number crunching with P6 and discursive practice with P5.

Combination 5: P5 and P7

Ideal for: accountants who are strong writers

Some finance professionals are Excel masters, but most of us have met accountants who seem surprisingly weak in this area. Well, that's because the accountant as Excel guru is a myth - many accountants make their careers in writing-heavy roles, preparing narrative reports for board committees and strategic advisory documents. 

Content-wise P5 and P7 have very little in common, but both will require strong writing and reporting skills so the practice phase of exam prep should help you improve those.

Unfortunately with this combination, there is little to no overlap so you will not get much help for one when studying the other.

Like the P5/P6 combination, these two taken together should make for a well-rounded accountant. 

Combination 6: P6 and P7

Ideal for: the accountant's accountant 

Tax and audit - this is surely the most conventional pairing of optional exams, and indeed, these are the subject areas that the wider public expects you to know when you say you are an accountant.

Like P4/P7, this is a solid combination for those who like dealing with the outside world (namely, the tax authorities and auditors). 

It is worth noting, however, that Paper P3 explicitly added content on management accounting because the ACCA worried that candidates taking P6 and P7 would have no exposure to management accounting at the professional level.

This combination could be said to be the least like CIMA - up to you to decide whether that's a good or bad thing.

Conclusion

There is a dearth of resources on the web helping students select their optional ACCA paper combinations; I hope this helped provide some food for thought.