Welcome to the wonderful world of Accountancy

My name is Andy Bradley and I am the head of AAT at Kaplan. You might be wondering what AAT means, well let me start by saying that in Accountancy we seem to use a lot of acronyms so get used to them! AAT means the Association of Accounting Technicians 9 wihc you would know already if you have been reading this website with interest!) but for you guys it means the awarding body for our Accountancy Apprenticeship.

You may well be considering if an Accountancy Apprenticeship is for you and wondering exactly what it is accountants do, so I thought I would start this blog to allow my colleagues and anyone else who wants to, to give you a flavour of life as an accountant, and to let you ask us any questions you might have.

I qualified as an accountant in 1994 - back in the dark ages, and worked as an accountant for 4 years before deciding to move into training and working for Kaplan. For most of my 4 years i worked as an auditor with a large firm of accountants. Being an auditor means going into companies and other organisations such as colleges, the NHS and charities to do a review of their accounts to make sure they have produced them correctly. For many organisations this is a legal requirement so it is important that auditors do their job well, or they can end up in court.

Some of the best things about being an auditor were that you never get bored. You visit different clients every 1-3 weeks so you are not just stuck behind your desk all the time. I was based in Hull ( great place - you should try it sometime!) but my clients were based all over the country so i got to travel a lot, including spending about 6 weeks each year in London. many of my friends and colleagues had clients overseas but sadly I was never that lucky. Working for a big firm of accountants meant that you had the opportunity to work overseas for longer periods too - I had firends who did secondments to Italy, Cape Town and America, so if you have the travel bug and want to see the world, this is a great job for you.