Career and financial advice

[CG2020UK]

I am 26 currently work for a tech consulting firm implementing SAP. I’m paid well enough (earning more than my friends and family), sensible with money and even got my degree paid for by my company. Career progression and salary increase will be good and regular almost guaranteed if you just do your job. Downside is the hours are long and intense and I have to travel 3nights a week when everything opens up again. I do the job but I definitely don’t love and it and would say I tolerate it because it pays well.

I’m thinking of moving into accountancy and I have an offer for a job including having CIMA/ACCA paid for (courses and textbooks). I’ll probably be taking a pay cut initially as well as losing money for the 18-24months it will take me to pass and no promotion etc. Mainly I’m thinking no travel and more 9-5 as the big benefits.

Has anyone followed a similar path or experienced this dilemma? Any wisdom to pass on? Especially keen to hear from anyone in SAP or management accountancy lines of work.

[Abdul Abulbul Amir]

The qualifications just open up a number of different options. You'll earn more if you keep doing ERP implementations, especially as a contractor.

[SK555]

Not in the SAP field but used to work at a Big4 firm in an advisory role. I opted for travel (some places better than others) but on the whole was happy with the role until I was circa 5-6 years in. Most consultancies have a pyramidal structure which means the promotion cycle is less of a guarantee the more senior you become. When I missed out on a promotion I felt I deserved I went into 'industry' which is an option I didn't really consider before but it fit in with what I wanted from a role (a chance to develop in my area of expertise, more accountability).

My advice is to sum what you like and don't like about your current role, but also speak to people in the accountancy field and get a true view of what the job is like. Working fixed hours and limiting travel may sound great in theory but would you accept less significant promo/salary increase opportunities?

The SAP field is also huge - I am sure you could apply your expertise outside of a consultancy and get near enough a 9-5 for good money.

[CG2020UK]

Thanks for the advice guys I really appreciate it!

[pb8g09]

I'm an accountant (CIMA) having been involved internally on 2 SAP implementations at previous businesses so I like to think I know both sides.

There are accountants that I've worked with that would literally rip their bks off to work in your line. £1.5k day rates are not unheard of (in fact quite common).

Management accounting opens the door to business partnering which gets you involved in the commercials
Financial accounting opens the door to Financial controlling and FD roles in Financial service companies

Or as we joke at our place...
Commercial accountants bring in the money, the financial accountants count it and the SAP architects walk away with it into the sunset.

[Zetec-S]

How do you know it will be mainly 9-5? I've worked places where it's commonplace for people to do extra hours, especially around month end/year end, or if there was a significant bid to prepare.

Also, bear in mind trying to complete the whole qualification in 18-24 months will require a lot of dedication, I think on average it takes between 3 and 4 years.

[Abdul Abulbul Amir]

pb8g09 said:

I'm an accountant (CIMA) having been involved internally on 2 SAP implementations at previous businesses so I like to think I know both sides.

There are accountants that I've worked with that would literally rip their bks off to work in your line. £1.5k day rates are not unheard of (in fact quite common).

Management accounting opens the door to business partnering which gets you involved in the commercials
Financial accounting opens the door to Financial controlling and FD roles in Financial service companies

Or as we joke at our place...
Commercial accountants bring in the money, the financial accountants count it and the SAP architects walk away with it into the sunset.

Pretty much this and I'm one of them, except I'd use shears for decency.

And to make matters worse, it's the accountants that know what to actually do whilst the consultants earn the cash.

[Abdul Abulbul Amir]

Zetec-S said:

Also, bear in mind trying to complete the whole qualification in 18-24 months will require a lot of dedication, I think on average it takes between 3 and 4 years.

Depends on exemptions I guess...and it can be quicker now that the old six month exam sitting dates are long gone.

It took me 2.5 years (5 exam sitting sessions) as I skipped session 4 for the last three papers.

Not sure if it has changed now but when I did them for the last six papers split into two lots of three papers you had to pass all three otherwise you had to do them all again.

[Scootersp]

CG2020UK said:

I am 26 currently work for a tech consulting firm implementing SAP. I’m paid well enough (earning more than my friends and family), sensible with money and even got my degree paid for by my company. Career progression and salary increase will be good and regular almost guaranteed if you just do your job. Downside is the hours are long and intense and I have to travel 3nights a week when everything opens up again. I do the job but I definitely don’t love and it and would say I tolerate it because it pays well.

It's tricky one, I want to try and be balanced.

So degree paid for by company and you got to where you've got at 26 so well done achieving all that. It sort of proves/indicates you will probably do well if you switch too.

Grass is always greener though and more exams etc is a lot of work outside of work, so swapping currently paid work for unpaid study 'work' then new accountancy profession might still come into the " I do the job but I definitely don’t love and it and would say I tolerate it because it pays well. " category?

That statement, sad as it is, applies to I'd say the vast majority of people, sure they like it to a point, we are good at it in some way it aligns to our personally/skill set and so that makes us efficient and appreciated and ultimately paid better, but "love it" is so rare in work and perhaps your youth here is clouding your judgement (perhaps my age 48 is clouding mine too), work life is largely a long slog!!

Saying that why not chase your dreams but is anyone's accountancy? and I say that from someone doing it!!! So don't rush into anything, how long ago was uni (what degree) 4 year or 2 ago?

Your career path and internal promotion of job hopping to other companies will increase your salary, retraining for something will stifle that initially as you are aware but might also take you many years to catch up?

Discuss it with others (perhaps not at work lol) you trust respect and try and take it all in with one eye on their natural bias re what they've done.

[ujio]

pb8g09 said:

I'm an accountant (CIMA) having been involved internally on 2 SAP implementations at previous businesses so I like to think I know both sides.

There are accountants that I've worked with that would literally rip their bks off to work in your line. £1.5k day rates are not unheard of (in fact quite common).

Management accounting opens the door to business partnering which gets you involved in the commercials
Financial accounting opens the door to Financial controlling and FD roles in Financial service companies

Or as we joke at our place...
Commercial accountants bring in the money, the financial accountants count it and the SAP architects walk away with it into the sunset.

This.
Keep in your lane and excel here.... SAP isn't going anywhere and you will absolutely kill it at contractors rates with enough implementation experience under your belt. You will pick up the relevant finance knowledge along the way.

Just to get come letters behind your name you will be spending the next 3 years studying for exams and most of what you will study will be forgotten (or not necessary to know unless you go into soul destroying technical accounting). Having qualified you will then be doing month ends for 25% of a month (no 9-5) or be moving numbers around a spreadsheet 'adding value' the rest of it. However, if you have a genuine interest in accounting or aptitude, by all means go for it.

This is all said by a CIMA qualified accountant looking at an exit.

[Countdown]

CG2020UK said:

I am 26 currently work for a tech consulting firm implementing SAP. I’m paid well enough (earning more than my friends and family), sensible with money and even got my degree paid for by my company. Career progression and salary increase will be good and regular almost guaranteed if you just do your job. Downside is the hours are long and intense and I have to travel 3nights a week when everything opens up again. I do the job but I definitely don’t love and it and would say I tolerate it because it pays well.

I’m thinking of moving into accountancy and I have an offer for a job including having CIMA/ACCA paid for (courses and textbooks). I’ll probably be taking a pay cut initially as well as losing money for the 18-24months it will take me to pass and no promotion etc. Mainly I’m thinking no travel and more 9-5 as the big benefits.

Has anyone followed a similar path or experienced this dilemma? Any wisdom to pass on? Especially keen to hear from anyone in SAP or management accountancy lines of work.

ACCA qualified (roughly 20 years PQE). I'd recommend Accountancy to everybody. It's an easy way of making good money and it allows you to work in any industry that you want. However in the first few years before you qualify the work can be very mundane/boring/repetitive. What makes it interesting and enjoyable is the organisation that you work in.

Also SAP is sheer hell. It's the least user friendly system I've ever used and it wasn't easy explaining to the Consultants what double entry is.

[bigandclever]

Not advice, just opinion

If I were in my mid-twenties and building real-world experience in implementing SAP, I'd stick at it till I was 30, keep getting the certs and whatnot and then go freelance. Spend the next decade getting the decent day rate, find a few interesting projects. Financially retire at 40, and then if I still really wanted to do bean counting, do it then with the remaining however-many-years of working you wanted to do..

[PorkInsider]

I'd get as far away from SAP as I could, personally.

Many will disagree because SAP's so ubiquitous, but bear in mind how many companies end up with it because 'that's what everyone else has' rather than because it's so great - rather like looking at what shoe size the CEOs of successful companies wear and then deciding you need a CEO with the same sized feet to be successful.

They're clever is some ways though, I'll give them that, since they're pretty good at keeping on top of finance system requirements, which isn't a bad tactic given who's going to sign off the POs for all the work.

And now they're sun-setting ECC, canning the support, and forcing everyone to HANA whether they like it or not at vast expense to the customer. So there everyone goes again with an unwieldy, jack of all trades ERP system that's supposed to be 'fully integrated' but has everyone working in silos.

Have a look at someone like Shaun Snapp for some interesting insights and research.

Anyway, apologies for the detraction from your questions, OP. Can you tell I'm not a huge SAP fan?

(I'm also in consulting and we make the bulk of our income getting people off their SAP dependency and onto 'best of breed'. )

[Countdown]

PorkInsider said:

I'd get as far away from SAP as I could, personally.

Many will disagree because SAP's so ubiquitous, but bear in mind how many companies end up with it because 'that's what everyone else has' rather than because it's so great

It's a HGV sized bagoshoite. When my predecessor chose it the rationale was "Everybody uses it therefore it cant be that bad....."

Our SAP Support quoted us £16k to make it MTD compliant. EY have provided us with a spreadsheet which does the job for £500.

We're now moving to Dynamics 365