How to Become a Chartered Accountant?

Well, students aim to be Chartered Accountant (CA) looking at the success of T.N.Manoharan, Kumar Mangalam Birla but many a times their plan fails due to lack of planning or guidance. Number of online portals list out the steps to become a CA with the aim to promote their own business. Here, UrbanPro experts list the easiest, shortest and convenient way of becoming a CA and how also how to do it from Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI):

a) Know CA to the core The beginning of pursuing CA course is to know the academic content and end result of CA course to the core. So, first here is putting the top 5 professions that you can aim for as a CA pass out - Tax Accountants, Management Accountants, Financial Accountants, Budget Analysts and Auditor. Coming to course content, its important to learn Intermediate (Integrated Professional Competence) Course, Accounting Technician Course (ATC) along with Final Course. You can read about them here. b) CPT exam The first step to ICAI CA course is the Common Proficiency Test (CPT) which you can apply from here. (http://www.icai.org/cptform.html) CPT is an objective type test of 200 marks with four segments. The primary criteria to apply for CPT exam is qualified candidates of 10+2 exam from recognized institutes. Graduates and post graduates can also apply for ICAI CPT exam. There is no age limit related to the ICAI CPT test. For online candidates the exam fee for CPT exam is Rs. 500. The offline candidates have to pay Rs. 1000 (test fee and application form cost). The four section of CPT exam are as follows: Accounting (60 Marks) Mercantile Laws (40 Marks) Economics (50 Marks) Quantitative Aptitude (50 Marks) c) About ICAI CA course Exactly alike any other course, you should research enough about ICAI before applying for their CA course. Other than CA, there are many Post Qualification course and Certificate course offered by ICAI, that you can browse. Please note, the during the ICAI CA course duration there are 4 important steps involved. It starts from the CPT exam followed by Integrated Professional Competence Course (IPCC)/IPCE, three years Article ship/ Training under a Practicing C.A and C. A. Final. d) Orientation Programme and ITT course Students who qualify the CPT exam, next moves on to the orientation and 100-hours ITT course. Student can speed up the procedure of orientation and ITT course, but not get rid of this step.This majorly involves lectures, case studies,presentations,group discussions and debates.  The duration of Orientation Programme of CA course is 7 hours per day and this is held for 5 days (35 hours). The ITT course can be taken up in any ICAI ITT center. Check the ICAI ITT centers here. e)  Intermediate (IPC) Examination Conducted in the month of May, the IPC exam is the last step for you, before you get on to the CA article ship. The exam is conducted in the month of May and results are out by August in the official website of ICAI. This year, the IPC exam is starting on 3^rd May 2017. Submission of application form is discontinued and thus, students can apply for IPC exam online only. The following is the syllabus or papers IPC exam: Accounting Business laws, ethics and communication Taxation Cost Accounting and Financial Management Advanced Accounting Auditing and assurance Information Technology and Strategic Management f) CA Articleship On clearing the IPC exam starts the 3 years of CA articleship which can be split into two heads : 2 years - Mandatory article ship served under a Chartered Accountant in practice and referred to as Industrial Training 1 year - In the last year of CA article ship, a student can continue his training under a CA (in practice) or enroll himself for training under a CA (in employment). You can download the CA articleship registration form here. g) Final course of CA Post article ship, there is one last step in CA exam - the final course, whose time frame is 6 - months. There are two groups for which one has to qualify the CA final course and thereby, becoming a CA professional. In CA final course,  there are eight subjects to be studied sectioned under 2 groups of 4 papers of 100 marks each. In order to clear the exam, students have to get 40% in each paper and 50% in accumulated score.   h) GMCS Course The next immediate step after clearing the final course of CA exam, is to mandatorily take up the GMCS course. But this is going through a revision process and and is being mapped to be clubbed along with CA orientation course, based on a ICAI press release. Check here. i)CA enrollment The last step in becoming a CA is officially registering yourself with ICAI, which you can do here. You are offered a certificate which states you as a professional CA candidate.