I’m based in Birmingham and currently working as a Finance Analyst on £30k. I’m also CIMA part-qualified (14/16 exams) and trying to work out the best route to get towards £40k+.

My career progression so far:

Finance Analyst – £30k | Jan 2026–Present (8 months): P&L and management reporting, variance analysis, month-end close, balance sheet/AP/AR reconciliations, cash flow analysis and weekly reporting for senior management. I’ve also built reporting dashboards and worked on Excel automation/process improvements.

European Finance Operations Assistant – £25k | Aug 2024–Dec 2025 (1 year 5 months): Supported month-end, intercompany invoicing and journals, financial reporting, Power BI processes and maintaining financial data. Worked with finance and operational teams across different areas.

Accounts Coordinator – £25k | Jan 2024–Jul 2024 (7 months): Managed bank reconciliations, incoming cash allocation, AR, invoice queries, overdue payments and intercompany journals, while supporting month-end close.

Property Accounts Assistant – £25k | Aug 2023–Dec 2023 (5 months – Temporary): Worked in property AP processing invoices, managing supplier queries, VAT journals, direct debits and supporting month-end across.

Graduate Investment Operations Officer – £20k | Feb 2023–Aug 2023 (7 months – Temporary): Worked with institutional investment operations, processing financial transactions and settlements, corporate distributions/dividends, reconciliations and resolving fund issues.

I also have an Economics degree and am now only 2 CIMA exams away from qualifying.

I feel like I’ve gained quite a broad range of experience, but my salary progression has been:
£20k → £25k → £25k → £25k → £30k

For those in finance/accounting earning £40k–£50k+, what would you recommend I do next?

Should I finish CIMA first, start applying now.

Also, for anyone based in Birmingham/the Midlands, what salary would you realistically expect someone with my experience and CIMA level to be earning?

What would you do if you were in my position?

I logged onto the CIMA FLP platform and noticed at the end of a topic level, before you do an assessment you now get a pop up with terms and conditions warning you to follow set rules, now you have a set time frame and it strictly prohibits any use of generative AI and help from others etc.

Is this a new feature? And I wonder why it's been added?

Does anyone know anything of this?

Hi guys I’m hoping someone can point me in the direction of somewhere/ something helpful to help me get a deeper understanding of ratio analysis like a video or online lesson.

This is for F2 but don’t necessarily need something specifically tailored to that.

I’m looking to get some last minute knowledge on what causes variances and changes in ratios.

I’m interested in hearing from people working in finance/accounting in the UK.

For those of you earning £40k, £50k, £60k+, how did you make the jump?

I’m currently studying CIMA and it feels like there’s a big gap between being on £25–30k and getting into those higher salary brackets.

For anyone who has been in a similar position:
What was the biggest thing that increased your salary?

Did you stay with one company and work your way up, or move jobs regularly?

Did becoming part-qualified/fully qualified make a big difference?

Which areas of finance are paying the most? (FP&A, commercial finance, management accounting, financial
accounting, analyst roles, etc.)

At what point did you stop applying for junior roles and start targeting £40k+ positions?

If you could go back to when you were earning £30k or less, what would you do differently?

Would especially appreciate advice from people who started around £25–30k and worked their way up to £40k+, rather than people who went straight into high-paying graduate schemes.

What’s the one piece of advice you’d give someone trying to accelerate their finance career?

Hi. I'm currently at the Operational level of CIMA, aiming to finish the whole qualification by the first half of 2028. I also have about 2.5 years of experience that fits CIMA's practical experience requirements. I'm about to change employers, and I'm worried my current boss (who would be my PER supervisor) will become hard to reach once I'm gone.

I don't want to lose the chance to get this experience properly documented and verified. Is there a way to get my supervisor to confirm/sign off on my experience now, before I leave, so I don't run into problems getting it verified later? Has anyone dealt with this?

Hi everyone,

Just wondering how many weeks people took off between CIMA levels?

Hi, I am starting the competencies for MCS today. I have an exemption for Performance and Project Management so just need to do the competencies for Advanced Management Accounting and Advanced Financial Reporting.

I'm thinking of giving the exam in November. Is that realistic? I have a full time job as a management accountant right now but can dedicate 2 hours daily with more on the weekends (8 hours) to complete the competencies.

I have not booked the exam yet. Also, I have enrolled myself in the daily evening classes at 6pm, but it says no scheduled events? How do i schedule it after i have already enrolled myself.

I'm on the Skills Plus package for 12 months. Do i get any mock exams? Sorry I have not gone through the website properly

Just passed F2 yesterday and will be starting 6 weeks of live lectures for the MCS - for those who’ve done it, what E2/F2/P2 topics did you wish you’d revised before rather than relearning alongside the case study?

I passed OCS last year (albeit narrowly), but felt like I was having to remind myself of the syllabus rather than honing the actual exam technique.

Would appreciate any tips!

Looooooooool Masters' in Finance and I'm hard stuck on this fucking OT. I am acutally cooked

Edit: Scores are 68, 86, 84, 84, 81, 82, 87. 8th is pending

Edit 2: I got 95 on my 8th LOOOOOOOOL

Hi all,

I recently became a licensed CPA, I was curious as to what are the steps to be followed to get the CIMA certification

What are the subjects to study and who review course providers to choose.

Please note; consider me a dummy in terms of the CIMA Subjects.

All the guidance is appreciated.

Hello everyone! A little background about me — I started CIMA in August 2026 and am currently fast-tracking since I graduated about two years ago. I’m working full-time and am currently under a one-year subscription. As I’m fast-tracking, I only need to sit for the OCS, MCS and SCS exams, but I still have to complete all the competency area learning. My goal is to complete all three case study exams within this one-year subscription because paying for another year would be quite expensive for me. I’m currently feeling a little pressured because balancing full-time work and CIMA has been more challenging than I expected. Completing all the competency learning on the CIMA portal is essential before sitting for the case study exams, but it is taking up a significant amount of my study time. Honestly, I’m also finding some of the calculation-heavy areas, such as cost accounting, budgeting and planning, quite difficult to simply go through quickly. I feel like I need proper time to understand and practise these topics rather than just rushing through them but this is not possible as I am chasing time. At the moment, I have approximately two months left before my OCS exam, and I still need to study the pre-seen material, attend classes and practise past-year questions. So I’m trying to figure out how best to prioritise my time.

For those who have already completed the case study exams, I would really appreciate some advice on how to approach them:

• Do we need to have a thorough understanding of 100% of the competency learning syllabus, or is it possible to be more selective?
• How much of the competency learning content is actually applied in the case study exam?
• Would it be sufficient to make sure I properly understand all the “I Can” statements in the Kaplan OCS book, since they seem to cover only certain parts of the wider competency syllabus?
• Should I focus more heavily on the areas directly relevant to the pre-seen and case study, rather than trying to master every single competency area in depth?

I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed trying to balance understanding everything properly while also racing against the clock. Any advice from people who have gone through the fast-track route or recently completed their OCS would be greatly appreciated. Thank you! 🙏

I've got my E1 exam tomorrow. Have passed about 5 mocks from different sources. For anyone that has taken the exam recently, are there any topics that came up frequently, and where there any calculation questions?

None of the Kaplan or aCOWtancy mocks had them, but the opentuition did.

Hi All

I have some exam credits that expire on 7th Nov.

Realised that the Nov sitting for the management case study exam falls outside this window so not sure if can still use the credits in this case.

Does anyone know whether the expiration is based on the day you schedule your exam or whether this is based on the day you sit for the exam?

I checked with the GEC and the consultant I spoke to said no but I was able to schedule an exam as a test. Please let me know. Stupid questions I know but I am desperate 😭

Hi! Can anyone explain EPS & diluted EPS to me in layman’s terms (if that’s even possible lol) or potentially point me in the direction of a good resource. I’m using Kaplan and they way they explain just isn’t going in.

I know the formula for EPS = Earnings / WAV no. of shares

My textbooks say that WAV no. shares is worked out the following way:

shares before issue x (months before/ 12) x BF

+
shares after issue x (months after/ 12)

BUT I keep getting questions where the EPS is being calculated literally just as Earnings/no. shares before x BF??

Diluted EPS I am also at an absolute loss with, everytime I think I have my head around it I get a question wrong!

Thanks in advance

I'm going to book an F3 exam for the 18th of september.

Ive already passed P3

I am doing the BPP apprenticeship and covered all the live lessons.

My revision will be to go over the videos and the mocks.

What are the questions like in the exam are there lots of calculations being a F paper?

Or is there alot of multiple choice of the theory?

Thanks.

I'm looking at swapping from self tutoring to FLP, and I'm wondering what's the learning resources like on FLP. Is it just written text books for I to read, then answer some multiple choice questions based on information retained, or are there videos explaining the information?

Hi all

Not a finance or accounting professional, but worked at support consultant roles.

Our team needs a finance guy in complement to our consultancy background. “Fortunately” I was chosen to be that guy. As I have a business studies degree, I can start from Operations CIMA level.

What difficulty can I expect to pass? Our company will be using Kaplan online learning course. Has anyone got experience of going through them?

Thanks

Hello people of reddit. Is there anyone with F1, E1 and P1 BPP progress tests? Could someone please dm me if they have them.

Hey everyone.

We're running a series of free, one-day in-person workshops for the upcoming SCS round (again).

If you are sitting the upcoming Nov-26 or Feb-27 window, or perhaps the SCS exam next year, these could be really useful resources for you. If you are sitting the MCS and need some insight into the SCS, that's fine too.

The workshops will be run in these cities, on the following dates:

🇿🇦 Johannesburg, ZA — 10th October
🇿🇦 Cape Town, ZA — 17th October
🇿🇲 Zambia, ZM — 24th October
🇿🇼 Harare, ZW — 31st October
🇬🇧 London, UK — 7th November

Some are almost full, so please register if you are interested.

In these workshops, we'll be covering

→ Exam technique
→ New syllabus elements
→ Question application (window-specific)
→ Q&A

To join, here's what to do

1. Click the link below
2. Fill in the form
3. Wait for us to confirm (48 hours)
4. Receive venue details (14 days or so before)

https://www.procountancy.com/free-ultimate-scs-workshops

FYI — Admin approval sought before posting this.

Please only sign up if you are interested. My colleague will send you a gift after you sign up as a thank-you for engaging with us.

Just wondering how much of a bump people saw in salary once they qualified and whether it was due to an external move or internal raise? Also how long it took to get another role if external?

I’m in Manchester, have 4-5 years of relevant experience (FP&A/FBP) and currently a management accountant (has been a year). I qualified in May and my salary has remained £42k. Employer keeps drawing out the review and I don’t see an increase anytime soon which is frustrating. Hoping to find something external instead as I’m definitely in a position to take on more responsibility too.

I am due to sit E3 and have used Astranti as my tuition provider. Alongside this I have been using the Kaplan exam kit. The questions between the 2 providers differ massively as the Astranti ones are very long winded and subjective and I am struggling to pass their mocks. However I am flying through the Kaplan questions with ease. Should I be worried?

I officially qualified as a CGMA this July and I am planning a salary negotiation meeting with my manager next week. I wanted to get some realistic feedback on my target figures and situation from this sub.

Current Role and salary : Finance Analyst - £48k. The advertised band for the role (48k - 55k)

I have 6years total corporate finance experience - management accountant, financial accountant and 10months in my current role.

When I accepted the offer, the recruitment business partner explicitly told me there was no room for negotiation at that time because I wasn't qualified yet, but stated that my salary would come up once I qualified.

N:B - The company sponsored my Management and Strategic level exam fees, so I am bound by a standard training clawback clause

My Plan:
I am looking to ask to be moved to £55k.

Is £55k a realistic expectation for a fully qualified Analyst?

Has anyone successfully negotiated a salary bump after qualifying. How did you manage to?

Really excited to be starting.

How did everyone get on with studying certificate level and self studying?

How quickly can i complete all modules