Finance is a continuous growing field with huge opportunities in India and abroad. All are required to track their financial data and maintain books of accounts regardless of the size and scale of an organization. All these require finance professionals. The new law and issuance of accounting standards have made it more challenging than before. Finance professionals are powerful figures in companies and occupy center stage in every organization. If you want to choose finance as your main domain of expertise then you need to get a professional degree from a recognized educational institute.
Admission to courses:
Any 10+2 student can register any of these courses. There are different stages of passing out of all these courses. In terms of joining and passing exams, all these courses are similar except for CA where three years of article-ship with a chartered accountant in practice is needed. Now CWA course have also made it mandatory to have three years of experience under a CWA in practice to get the membership. A company secretary before becoming a member also has to undergo 15 months of training.
Levels of Chartered Accountancy:
• Entry Level Test: Common Proficiency Test
• First Stage of Theoretical Education: Professional Competence Course
• Final Stage of Theoretical Education: Final Course
Levels of Cost Accountancy:
These 2 levels must be passed after the foundation course:
• Intermediate Examination
• Final Examination
Levels of Company Secretary:
• Student joining the Course after 10+2 pass or equivalent has to undergo three stages to pursue the Company Secretaries Course i.e. Foundation Programme , Executive Programme, Professional Programme
• Those who would like to join the Course after passing the Graduation has to undergo two stages of the Company Secretaryship i.e. Executive Program, Professional Program
Comparison of the three
• Chartered accountant (CA), Company secretary (CS), and cost and works accountant (CWA) are managed by centrally controlled Institutes. These three courses have similarity with regard to the syllabus, only difference being in the depths of the subjects studied. Chartered accountancy course gives an in depth knowledge on financial accounting, auditing, income tax, indirect taxation, corporate law and financial management. Cost accounting course will give you knowledge on cost accounting and financial management. Company secretary relates to corporate laws starting from company acts to secretarial practices.
• CA has better advantage over CS and CWA in terms of industry recognition and finance practice. Chartered accountancy is highly recognized in all areas of finance whereas CWA can only work in areas of cost audit and internal audit. In India companies are recognizing CA as a better course than CWA because of its course contents and other advantages over CWA. Even CS is related to finance; specialization is more into law and secretarial practice. If you want to get into the legal compliance matters of a company then this is the best course to do. CS has a very good acceptance in industry.
There is no such thing called the best course universally applicable to everyone. Most of it depends on the outlook, aptitude and the candidate's objective in doing the course. All the three courses have similarities in their course syllabus. A person doing one of these particular courses studies more or less the same subjects as the person doing any other course. Which course you take up is dependent on what you are interested in and what you wish to specialize in. You need to choose the relevant course depending on your ability, aptitude, and career outlook.
Your decision:
Ultimately what ones interests are and what he/she prefers doing are to be decided by the candidate itself. Anyone else would only be able to provide data to enable the candidate to take decisions.
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