The Best way to become a Certified Management Accountant

Alina Parker
4 min readFeb 25, 2022

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If an individual is good with numbers, ambitious, and have splendid communication skills, then a career as a Management Accountant will be the best job role for them. The BLS projects a job growth rate of 16 percent for financial managers from the year 2018 to 2028, which is much quicker than the national job growth rate average for all occupations. They project a job growth rate of 6 percent for management accounting professionals and auditors in that same span, which is also quite faster than the national job growth rate average for all occupations.

A Management Accountant is in charge of finances in the finance industry. They take end-to-end responsibility for the accounts and seek for ways to enhance the profitability. They also work for one organization unlike other accountants who can work for numerous firms. And they also head up a team of other financial professionals. The job role of a Management Accountant on daily basis could be:

  • Analysing performance
  • Preparing financial statements
  • Identifying and managing risk
  • Tracking spending and setting budgets
  • Preparing accounts
  • Making financial forecasts for the firm
  • Presenting financial reports
  • Formulating business strategies
  • Creating and maintaining the organization’s budgets
  • Managing a organization’s general ledger
  • Supervising staff in accounting or finance departments
  • Preparing and reviewing organization’s tax returns
  • Completing internal audits

The field of management accounting offers plenty of opportunities and this role can truly open doors for the aspirants who are willing to take yup this as their profession. As a management accountant they will in demand, all across the world.

They also play an active role in helping to take serious business and financial decisions for an organization. It is the job where the input matters; one also gets a clear view of enterprise inner work. The job role truly makes a huge difference. The role can also be seen as a stepping stone. Many management accountants attain enough knowledge in investment & management accounting, which helps them to move on to become a finance director, management consultant or even CEO of the company.

Certified management accountant

Doing a certification can help an individual to advance in the career in terms of accounting or finance, becoming a certified management accountant gives wings to your career and makes sure to reach more heights.

If one aims to be a chartered management accountant then Chartered Investment & Management Accountant (CIMA®) is perfect for them. This certification is highly sought after for several career-minded professionals who are want to advance in the worlds of finance, business and accounting.

It is the perfect management accounting certification to those professionals who are looking to start a global career to be an investment & management accountant professional. It is among the world’s most uniquely designed most useful certificate in the discipline of management accounting from United States.

CIMA® is an end-to-end certification and has the best distinctive validation of top-level competence of professionals in two of the most quickly emerging super-specialization areas in accounting — investment accounting, and management accounting. It is best professional certificate that offers each registrant with a proven promise and readiness for gathering the need and in-demand financial intelligence that globally several firms are required to monitor manage and grow their businesses and investment assets and portfolios.

· Requirements

The key prerequisite for the CIMA® certification is to have at least a bachelor’s degree from an accredited university in any discipline. Higher qualifications like Master’s or MBA, or specialist professional qualifications in finance, accounting and related disciplines can accelerate the CIMA® journey through registration under CIMA® Master’s or Professional pathways, which need taking a single, unified exam.

· Candidacy Tracks

It consists of 3 candidacy tracks that will help a professional to understand which the most suitable option they can opt for. The following are the 3 candidacy tracks:

Standard Route

This track is for the professionals whose most recent qualification is a bachelor’s degree from a nationally or internationally recognized/accredited institution. The background or major is no limitation, though, if one has a prior exposure to accounting, finance or business, their certification journey completes a lot easier and quicker.

Master’s Pathway

CIMA Institute USA master’s pathway is the swifter candidacy track if one wants to hold or pursuing a master’s degree like MBA/ MS/ M.Sc. in business, finance, accounting or related areas from a nationally/ internationally recognized institution, or from a B-school accredited by international firms like the AACSB, AMBA and EQUIS. One can speed up their journey to get this credential by exam-exemptions in 8 of the 20 standard CIMA® modules and take a single exam instead of two.

Professional Pathway

Choose this quicker CIMA® candidacy track and be a chartered management accountant if an applicant wants to do a professional qualification or certification in finance, accountancy, corporate law, management accountancy, company secretary ship, cost accountancy, public accountancy or similar or related areas from a professional association or a certification body. Individuals CIMA® program journey can be accelerated by taking a single, unified exam instead of two, and they can earn exam-exemptions in 9 of the 20 standard CIMA® modules.

To sum up

The job outlook for the professional in this field looks promising and those with management accounting certification will have better chances for getting promoted to the senior managerial positions. This means a certified management accountant will experience better job security and have many career opportunities in reputed industries available to them.

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Alina Parker
Alina Parker

Written by Alina Parker

Investment & management accountants Writer, Adviser, Researcher and Investor.

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