FET Certificate Accounting Technician: Public Sector
Course overview:
The purpose of this qualification is to provide the learner with the skills, competence, knowledge and understanding to become an accounting technician.
The Public Sector Accounting Qualifications are customised qualifications, offering accounting officials formal qualifications that ensure immediate demonstration of the acquired skills through their practical and competence-based assessment structures. These qualifications support the development of learners who are employed in the public sector and who want to progress with a career in public sector accounting.
The NQF4 qualification further develops the learner’s accounting skills in the spheres of provincial and national government.
Course details:
Accredited by SAICA for Accounting Technician qualifications:
- SAQA ID: 77143
- NQF level: 4
- Credits: 120
The duration is variable, depending on the learners’ progress and previous experience, but it is likely to take between twelve and eighteen months.
There are no formal entry requirements in terms of qualifications, but it is assumed that the learners accessing this qualification are competent in language, literacy, communication and mathematical literacy at NQF Level 3
FET Certificate: Accounting Technician is the second level of the AT(SA) Accounting Qualification. It introduces you to more complex accounting, tax and finance tasks, having completed your Level 3.
Course Structure
The qualification consists of seven units:
- Communication and Supervision
- Communicate with stakeholders
- Supervise an accounting team
- Use of Technology in Accounting
- Learn to use spread sheets
- Use accounting software
- Professional Ethics
- Apply general principles and procedures for ethical compliance expected within the public sector
- Develop, maintain and apply ethics in work situations
- Preparation of reconciliations and trial balances
- Prepare reconciliations
- Prepare a trial balance
- Identify the principles of VAT and prepare and complete VAT returns.
- Preparation of financial statements
- Understand and interpret financial statements and concepts.
- Understand the principles of drafting financial statements.
- Prepare a simple set of financial statements on the accrual basis
- Cash Management and Recovery of debtors
- Identify Cash Management techniques
- Identify, record, collect and report debtors
- Management of inter-governmental transactions
- Budget preparation and monitoring
- Prepare various types of budgets
- Monitoring of actuals against the budget.
- Discuss budgeting in the public sector
- Identify various types of costs and revenues in the Public Sector
- Discuss the principles of costing services
Upon completion of the qualification, learners will be awarded the FET Certificate: Accounting Technician NQF Level 4 from SAICA/AT(SA)
This qualification leads to the Higher Certificate: Accounting, which is registered at level 5 on the National Qualifications Framework (NQF). It also leads to membership of AT(SA) at the Gold membership level.