AAT Assistant Accountant Apprenticeship (Level 2 Pathway)

During this apprenticeship, you will learn finance administrator skills e.g. double entry bookkeeping, basic costing principles, and purchase, sales and general ledgers and then progress onto more complex accountancy processes e.g. final accounts for sole traders and partnerships, reports and returns and professional ethics.

Topics include:

Bookkeeping Transactions:This unit looks in more detail at the cash book and petty cash book and introduces the reconciliation of control accounts. You will also be required to make adjustments through the journal and re-draft the initial trial balance once adjustments have been made.

Bookkeeping Controls - Deals with documents that are sent to and from organisations, and to code and file those documents appropriately. You will need to know how to make entries in sales, purchases and returns day books, and to transfer those totals, and cash book and petty cash book totals, to the sales, purchases and general ledgers.
Using Accounting Software- This unit is about using a computerised accounting application to input and process data for business transactions including sales and purchases, receipts and payments, and to prepare management and period end reports.

Advanced Bookkeeping- consolidates and introduces new areas such as accounting for non-current assets and using the extended trial balance. You will deal with adjustments for closing inventory, accrued and prepaid expenses and income, and how these are incorporated into an extended trial balance. Provisions for depreciation on non-current assets, irrecoverable debts and allowances for doubtful debts are also to be calculated and accounted for.

Final Accounts Preparation- This unit is concerned with preparing final accounts for sole traders and partnerships, incorporating elements of dealing with incomplete records, and an appropriate understanding of the principles that underpin the preparation of final accounts.

Management Accounting: Costing- You will develop an understanding of how costs are handled in organisations, and why different organisations treat costs in different ways. You should be able to recognise different approaches to cost accounting and make informed and reasoned judgements to guide management.

Other areas include:
Indirect Tax
Ethics for accountants
Spreadsheets for Accounting