It’s the time of year when I think about my training requirements and as an ICAEW accountant in practice I have traditionally received my training face-to-face, either from Mercia or Smart Training. 10 half days a year, cost around £500, a mix of tax and accounting lectures but nothing on audit because I am not audit-registered.
I get a Tax TV subscription free with my Bloomsbury Tax Online service which gives me a monthly one hour program on topical matters from quality lecturers, so that effectively covers the ‘tax update’ type material. I could add Accounting TV for £99 + VAT.
Looking at the online material available from Mercia it seems to work out at £60 per webinar, which is comparable to their face-to-face price. Am I the only one who thinks that material delivered online should save us money? The Smart Training webinars seem to be sold in 15 minute modules (costing £29+VAT for two modules) with most topics covered in two modules so this strikes me as too brief compared with a traditional 3 hour lecture.
Am I missing something? Is there a quality provider who is doing a decent range of online CPD at a sensible price?
Replies (14)
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SWAT and TaxTV
SWAT's recorded seminars look quite good at £27.50/person/month.
Do you think TaxTV covers everything that comes up in the year? I asked this on another thread; as I have a subscription, but hardly anyone responded.
SWAT/Mercia
Hi Tim
I thought the £27.50 for the recorded webinars looked quite clear, but then maybe I have missed something
Mercia does quarterly one-hour updates for £110 (£220 if you want both accounting and tax) but I cannot see if that is per quarter or per year.
Smart Training looks good too. I particularly like the fact that you do not have to sign up for a whole year to get a good price. What are the Smart lectures like?
Mercia
We use the Mercia on line training and really like it, I find the Tax and Accounting updates really good.
We have just signed up to the 20:20 training too, which was quite reasonable for our size of firm, so might be worth a look?
Update on Mercia Quarterly Updates
The Mercia quarterly updates are £110 per annum for tax and £110 for audit and accountancy. I'm not really interested in the audit but it seems you cannot avoid it if you go for the package. I wonder if the accountancy content suffers much for it.
SWAT have a monthly subscription price per month - around £30. We used them previously and are actually going back now.
The flexibility is good and the number of courses huge. If you cannot attend the webinar, you can request a recording which comes with comprehensive notes.
As a sole practitioner with two admin/support staff, it is great value for money as well as great material.
CPD Notes: Smart and Mercia
Yes, I never thought about providing notes. Does anyone know if the others, eg Mercia and Smart do that?
Tolley Seminars
We have used online CPD for a number of years. Firstly CCH but for the last 2 years have used Tolley Seminars. The cost is around £350 for one user or £720 for up to 5 users.
The course material is top quality with lots well known speakers, far better than the cch offering and if a few people in the office would use it very good value.
I can watch it on my mobile, ipad- pretty much anywhere. No travel cost or time and as there are usually say 15 minute modules they very easy to get through.
I would highly recommend it and everyone in our office is now using Tolley Seminars.
SWAT Webinars
The monthly subscription price is good if everyone in the firm wants to watch webinars, as the package gives everyone in the firm unlimited access to the library of 200 courses.
However individual courses can be purchased for a single person or group.
Some courses are 3 hours long and some are 1.5 hours. All come with full notes, and as well as running live (so you can text the lecturer) most are also available to stream from the website.
I think we are definately worth a look if you want choice of courses and ways to pay...but then perhaps I am biased as I work for SWAT!
I'll try Smart Training First
I think I am going to try some Smart Training on-line lectures as they seem to be the cheapest ones you can get without a subscription. If I don't like them, I will consider the Mercia quarterly updates or the SWAT annual subscription to all their webinars. It's a shame Mercia don't do accounting updates without the auditing. Seems a shame to have to pay for something you don't want.
SWAT
As a 1 man band SWAT is brilliant. £27 ish for unlimited webinars every month. And I don't have to leave my desk.
Agree with djn24, Tolleys online seminars are great quality and you can view them anytime, archive content is very useful as well.
ACCA have free online courses
Checkout http://www.accaglobal.com/gb/en/member/accounting-business/ab-cpd.html. ACCA release about 3 a month. Alternatively checkout http://www.smarttraining.co.uk/online-courses.
Quantum Professional Training film some of the CPD courses I present to their live audiences and their DVDs seem to be pretty popular with people who don’t want to travel for their training. I think they also film tax courses presented by people like Rebecca Benneyworth so the quality of course notes etc is bound to be good. From what I know you just buy the topics you want so no need to be tied into any sort of subscription.