CIMA or ACCA?
 

Ok.. I guess this is a finance question.

First of all, this is my background:

My first degree is in politics and my masters is in social and political theory. When I was 22 I decided against carrying on to a PhD (which was always my plan) and to work for a while to get some money. I got a job at a smallish company (which is a v small subsidary of Deutche Post - which is a huge company) - and at 26 Im still there. Right now I am a supervisor of a small team in the dept that basically manages all the transactions that go in and out of the business.

When I joined I did a lot of project stuff and management reporting, but then I moved into finance, and did the cashbook and all the sales and general ledger posting, most of the GL recs and control accs, and I also ran a service for customers that took care of 8th and 13th directive tax reclaim in the EU. In the summer I decided that there was no point working in finance and not training, so I signed up to CIMA. Then two monthes later I got a promotion to the supervisor job, and just kind of forgot about CIMA.

But now I have decided I want to go for it, I find having a financial background really helps in what I do (even though my personal finances are a horrible mess) and I want to at least do the first year and gain some recognition and qualification for the couple of years I worked in accounts. But my CIMA membership expires, and I have a choice to go for ACCA or CIMA - at the moment I am only thinking of taking the first year (I am starting a management training course next year as well, and my director wants me to look at an MBA after that) - so I dont think I could cope with that and trying to qualify as an accountant as well, but I am going to try and get the first year done next year - I have researched CIMA (obv, cos I decided to do it before) and its totally modular and computer assessment based - the format fits really well. But from what I know about ACCA it is more pure finance, which is what I am better at - but I dont know a lot about the format or how the examination works

So, given all that, which qualification should I go for this year, especially on the basis I am only really looking at a 1 year certificate. (I did look at AAT but I was told to forget it cos it would be too easy... I dont know if thats true or not, for me anyway!)