An average accountant earns £62K in the UK, but there are different variables to consider here if you’re looking to maximise your earning potential which have been brought to light by a recent Accountancy Age UK Salary report.
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For those eager to get a quick-view of the data, we’ve summarised the key findings:
As the data below is just a snippet of the market situation at large, we’d like to add a few remarks.
Even though the average practice accountant earns more in industry than in practice, the highest salaries in the market are overwhelmingly found in practice. According to Accountancy Age data,
“Practice displayed both the lowest salary of all the responses (£11,975) and the highest salary (£400,000). Industry was more balanced, with the lowest salary being £20,000 and the highest salary being £225,000.”
Another example: A Partner in a Big 4 firm in 2016 would make on average between £580K and 660K (source), compare it to the median CFO salary in the UK - around £99K (source).
What’s more, as the report clearly pointed out, there is a significantly lower gender gap observed in practice than in industry. That’s only a result / representation of a more structured progression path usually offering a more frequent opportunity for promotion as it follows a graded structure. Progression in industry can often be quite subjective and may potentially take more time.
As mentioned before, the data only represents the large-scale trends and each instance should of course be treated case by case.
Georgina Trudgill is an Associate Director in the Accountancy Division at Harvey John.
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