University to Professional
Almost every graduate hits the same wall: a degree, but no experience, while every employer wants experience. U²Pro is a virtual accounting practice. You work in it as a junior trainee would, on realistic client files, reconciliations, VAT, payroll and month-end, and you finish able to show an employer which practical competencies you have demonstrated.
U²Pro is a simulated work programme. It is not employment, not articles and not a substitute for a real job. What you leave with is evidence of what you can do.
CIBA recognised by SAQA, SARS & CIPC
Work Readiness Passport on completion
12 months’ credit toward the CIBA designation, not toward employment
Completion certificate
Pathway to the CFAdmin designation
Arrive ready for your first accounting job.
You have done the studying. U²Pro is not more of it. It is the bridge between the degree and the job: the place where you build and demonstrate the practical competencies an accounting practice expects of a first-year trainee, before anyone hires you.
U²Pro is built as a virtual accounting practice rather than a passive online course. You work through the tasks, decisions and workflows a junior trainee meets in a real firm, on synthetic client data, so you practise the whole flow of the work rather than studying pieces of it. That means the work reaches you the way it actually reaches a trainee’s desk.
And half of them are missing. What do you request, from whom, and how do you ask for it?
Something is out. You have to find it, and month-end is not going to wait for you.
The client is not ready. You still have to be.
Show your working, in a form somebody senior can actually review.
Before anyone drafts a financial statement, you are the one who checks it.
It needs a professional answer, in writing, today.
Prepared, and then explained to somebody who is not an accountant.
You have to decide whether to fix it, ask about it, or escalate it.
These are the real jobs a first-year trainee does inside an accounting practice. You work through them here, on realistic client scenarios, before an employer ever asks the question: can you already do the work?
Capture, reconcile and close the bank, debtors, creditors and general ledger, every month.
Work up VAT201, EMP201, EMP501 and provisional tax to submission standard, and know the eFiling process step by step.
Calculate PAYE, UIF and SDL, build a compliant payslip and prepare the returns that go with it.
Build a director-ready pack with variances, ratios and plain-language commentary.
Year-end adjustments, provisions, a working paper file a reviewer can follow, and the road to CIPC compliance.
Ethics, confidentiality, POPIA, fraud red flags and the communication that builds a career.
U²Pro prepares you for the work of a first-year trainee in an accounting practice. University and TVET college students, recent graduates and career changers are all welcome, and you do not need any work experience to start.
The same work carries further than a practice. Client files, reconciliations, VAT, payroll, month-end and reporting are also what a junior in a company’s finance department handles, and they are what you need if you intend to run your own practice one day. U²Pro shows you how a practice operates, through its workflows, quality control, documentation and professional standards.
You work through the practice block by block, following the client file from take-on to year-end, at whatever pace suits your studies or your job. A course is organised around topics; U²Pro is organised around the jobs on a trainee’s desk. In format terms that is twenty-six recorded sessions of about two hours each, roughly 52 hours in all, and every one of them gives you the same four things.
A reference you keep: checklists, templates and worked examples for the workplace.
The definitions, the legislation and the worked examples, laid out clearly.
About two hours, trainer-led, with screen sharing and worked examples. Pause, rewind and rewatch as often as you need.
A 20-question check after each session to lock the content in before you move on.
Where the work calls for it you are taken through recognised South African accounting and practice software, including Sage and Draftworx, so you can name the systems you have worked in when you apply for a job.
Ten blocks that follow the work as it moves through a practice, from your first day to the client’s year-end. Twenty-six sessions, then one integrated case study that runs a single client through all of it.
Knowledge is checked after every session and consolidated in one case study at the end.
Over 18 years in business accounting, audit and corporate governance. A former Audit Director and professional-body Technical and Standards Executive, she has guided more than 14,000 members through complex regulation, and serves on the PAFA Technical Advisory Group, the IFAC Anti-Money Laundering Committee and the IFRS Foundation SME Implementation Group.
Every principal asks the same question about a new graduate: can this person sit down on Monday morning and start helping? A normal graduate costs the firm money for months first, in training, mistakes, supervision and rework. A U²Pro graduate has worked through those same tasks already, so they reach useful work sooner.
They already understand how a practice’s client files and month-end workflow run.
They have worked through the core tasks before, so they need less hand-holding.
Work done to a standard the first time, not the third.
Faster to value, so a new hire stops being a cost centre sooner.
Ten past U²Pro students. Every one of them now holds the Chartered Financial Administrator designation with CIBA. The words are theirs, unedited.
Quoted with each student’s permission. U²Pro is a simulated work programme; the designation each of them holds was awarded by CIBA under its own admission requirements.
You have already paid for a qualification. What most families discover next is that employers want practical ability as well as a degree, and that the first accounting job is the hardest one to get. U²Pro is the step in between: your graduate practises the day-to-day work expected in a junior accounting role and builds evidence of what they can actually do.
R12 000 once off, or R1 000 a month for twelve months. A fraction of a year of university fees.
A Work Readiness Passport listing the competencies they have demonstrated, a CIBA completion certificate, and 12 months of credit toward a CIBA designation.
It is not a job, not articles and not work experience. It is practice, and evidence of practice, done before an employer asks.
South Africa does not have a shortage of accounting graduates. It has a shortage of graduates an employer can put on client work in their first month. U²Pro closes that gap for R12 000 a learner, and every learner finishes with a Work Readiness Passport recording exactly which competencies they demonstrated, so the outcome of your funding is documented rather than asserted.
Fund a defined number of graduates. You receive completion and competency reporting for every learner you fund.
Back the deferred payment route. Repayments from employed graduates fund the next intake, so the same capital reaches more than one learner.
Firms can put shortlisted candidates or new juniors through U²Pro so they reach useful work sooner and cost less to train.
U²Pro (University to Professional) is CIBA’s programme for the gap between studying and employment. It is built as a virtual accounting practice: you work through the tasks, decisions and workflows a first-year trainee meets in a real firm, on synthetic client data, so you finish able to demonstrate practical competencies rather than only academic knowledge.
University and TVET students, recent graduates and career changers are all welcome. You do not need a completed qualification or any work experience to start. If you want to work in an accounting practice, join a finance department, or run your own practice one day, this is for you.
There are no intake dates. Every session is pre-recorded, so you start as soon as you enrol and work through the blocks at whatever pace suits your studies or your job. If you pay R1 000 a month, the sessions are released month by month as each payment is received rather than all at once. If you pay R12 000 once off, everything available is released immediately.
A 20-question check after each session (60% to pass, one resubmission), plus one integrated take-home case study at the end (65% to pass) marked with written feedback. Everything you pass is recorded in your Work Readiness Passport.
Your U²Pro Work Readiness Passport, which lists the competencies you have demonstrated and is the document you show an employer. Alongside it, a CIBA completion certificate and 12 months of experience credit toward your CIBA designation. If you chose the R12 000 once-off option, your first year of Chartered Financial Administrator (CFAdmin) membership is included as well.
CFAdmin is awarded on the Skills Module, 12 months of relevant experience and a Professional Assessment. U²Pro delivers the Skills Module, and completing it earns 12 months of experience credit against the experience requirement. You then sit the Professional Assessment.
You choose at checkout. Either pay R1 000 a month for 12 months, or pay R12 000 once off. Both total R12 000. The difference is what is bundled: the once-off option includes your first year of CFAdmin membership, while the monthly option covers the programme on its own. If you choose monthly, your card is debited automatically on the same date each month and the payments stop by themselves after the twelfth one. All payments go through secure Payfast checkout, and you can view or cancel a monthly plan yourself under My Account.
A single record of what you demonstrated during the programme, competency by competency, from client onboarding and source documents through reconciliations, VAT, payroll, working papers, month-end and reporting. You can attach it to a CV, take it into an interview and talk an employer through it. It states plainly that the competencies were demonstrated through a simulated work programme.
A limited number of places carry deferred payment terms. It is a separate application rather than an option at checkout, places are limited and nobody has a right to be granted them. If you are approved, you sign a deferred payment agreement and a parent or guardian signs as surety. Repayment starts when you are earning at least R5 000 a month, or twelve months after you finish the programme, whichever comes first. You then repay the R12 000 over up to twelve months, with no interest and no fees. Read the full conditions.
No. Every return you prepare sits on a simulated client file built with synthetic data. You work a VAT201, an EMP201, an EMP501 and a set of IRP5s up to submission standard and you are taken through the eFiling process step by step, but nothing leaves the programme and nothing reaches SARS, CIPC or a bank. The competence is real; the client is not.
No. U²Pro is not employment, not articles, not an internship and not a substitute for a real job, and we will not tell an employer that it is. It is a simulated work programme. What you leave with is a Work Readiness Passport listing the competencies you have demonstrated through it. Separately, CIBA recognises completion as 12 months of experience credit toward its own designation requirement. Those are two different things, and we keep them apart on purpose.
+27 (0) 12 643 1800/2/4 ciba@myciba.org www.myciba.org
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Cape Town: Cape Town Spaces Office, Century City, No1 Bridgeway Road, Bridgeways Precinct, Cape Town, 7441
Namibia: Regus Office Windhoek, Maerua Mall 3rd Floor, Windhoek, Namibia, 10005
Paris: I13 Rue Paul Valéry, 75116 Paris, France (ICFOA)
