The purpose of this qualification is to:

• Provide the learner with the knowledge, understanding, skills and experience to become a Financial Accountant.
• Prepare the learner to work in the financial accounting field and develop a specialist accounting and management career, either within South Africa or in other countries around the world. The learner will have the necessary knowledge, skills, and insight to operate at a second or third level in financial accounting in a large organization or assume full responsibility for the function in a smaller organization.
• Provide the learner with a developmental experience which promotes independence and self-reliance and encourages the adoption of a critical, questioning approach, analysing, and challenging the truth and value of received wisdom.
• Provide employers and others with an adequate basis for assuring that those learners gaining the qualification are competent to act as Financial Accountants for companies and other organisations, whether in manufacturing, commercial or service organisations, in either the public or private sectors of the South African economy.
• Provide companies and other organisations with skilled financial accounting staff who can make a positive contribution to the development of business and society, adding value and assisting in the creation of sustainable economic growth, both for their employers and the economy of South Africa.
• Once qualified, learners will have the necessary financial skills to engage in self-employment of an entrepreneurial nature, thereby contributing to job creation and ultimately contributing to the reduction of unemployment in South Africa.