Lou8670

When you apply to have your skills assessed you can also have your work experience assessed at the same time. The assessing body will only count work experience AFTER you met the criteria for your skills as an accountant. If your degree does not fully meet the criteria they will look at your CIMA qualification and see at which dated during your studies you met the criteria. They will then count work experience from that date and provide an opinion On the number of years you can claim. I would thoroughly recommend in your case you pay an assessment of your work experience as this can often cause problems with DIAC if you over claim for work experience.

Invited 1 April and lodged visa on 4th Allocated Adelaide but no news of case officer yet. Sounds like these visa approvals are moving fast!

Be grateful if you could let me know how you got such reasonable flights. I've looked recently and cheapest I could find for when we want to fly is £3.5k. There are 5 of us but would like to save a further £500 if we decide to do a reccie in October.

Thanks guys! I always find others views and comments really helpful. If I were single or if it was just me and my hubby I wouldn't give it a second thought! But we have 3 kids aged 6,6,8. Also, we are looking to move to Perth because SIL lives there and it's great for families but personally I preferred the East coast (I say preferred as I haven't been to the East coast for 14 years). A reccie would be good in October as SIL is getting married and it may come to that as we'd love to go but just waiting to see what happens with our visa before deciding. Trouble is it will be costly as the rest of the visiting family's as bagged staying at my SIL and fiancees families houses so we would have to find somewhere else to stay. Lou

Just wondering if anyone thinks its worth a reccie before the big move. We've been to Australia a couple of times and plan to move to Perth. I would prefer to do a reccie but think my OH just wants to move as soon as our visa comes through and we sell the house. I want to know we are making the right decision.

Flip that's quick. We have lodged a 189 visa on 60 points on 1 April. Have meds booked 28 May (as need to travel to UK so doing them half term) but based on that it'll be more or less straight after meds if all ok. We've been allocated Adelaide as well. Congratulations!

Sorry but only advice is to practice practice practice. If needs be (and needs must) perhaps pay for some private tuition.

On lodging your visa application you'll have to input loads of information (17 pages worth on ours) and pay your visa fee but you don't need to upload any documents at this stage. Once your visa application is lodged you log back in using the new details DIAC provide you with on lodging your visa and that's when you upload your documents. A little patience helps at this stage as lots of us have tried to rush uploading documents before the system shows them as requested which causes a few problems. It's at this stage you should be able to book our Medicals. If you are on the same visa system as us it allowed us to book our Medicals by clicking on the link in the required documents screen. It provide you with a letter which you take to your medical. You just need to contact the centre you selected on the medical application and thy should be able to see you in the system and book the appointment. It's straight forward if you know how (which we didn't either) and there seems to be little guidance or instructions for the individual user!

Once you pay your visa fee you will get a TRN number and on logging into te system there should be a link to book your Medicals and complete the online forms (at least it did with ours a few weeks ago). We've booked our medical at Sutton Coldfield and have been told to allow 3 hours...there are 5 of us though so I think they are staggering the various tests. If you give Sutton a call they are very helpful and were able to answer al of my questions. The Medicals are about £320 for an adult and £90/£100 for a child under 11 years old.

We had exactly the same problem. We uploaded what we could and then left it and last week we received an email from DIAC stating we had been allocated Adelaide processing centre and when we logged back in hey presto they are now requesting we upload documents against the evidence type; some are listed a recommended and others as required. I think we are all rushing and the system is not that sophisticated and is subject to some sort of manual intervention or programme to generate the evidence types to upload documents against.

Log in tomorrow it may have updated. Ours seemed to take a few days/weeks to ask for the right info under each name. One other thing...did you include all their details on the visa application etc?

If your getting your skills assessed by one of he accounting bodies they will also confirm if your accountancy is equivalent to an Australian bachelors degree and will state this in their assessment letter.

Yep that's right. It's basically validating everything in your EOI before you pay your fee and asking for a bit more info. Once you've paid it asks for documents and there's a link to book your Medicals. We haven't done our PCC yet. It is stating its required but I know they are taking about 2/3 weeks at the moment so we are aiming to send ours off at he end of this month to correspond with our meds booked for end of may.

Thanks Jude. We had problems loading documents and ended up loading my birth certificate 4 times because the system kept crashing and when we logged back in no documents were showing. Best thing is to be patient and leave it and come back to it the next day if you are having problems. Good luck with everything. Lou

Firstly lodge your application and pay the fee. This entails filling out 17 pages of information. you aren't asked to load any documents at this stage but you need all your document numbers (eg passport, IELTS, skills Once you've done that it'll say its processing and then you'll be able to start loading documents. However, this can be problematic and we found it easier once DIAC listed the documents to attach.

Do you know which centre he was allocated?

Hi Jude We tried to load ours straight after being invited on 1 April and lodging our visa application. We kept having problems and ended up giving up and thought we would wait and see if the site changed to list the documents required. We got an email this week confirming we had been allocated Adelaide processing centre and have logged back in and found that all documents required are now listed. We are busy tonight attaching them although they ask for everything even though it might not be applicable to us. For example they ask for evidence of custody for the children but this is only if both parents are not migrating. Did your friend actually get allocated a case officer or was it allocation of he centre. Just interested because we've booked our Medicals for end if May because we can't get to the UK until then. I don't want to be allocated a case officer too early and be told we have to do our Medicals earlier!

Hi Harpersgirl. Great to hear from somebody who has been there for two years. My sister in law moved to Perth about 6 years ago and said it takes about two years to feel settled. We are looking to make the move and are in the process of applying for a visa. It is so nerve wracking as to whether we will be turning our backs on a good thing and whether we are making the right move. So it's great to hear from someone couple of years down the line of making the move. Glad to hear things are going well. Lou

Not really. We've left it and have just been allocated a centre (Adelaide). We can now see a whole list of requests for documents to upload so we are going to give it another go today.

Not easy and I have a degree, a diploma and am a fellow of the securities institute, am a qualified accountant and was born and bred in England! I found the reading particularly difficult and only scored 7.5 but met the requirements for my skills assessment. I scored 9/9/8.5 on the others. Trouble was that if I had been the lead applicant I would have have had to resit to get all 8's or more and advice on here has been to resit the general if you then just need it for points. Luckily my other half is the lead applicant and he scored all 8.5 and 9's. Lots of practice helps. I hope she gets on ok. Good luck!

Invitations are based in points not what skill you have applied under. WA stopped sponsoring Accountant General end Dec/ beg Jan but we were still invited on 60 points at beg April. The ceilings are so when they reach them (12,000 in the case of accountants) no more can be invited until the next years quota. I don't necessarily believe that because States are no longer offering sponsorship they will be taken off the list but if you think they might I suggest you get apply before the lists are revised.

Good luck! Where are you in the process? We have been doing the same but haven't put the house on the market yet as we are at the stage where we have meds booked and are awaiting a case officer which we probably won't get allocated until end May/ beginning of June.

I thought you had to be able to evidence all points being claimed at the time of submitting your EOI. If that's the case and if you need the IELTS points then you should put your EOI on hold until he gets enough points on passing his IELTS. Perhaps if you can give a breakdown of points it would be clearer for anyone who is able to give you some advice.

Brilliant. We'll have a go at uploading the remaining documents tonight. At the moment though we are uploading documents using the 'upload' button at the top right of the page as the documents required are not all listed with an 'upload' button next to them.

We are using the checklist but its not clear if you have to load documents more than once against different evidence types and was also unclear for the Children's passports. The site was also playing up and kicking us out and didn't show my birth certificate as being loaded. We loaded it again and still didn't show. Ended up loading it 4 times then suddenly it showed as being loaded 4 times!!!! You earlier comments really help so thank you. Do you know if you can remove documents if they have been loaded in error?