To become an Alberta CPA, a CPA candidate must successfully pass the Common Final Exam (CFE) as well as complete their practical experience requirements. CPA Alberta’s Practical Experience team works with employers and CPA candidates to ensure candidates gain relevant experience within their role.
The work of the Practical Experience team plays an important regulatory role at CPA Alberta. The mandate of the team is to protect the public by ensuring candidates obtain the appropriate practical experience in order to be admitted into membership. Candidates are considered registrants of CPA Alberta and have the same duties and obligations that designated CPAs and professional accounting firms (PAFs) have to meet. The applicable obligations and requirements are set out in the Chartered Professional Accountants Act (the Act), the Bylaws, Directives and Resolutions made pursuant to the Act, and the CPA Alberta Rules of Professional Conduct. In short, candidates must comply with all the requirements of CPA Alberta, including the underlying obligation to be ethical in all aspects of conduct, both professionally and personally.
Prior to admittance into membership, candidates must obtain relevant practical experience through one of two routes: pre-approved program (PPR) or experience verification (EVR), or a combination of both.
The PPR route is a structured training path, where the employer and CPA Alberta have worked together to develop a program that will satisfy the Practical Experience Requirements in 30 months. The reporting requirements for candidates in PPR are streamlined as CPA Alberta evaluates the experience at the time the candidate completes the program. This streamlined process exists because CPA Alberta monitors PPRs once every three years to ensure they continue to operate as approved.
The EVR route is much more flexible as it allows candidates to work anywhere as long as they are gaining qualifying experience. Candidates in the EVR route are required to submit detailed practical experience reports to CPA Alberta. The Practical Experience team then evaluates the experience, determines what competencies have been achieved, and provides guidance to meet all of the necessary competencies.
All candidates, regardless of their path, are required to be mentored throughout their term of practical experience by an Alberta CPA.
Whether a candidate obtains their experience through the EVR or the PPR route does not impact their application to membership. However, if a candidate plans on providing professional or public accounting services post-qualification (i.e. once they become an Alberta CPA), the practical experience stream they have chosen may impact their eligibility to register a professional accounting firm (PAF).
For more information on practical experience visit our website or reach out to CPA Alberta at PracticalExperience@cpaalberta.ca.
