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Would any Canadian goons be able to weigh in on what it's like going through the process of getting a designation (guess it's CPA now)? I graduated with an Bcomm in accounting in 2013 and heard some real horror stories about the whole process which, coupled with piss poor marks from half assing my way through university and not being particularly thrilled about stuff like tax accounting led me to try something else. It's now three years later and I'm not particularly happy with what I'm doing now and looking for some different options. Being three years wiser I'm of the opinion that people's horror stories were a bit overblown and I'd probably have a better grasp on the material and learning it doing accounting poo poo as a day to day job.
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Jun 9, 2016 20:51
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 21:28 |
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Has anyone done the CPA program in Canada? I'm just looking on a gauge on the difficulty of the program versus the CFA exams
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Oct 15, 2022 03:02
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mojo1701a posted:Having said that, working at the same time as a staff accountant in public practice helped a lot because cases become less conceptual and more practical in terms of proposing solutions to whatever your role is. If there is one thing that does worry me it's this. My role is pretty loving niche and business specific so I'm not going to have that working knowledge. The effort in seems fine from whats being described. When I took the CFA level 3 exam there was people crying on the steps outside the exam room during the break so I'm not too worried about the CFE lol
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Oct 24, 2022 20:39
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italian quid posted:Has anyone done the CPA program in Canada? I'm just looking on a gauge on the difficulty of the program versus the CFA exams Circling back to this, I just finished doing a PREP course through CPA and now I'm curious on the difficulty between the PREP and PEP stuff. Sounds like PEP is more case oriented which is fine but is there any difference in difficulty beyond learning how to write a response
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Feb 13, 2023 21:34
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This is exactly what I was looking for so cheers. I did the tax PREP course and am doing Audit PREP now and it sounds like PEP will be roughly the same as the PREP courses but maybe a bit more analytical. What you said about them wanting you to pass the exam makes sense, almost all the activities seem to be somewhat geared towards that end. To an extent I get why they have you do all the prep busy work to be able to wrote the exam (and I'm sure that probably pads their pass rates) but having done the CFA exams where they're basically like "here's the textbook, a test bank and the exam format, good luck" it strikes me as a bit too much hand holding. I guess that's a thing throughout the program though so I'm just going to have to phone it in to get to that 75% and write the exam.
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Feb 20, 2023 21:32
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mojo1701a posted:We also have some clients whose expenses we analyze like a hawk because they'll try to claim sales tax credits on insurance (Federal sales taxes paid are claimable, but insurance in Ontario only has a provincial sales tax which is not claimable and must be expensed) and we need to reverse them every year. Too be fair I work in life insurance and the level of understanding and consistency over how sales tax works on insurance may as well be zero on the actual insurance plan side lol
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Feb 25, 2023 00:40
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ya I know nothing about the client side of it but I just know the sales tax on insurance was a nightmare in the actual insurance company. they'd get tax credits held in a reserve or deposit account on certain insurance plans and I don't think there ever was a consistent implementation of how the credits were calculated or dished out. Thankfully I don't have to deal with any of that now, I hate tax accounting with a burning passion so the less I have to do with it the better lol
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Feb 25, 2023 02:02
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black.lion posted:yall should i get the CFA and do crime accounting? or anti crime accounting mb I did the exams. You're aware of the pass rates for the exams right?
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Mar 18, 2023 01:41
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black.lion posted:no what are they  https://www.cfainstitute.org/en/programs/cfa/exam/results-info Not trying to scare you or anything but I've seen first hand plenty of people underestimate the CFA exams and get their asses handed to them. When I wrote level 3 I thought I was doing bad but then there was a guy on the steps outside having a mental breakdown crying during the break and I thought maybe I wasn't doing too bad lol
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Mar 20, 2023 20:26
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If I apply for admission into CPA PEP do I have to enrol in Core 1 right away or can I just sit in the program without registering for anything? I really just don't want to take anything right now and just want to make sure my old university courses don't expire.
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Apr 24, 2023 21:26
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ya I just want to make sure my university courses don't expire so I don't mind sitting in the program for a while. I got one PREP course left then I want to take a break and then just start knocking PEP out next year if I decide to go through with it. I'm only doing PREP but the deliverables thing is kinda driving me nuts and it sounds like PEP is just as bad if not worse. I get that they're trying to walk you through passing the exams but I've already got my preferred study method and dicking around with assignments that have oddball outlier questions really is a hinderance to me if anything.
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Apr 26, 2023 21:40
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PEP is the same as PREP where you need 75% in the course deliverables to take the exam right? cause to be brutally honest my prep strategy has been to just do the minimum effort to get that 75% then go back to studying my own way and its probably going to be the same approach I take for PEP and the CFE. I wouldn't feel bad for a second about skipping deliverables cause its the exams that matters most. It's funny you mention the corporate tax stuff because that's exactly what one of the questions had us do in the Tax PREP exam I took lol. I have a feeling a lot of people ate poo poo on that and the personal tax questions though because I was not feeling good about putting that stuff together and ended up with a 93% on the written portion of the exam.
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Apr 27, 2023 04:45
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I hate doing taxes as much as the next guy but my immediate thought was that you hosed up filling out the tax forms when you changed jobs because payroll is usually accrued on the assumption that you're sticking with that job throughout the year unless you indicate otherwise. Not pinning all of societies woes directly on you dude but I do think it says something about why its basically impossible to get infrastructure projects done or turn a large business around when as a society you can just black box something and ship it off to "your guy" and if you get a result that isn't exactly what you wanted back there isn't any critical thinking as to why you got a different result, it has to be 100% "your guy"s fault that he didn't magically conjure the outcome you wanted.
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Apr 29, 2023 21:50
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mojo1701a posted:God I hate some of these Capstone 2 practice cases. They're meant to prep you for the CFE but one of my AO's literally requires me to research Non-GAAP Measures and the online discussion board confirmed what I knew: none of that poo poo was ever studied or in the e-books. Every educator thinks they're some galaxy brain super genius for putting some niche difficult concept on their assignments that has like a 1.7% chance of actually being a question on the exams. When I did CFA the guy I used for mock exams had quite an ego and just made brutally hard mock exams on niche concepts and I literally just stopped halfway through the second one because it was loving pointless and wasn't going to meaningfully prepare me for what the exam actually is. If you're in education at all and reading this put actual loving effort into your test bank. Have challenging questions relevant to the material with wrong answers that you could realistically arrive at by misunderstanding the concept and then loving explain what was wrong with the answer you arrived at and explain FULLY how to arrive at the correct answer. If I have to look up addition crap for your explaination for the correct answer then your test bank blows. That's my test bank rant
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May 3, 2023 19:24
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Just had a really loving fun meeting with my company's CPA coordinator about registering for PEP and the practical experience requirement and I've got a feeling I'm about to be hosed badly. there's a PPR Practical Experience Reporting approval for my job in Ontario and Quebec, but I'm in BC, I'm the only accounting employee in my company west of Ontario. So I had a 45 minute meeting of them basically saying they don't know what the gently caress I should do if I should register under BC and just blindly hope they accept PPR approved under CPA Ontario or register under CPA Ontario (even though I'd have to go to Ontario for all the exams and workshops). Making this even more fun is that CPA Ontario and CPA Quebec pulled out of CPA Canada two weeks ago so the whole thing is just a giant shitshow with no clear answer. My gut feeling is that the Preapproved route is basically off the table and I'm going to have to go the experience verification route (wasn't described as too fun by the coordinator) and I've got to decide what the hell I should do pretty quick.
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Jul 12, 2023 20:52
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Anybody in Canada willing to weigh in on what to expect from the Core 1 orientation workshop? I've got mine next weekend and just got an email saying I need to complete some sort of store brand Myers Briggs personality assessment and that cameras have to be on the entire workshop which is setting my expectations at "I'm going to want to blow my brains out by the end of this thing"
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Jan 20, 2024 03:36
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mojo1701a posted:I finished the CFE and did all of the modules in the last year or two, AMA. So it wasn't too bad although I understand why the program is so rigidly structured after seeing that a solid half the class hasn't even had a job out of university yet and I'm assuming having make work assignments every week is to keep them on track. I personally would rather just be able to do my own thing but whatever that is what it is. How big is the capstone 1 group project? I think I did an own goal on myself with the personality test since I spiked it to get the usual obvious "leadership type" personality, I didn't realise they sorted groups based on the personality test results and now I've got a bad feeling I'm going to end up managing a bunch of snot nosed kids when that comes around lol.
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Jan 30, 2024 02:13
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mojo1701a posted:There’s a format they’re looking for and you had better ensure that you follow it. Boy loving howdy did I get told this in no uncertain terms on the feedback for my first assignments. They apparently are not too loving keen on me turning in the assignment only in Excel without an accompanying word document.
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Feb 8, 2024 01:57
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yeah, the whole guardrails thing is a little annoying tbh but it made sense when I saw how many fresh grads who hadn't even started work there were. I did back-calculate it out of curiosity and you basically have to get a 45% actual grade across all assignments to qualify to write the exam. I get why it's there, you gotta have some mechanism to push people over the finish line. But for myself I am 100% certain that my time and test results would be better suited to just grinding out test bank questions and a few retired exams and this stuff is just getting in the way.
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Feb 8, 2024 05:55
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Companies are gonna say a lot of things about how they value your loyalty or development or whatever. actually getting them to follow through on that is a whole other task. I get emails almost monthly about how much my company values my development. Because I don't live in Ontario or Quebec our company's CPA coordinator straight up told me I'm not her responsibility and best of luck with doing the CPA on my own lol
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Feb 25, 2024 18:43
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As bad as that sounds I would take this every loving day of the week over having to explain annuity reinsurance accounting to some big 4 new grad doing sample testing every day of the week.
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Apr 5, 2024 16:26
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as long as it gets caught before the statements are released who really cares. I misbooked 16 mil in reserves last month and was indignant about it because the root of the issue is another department constantly messing their report up.
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Apr 14, 2024 02:04
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Work wants me to sign a two year contract in exchange for covering the course costs for getting my CPA. ludicrous that I'm required to because I'm the only finance person residing outside of Ontario or Quebec but whatever I don't give a gently caress just pay me the loving passing bonuses and reimburse tuition costs like you do for everyone else. I am curious if anybody has been in this situation and hopped jobs before and been successful in negotiating the new company to cover those costs? With a salary bump I think it wouldn't really matter but I am curious what the success rate of getting that covered as part of offer negotiations is.
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Apr 22, 2024 01:18
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 21:28 |
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yeah its a perfectly reasonable request, although the circumstances leading up to this even being offered were some of the most unprofessional ridiculous bullshit I've seen in my 10 years at this company and I've seen some bullshit while at this company. I am however 100% planning to bolt when I get the designation which I'm anticipating is around midway through next year, no big deal if the next employer won't cover it (at least this company held onto the costs interest free for a year and a half or so) but I am curious if thats a battle worth fighting with an offer.
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Apr 22, 2024 01:37
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