CFA helpful when applying for CPA

Not saying I am going to take the CPA, but am just curious if the accounting education through CFA is counted toward the 150 minimum hours required by the CPA authorities to become eligible to take the exam?

I would like to know this too. I would highly doubt it.

I dont understand why. There is a solid amount of accounting taught and learned in the CFA program.

I don’t think it would count. Don’t the credit hours have to come from an accredited school? CFA + CPA is a killer combo IMHO.

CFA will not give you the credit hours for CPA, however studying for the CFA counts as CPE credits for CPA continuing education

>CFA will not give you the credit hours for CPA, however studying for the CFA counts as CPE credits for CPA continuing education< I think if you do self study you will need to get this approved and it isnt automatic…but the live courses are. At least for my state.

What are the CPA requirements? 150 total college credits, including 24 accounting credits, and 24 general business credits? You need 1 or 2 years experience, right? Does it havet o be pure accounting, or can it be a finance job that involves a lot of financial statement analysis (commercial bank underwriting, R)? Just curious.

Rydex Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I dont understand why. There is a solid amount of > accounting taught and learned in the CFA program. Im pursuing an accounting designation along side the CFA and while there is coverageof similar subjects such as cap leases, consolidating foreign operations…etc the viewpoint from an accounting perspective of these issues is very different from the prospective the CFA materials take. The CFA lets you know what these accounting issues are and how to intrepret them, whereas the accounting is aspect is more involved in actually doing the journal entries and preparing the FS in accordance with GAAP. CFA is much more interesting IMO

The hours have to be from accredited school, studying for the CFA won’t count. But as someone mentioned above I did get all my CPE requirements taken care of studying for Level I last year. I felt that there was a lot of overlap between the Level I and the FAR section of the CPA. The CPA was a lot more in-depth, but if you master level I fin stmt analysis you will have a great base for that section of the CPA. As for the exprience requirements, it varies state to state, but in most states it requires 1 year of experience working for or supervised by a CPA and it can involve a variety of things like audit, tax, fin analysis, accounting, etc. There are also ways of getting around the supervised by a CPA requirement if you can convince the state board what you do should count, similar to the CFA work experience requirements.

Whodey, I am short about 8 credits or so for accounting from my bachelor’s. Do you know of any online source that can give you these credits for as cheap and quick as possible. Thanks.

In California the experience has to be working for a CPA, but not necessarily auditing. If you want to be able to sign off on audits you need 2 years auditing experience. Any other experience (as long as under a CPA) you can get the designation CPA but won’t have the full benefit of the designation (i.e. license to sign off on audits). I confirm that the accounting credit hours have to be from an accredited school like Cal State Northridge or UCLA Extension where I live.

You can check with your state board to get the hours cleared, which I would suggest, especially if you are using hours from an out of state school. I have seen classes turned down because the listing didnt quite match up with the way they list them in my state (I think though you then have to send in description, etc, and it will get approved).

Rydex Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Whodey, > > I am short about 8 credits or so for accounting > from my bachelor’s. Do you know of any online > source that can give you these credits for as > cheap and quick as possible. Thanks. I don’t personally know of any but I do know this kind of thing exists, I would suggest google and get it cleared with you state board in WRITING before you do anything. like kevin12, I’ve seen people (granted only very few) get rejected by the state board for odd things like qarter hours vs semester hours, out of state classes, things like that. Some boards are much stricter than others.