– Hello and welcome, welcome to your guide to passing the 2020 CPA exam. I’m Roger Philipp of Roger CPA Review powered by Uworld and thank you so much for watching the seminar to learn more about the changes and the upcoming 2020 CPA exam.

Now, a little bit about Roger CPA Review. We are here to partner with you and your CPA exam preparation. We’ve helped over 200,000 students accomplish their goal of what? Passing the CPA exam. We have a proven 91 plus percent pass rate and that rate has increased dramatically since we issued our brand new smart path and the smart path helps students to focus in on what they need to know in order to help them pass the exam. Basically, we look at our students who have passed the exam, just pass the exam using our product. We look at what percent they got correct, how many questions they did and so on and by doing this, it tells you hey, you know what, we don’t need 15,000 questions it’s overkill, you’ve done enough in this area let’s move on to the next area so you can do enough questions there because our goal is to get you through the exam with a 75 and above so you too can become a CPA.

Now, when we look at the CPA profession, why is it an exciting time right now to be a CPA? First of all, great job security. I mean as the economy’s strong, we always need accountants, we always need CPAs. As the economy changes accountants are always in demand. You’re a trusted adviser and a business consultant and this is great because it gives you lots of flexibility and opportunities. If for example like myself, CPA and then I started my own business, right, become an entrepreneur or a business consultant where you can assist others in helping them how to improve their business as well. We’re always staying on the cutting edge of technological advances as things change, the exam is updated, the industry changes. Things like big data data analytics and so forth. You get to enjoy kind of a work/life balance. So it’s a combination of an enjoying what it is you do, but also always feeling challenged. I loved that with always, even today I’ve got to keep my CPE continuing professional education up-to-date. In California for example, I need 80 hours every two years. A minimum of 20 hours a year. There’s always new things changing which I’ll talk about later especially as it relates to the CPA exam, but that keeps it new and fresh. You’re never gonna get bored at work, that’s for sure ’cause it’s always changing and then finally ka-ching, ka-ching, great salary. Great salary, great benefits as well.

Now, now that I’ve shown you how exciting it can be to be a CPA, how do we get from point A to CPA? Also known as the for E’s because we’re gonna talk about the educational requirements, the exam itself, the ethics exam and the actual practical work experience that you’re gonna need in order to become a CPA and then after that, let’s submit our paperwork so we can actually become a CPA. Now as far as the E, educational requirements. In order to sit for the exam, in most states you need or in all states you need at least a bachelor’s degree from an accredited university. In most states you need a 150 semester units as well, that’s in most states. Some states are different. California for example, you need a bachelor’s degree to sit, but the 150 to get certified and at least 24 units of intermediate accounting or above. So those are just some of the basic national educational requirements which qualifies you to sit for the exam. Now as far as applying for the exam, you’re gonna apply with the Board of Accountancy and in applying, it costs about $120 for the application fee. What you do is you submit your transcripts and you’re gonna have your university send the transcripts directly to them. They’re gonna look at those again, then gets approved by NASBA, National Association of State Board of Accountancy and they will issue you a payment coupon. Once the NASBA fees are received, you’ll be issued this thing called an NTS which is called a notice to schedule.

Now, as far as your notice to schedule, you will receive that and it’s generally good depending on what state you’re in because what it says is okay, these are the parts that you’re scheduled to sit for. So let’s just say each part costs $220, right. It goes up every year. Let’s say 220, two, four, six, that’s 880. Now, cost you $880, so when you sign up and you get your notice to schedule, that means you need to sit for those parts within that notice to schedule period. Notice to schedule, most states are about nine months. Some states are six months, some could be 12 months. So it depends on what state you’re in. California for example, we’re good for nine months which means that whatever part you pay for, you need to sit for within that window. If you don’t sit for that part then those fees are gonna be forfeited. So I always tell people you know, don’t sign up for all four parts. What I would say is pay your application fee, let’s just say it’s a hundred bucks depending on your state then you pay for each part. So let’s say you sign up for two parts for 440 bucks. That means you’re gonna sit for that within that notice to schedule period which is let’s say six to 12 months. If you decide I want to add another part then you’re a reapplication which is half that price about $50 and then you still pay your 220 per part. If however you sign up for all four, pay for all four and you don’t sit within that six to nine months, guess what? You forfeit that fee. So we don’t wanna do that. So I always tell people sign up for the first two and you can always add another because the first time you sign up, it could take maybe six weeks to get your notice to schedule. Once they have your transcripts, did a background search, all that stuff, then it takes about three or four days to get a notice to schedule for the additional parts. So it’s really not too time-consuming. So again, I hate to see you waste your hard-earned cash-ols, so what I would do, sign up for two, you can add some more later. Also make sure your name on your notice to schedule exactly matches your photo ID because when you go to sit for the exam at a testing center called Prometrics, they’re gonna check you need two forms of ID, a credit card and something with a photo, but you’ve got to make sure the names exactly match. So if you did something totally crazy like what? Fell in love and got married and let’s say you change your name, great, but you better make sure your name matches the name on the IDs as well.

Now, when can I sit for the exam? Basically, we have four windows in a year currently. Let’s say the first quarter, right January, February, March. So you can sit January first through March 10th then they generally close the exam from the 10th until the next month which would be April first. So what happens is during that time, they kind of close it down, they retool the exam, maybe update some questions, things like that. Now, as far as each window you can sit for one, two, three or all four parts in that window, in that quarter. So if you wanted to sit for audit and FAR in the first window, let’s say January first through March 10th, generally you’ll get your results about 20 days. So you take the exam, let’s say January first. The first 20 days, they’ll take that, they’ll hold that for about 10, 20 days and then release the results. So they’ll typically release the results three or four times in every single window. Let’s say I sit for audit January first, I get the results February first, darn I didn’t pass. I cannot sit for that part until the next window. So the way it’s set up again is we’ve got these four windows and again, you could sit for all four parts four times a year, not that you want to, but that’s the way it’s set up then they have the blackout period, that’s kind of when they’re retooling the exam, updating it and so forth. Once you pass a part you keep that part for 18 months. So let’s say I study for a part, take a part, past that part, boom my 18-month window starts generally from the date you sat for that exam. So I get the results, I see that I passed FAR or audit let’s say, now I’ve got 18 months to study and pass the other three parts of the exam. So if I pass, pass, pass, don’t pass then 18 months goes by, I don’t lose everything ’cause that’s how it was when I was your age. Now, you just lose the first part. So as long as you can pass them in that 18-month window, then they say hey, you deserve to be considered a CPA.

Now I get this question all the time, they go Rog, which part should I sit for first? I always say it depends on what part you feel comfortable with because no matter what part you take, there’s going to be stuff you’ve never seen in school. It’s rare that I’ve ever met a professor who finished the entire intermediate accounting book for example, right. They look at the book and they go well, I’m gonna finish everything in the book and you’re like, oh my gosh, right and then they start talking, well that reminds me, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and they go off on a tangent and they don’t cover the last four parts. Also, there’s electives in school. For example when I was in college, governmental accounting was an elective and I elected not to take it. So the only way I was exposed to it was through the review course which gave me what I to pass the exam. So people always say which part should I start with? I always say, well if you feel, let’s say you’ve just had an amazing audit teacher in school, great, start with audit or start with FAR, but if you are indifferent as to the four, then FAR is by far the thickest book, it has the most content. So I would say start with FAR, that way you study, study, study then you take it and you pass, that’s when your 18-month window starts. So now I have 18 months to pass the other three. So our suggestion is FAR then either audit or reg ’cause they take about a similar amount of time to prepare for and then the last one is BEC ’cause it’s a little bit more general and I’ll talk about what’s on each exam in a minute, but it’s a little bit more general and so by the time you get to that fourth part, you really start to see the whole picture and incidentally, that’s one of the things I miss about the olden days, you know. I feel like your parents, when I was your age, back in the day when I sat for the exam, it was three days, twice a year. You had to sit for all four parts at the same time, you had to pass at least two parts to keep anything and the parts you didn’t pass you had to get at least a 50% or more or you kept nothing. So if you got a 99, 99, 99, 49, guess what? You started over. Now, you study for a part and take apart and study for a part and take so it doesn’t make it easier, but it changes the nature and way in which people prepare for the exam. So again, the other thing that I miss is when we studied all four parts, you really kind of saw the overview of how it all fit together. Now you study for a part, pass it, study for a part, pass it. By the time you get to your third part, you go oh, now I kind of see the whole picture because it really ties together, how FAR ties into regulation and you’ve got your M1 reconciliation which ties into the auditing area and how the auditing changes affects the numbers and affects the audit report and so. So there’s a whole bunch of overlap, but you’ll start to see it as you continue on in the exam and you start to get more of it done.

Now, what do you expect on the exam? The exam currently is 16 hours in length, there’s four parts. One, two, three, four, four, four, four, four. When I took it, it was 19 and a half hours then they changed it to 14 then they raised it up to 16 hours. The four parts of the exam are FAR, financial accounting reporting, auditing, regulation and BC, business environment of concepts. What’s included in there? FAR is financial accounting and reporting. That is intermediate one, intermediate two, advanced, government nonprofit squeezed into a fun-filled for our adventure. Leases, bonds, pensions, deferred taxes, consolidations, contingent liabilities, governmental accounting, nonprofit accounting and so on. Auditing is planning, internal control, substantive testing, IT, audit reports, SSARS, reviews, compilations, financial statement presentations and so on. So at the end of the audit what do we do? Drafting an auto report. What does it say? In our opinion, the statements operations in conformity with US GAAP or applicable financial reporting framework. So I was single for a long time, so I had time to memorize it, but basically that’s your audit report. We’ll talk about the types of opinions, how it affects it , ow you make adjustments and so on. Regulation, that’s gonna be your tax which is up to about 80% of that exam. Tax, business law and ethics. Now with tax, that could be things like individual tax your, 1040. There are different schedules, A, B, C, D. Could be your 1120 corporate tax, 1120 SKORPS, 1065 partnership, 62-52 installment sales, 706, 709, 1041s, estate, trust, gift, exempt organizations, 990, that is regulation. It also includes business law.

Now when I took the exam many moons ago, business law was its own exam for three and a half hours. Now the same content, a little bit, they took a little bit out, but not much is whittled down to 10 to 20% of this one exam which is already just a four hour exam. So there’s a lot of material and business law we’ll cover and then of course ethics and professional responsibilities. For BEC, this is gonna be economics, micro, macro, financial management, operations management, IT, information technology, our favorite cost managerial, right, variance analysis, remember that? It’s back, so what is BEC, business environment, that’s gonna be like your cost accounting, that’s gonna be like where you’re trying to figure out the cost. Direct materials, direct labor, factory overhead, what could go wrong with materials, with labor, with overhead and so on, that’s gonna be your BEC, joint product costing, budgeting analysis and so on. So again, those are the four parts. Even if they’re stuff you didn’t see in school, you don’t remember, we will cover in class what you need to know to accomplish your goal which is to pass the CPA exam because I realize how most of us went through school. We go this semester’s gonna be different, I’m not gonna fall behind, right and then you get your syllabus and you get your book and you go I’m gonna study, I’m gonna study, I’m gonna study, you’re walking home, hey Rog, toga party, okay and it’s the night before, you cram, cram, cram, take the exam, blow it out your brain after the exam. This is the comprehensive final you never saw in school. So I like people to realize this is not an IQ test. You do not have to be a genius to be a CPA, however it’s a test of discipline. If you study, you will pass. That’s our job is to motivate you. So part of what we do is not only just teach you accounting, but I need to motivate you to put in the you know, couple of hundred hours of prep time it’s gonna take in order to get through all four parts of the exam. So you know, I’m part therapist and part CPA instructor.

What kind of questions make up the exam? We’ve got multiple choice type questions and that’s about 50% of your score and then we have what we call task-based simulations. These task-based simulations, those could be for like a research question, they could be a problem where you’re kind of mixing and matching and then they have a newer type of question called a document review simulation which has much more detail, it has exhibits that we need to look through as well. On the BEC exam, that one structured a little differently. That one has written communication it does have some TBS, but it also has written communication or essays. Generally it has like three essays of which only two are graded. Same thing with the other exams, you’ve got eight simulations of which usually one is research and the other seven are problems and of those eight, one is pre tested not graded. So as we look at these kinds of questions, you’ve got a multiple choice that question. Generally, you’ve got four different choices. We don’t really say A, B, C, D anymore or A, B, C, yeah, A, B, C, count one, two, three, four. We don’t really say that, but you’ve got four different choices to choose from. You also have a countdown clock and that’s important as you’re taking the exam because in life we don’t really count down. You know, I’ve got 20 thousand days of life, 19,999, 98, but at the exam, you log on it ’cause you’ve got four hours, 359, 358, and your heart starts racing like oh my gosh, I should have started studying sooner, right. So part of that is us preparing you and giving you sample exam so you can get used to that exam pressure as well, but you’ve got multiple choice to have questions and as I said, 50% of your score comes out of these multiple-choice and we’ll talk later, but you could have anywhere from 31 times two or 62 multiple-choice, up to 38 times two because you’ll have five different tests. Which I’ll talk about in a minute. You’ve got a task based simulation where you might click on the choice and it pops up a window and it gives you a variety of choices in order to pick the correct solution. You’ve got this newer type called a document review simulation called a DRS. This is a type of task based simulation called TBS, but it’s much more involved. This came about when they said you know what, they went out and talked to the accounting profession, they talked to the professors, they talked to the real world people and said what are first and second-year CPAs lacking? They said they’re lacking critical thinking and the ability to analyze information. So what they said is okay, let’s try to come up with a more real-world type of problem called a document review simulation and what happens here is they give you a scenario, they give you a variety of questions and then they give you a tab with called exhibits, exhibits and these exhibits could be depreciation schedules, balance sheets, income statements, letters from attorneys, invoices, different things that you’ve got to look at and what they want you to do is look through this support, these exhibits and discern which items are usable, useful in solving the problem and which ones are just to kind of throw you off. It’s kind of like if someone came to you and asked you to do their taxes and they said hey, here’s a shoebox full of receipts, have a lovely day. So you’re gonna look through there and say, well this is deductible, this one isn’t, the cost of cleaning my suit, no, not a business expense. So you’re gonna look through that and see which ones are, aren’t. That’s the kind of question, that’s more of a DRS. These questions take a little bit more time, maybe 20 to 25 minutes as far as how much time to prepare. A research, research is on Audit, FAR and REG. So think of the four parts, we’ll break these three and one. This is Audit, FAR and REG, this is BEC because Audit, FAR and REG or structured similarly whereas BEC is completely different. With Audit, FAR and REG, they’re gonna have at least one research question on each exam, the research question, most of our students don’t have a lot of trouble with. You know, we all do Google searches every day for example, so this part usually isn’t a problem for our students. Figure you need about 10 minutes for the research type question and that’s going to be again, an Audit, FAR and REG. Written communication, that’s only here on BEC because BEC has multiple-choice, task-based simulations, four of them and generally three written communications or essays. So on BEC, you’ve got an essay. They wanna know you know, a beginning, a middle and an end, is it clear, concise, complete, use of standard English, appropriateness for the reader, that’s what they’re looking for. Spelling, grammar, punctuation and so on. So they’re looking at that to see that you can take what they’re asking and set up a coherent, smooth essay. As I said earlier, what is the exam look like? Audit, FAR and REG has 50% multiple-choice, 50% task-based simulations. The 50% multiple-choice, that’s gonna be two testlets, two sections of multiple-choice and then the task-based simulations, there’s eight of them. You’re gonna have two of them than a break and then three and three. For BEC, 50% multiple-choice, 35% task-based simulations and 15% written communication. So you’ll have multiple choice, 31 times two or 62 on BEC, then you’ll have task-based simulations, four of them where the other Audit, FAR and REG have eight and three essays called written communication which is 15% of your score.

Now, years ago when I took the exam, we had long problems in cost of managerial, budgeting, joint product costing and so on then they took it away for many years then they brought it back. That’s where that 35% in BEC, those are written communication types of questions. So those are the kinds of questions you’re gonna have. Now, what do you need to pass the exam? A 75 and above. Now when I say a 75, if you think of college, if you’ve got a 75 in college, what does that feel like? Like you’re not doing that well and you may not ever get a job, you’re gonna live with your parents to you die, right, but that’s the C, like a C, right, 75’s a C. That’s what C in CPA stands for, average, right. I don’t mean when you go meet a partner, you go oh, you’re a partner, CPA, you must be your average. No, what it means is you need a little bit about a lot of information. This exam is like an inch deep, like a lake, an inch deep and a mile wide, but in a minute and a quarter in a multiple-choice question, you’ve got to jump in your brain, leases, pensions, bonds, defer taxes and so on, that’s where the repetition of upfront preparation is so important in order to get you ready to pass this thing called a CPA exam. So 75 and above you pass, 74 and below you fail and it’s kind of a bell-shaped curve where most of the scores are right about 74, 75, 76. That’s how they are. A few down here at 20, a coupled up here at a 95 because if you get four 95s or above and we have many students that do this, they get an award called the Elijah Watt Cells award which is great, right and that’s wonderful, you can tell everyone and, most people don’t need 495s they just wanna join the 300 club, what’s that? 75, 75, 75, 75, why? Because they figure, I just wanna get through it and be a CPA. Once you get your certificate, you stick it on your wall. I’ve got mine on my wall. It doesn’t say your score, it just says either you are or you aren’t a CPA, that’s all. It’s like being pregnant, either you are or your aren’t. You’re not just a little bit, right.

So as far as the exam time strategies, we talked about how much time should it take and the reason for this is there’s five teslets on the exam. testlet one is a multiple-choice, testlet two is multiple-choice, testlet three would be two task-based simulations, testlet four and five for Audit, FAR and REG would be three and three more, six problems and then these two is eight. For BEC multiple-choice, testlet one, testlet two multiple choice, testlet three would be also two task-based simulations then you get a break then testlet four would be two more because there’s four total and then the last one is your essays, written communication. So we want to cover in class how much time and we’ll set up a study schedule, a study planner, but how much time you need at the actual exam ’cause you don’t want to get through the first four testlets and run out of time, you’re never gonna pass the exam. So what we need to do is work on good time management and each exam has different number of questions, but basically, you’ve got let’s just say anywhere from 31 multiple-choice in each testlet, that’s 62 for BEC, up to 38 times two is 76 multiple-choice in REG. So you’ll see that you’ve got about a minute and a quarter per multiple-choice. So that means I’ve got to kind of keep going and keep pushing myself in order to keep on the proper time strategy. Now as far as the timing, you’ll have first testlet, when you’re done with the first test, it’ll say, hey do you wanna take a break, no you don’t because if you take a break, the clock keeps running then you go out, go to the bathroom, do whatever, but then you got to wait in line to get back in, get re-fingerprinted to sit down and continue the exam. So after testlet one, no brake, testlet two, no brake, testlet three, that’s after that when you wanna take a break ’cause one of the cool things now is they give you an automatic free 15-minute break, wow. When I was your age, did we get a break? I don’t think so. They just said here, here’s your exam, 19 and a half hours over three days. Here’s a paper, pencil exam. Here’s you know, we were so tough they didn’t even give us pencils. We wrote with blood, all right, that’s how tough we were. Today, they give you a computer, they give you a calculator, they give you a break, oh you need a little break. I’m just kidding, but anyway. So you wanna take that 15 min a break, but don’t go over 15 minutes otherwise the clock automatically starts running. Again, you’ve only got the four hours. So testlet one, it’ll ask you for a break, no. Testlet two, do you wanna break, no. Testlet three, do you wanna break afterwards? Yes, that’s your free break. 15 minutes, come back in then testlet four, testlet five. So that’s kind of the way that it’s structured, that’s the way that it’s flowing and we talk here about you know, as you sit down you’ll get like a little yellow or white board. They used to give you paper, but people would write notes and steal it. So now they give you like a hard board where you can write on it, turn it over, write on it, that’s your scratch board. When you need a new one, raise your hand, raise the board, they’ll come and give you as many as you need, but I always tell students to write down on there the time you expect to finish each part. So in other words if I’m writing there and let’s say I need you know, 45 minutes, so it’s four hours. So by the climb the clock says three hours and 15 minutes, I should be done with the first 45 minutes of multiple-choice you know, and so on. So you want to jot those times down so that way you don’t run out of time because we figure you know, you need about an hour for the three task-based simulations. So the last two hours would be again, with two hours left and then one hour left and then you go to zero. So you wanna jot those down, but our timing, our suggested timing is that multiple-choice are about 75 to 84 seconds each, task-based simulations, there’s some easier ones where you click and it opens a window, maybe 15 minutes, maybe 20. They’re more complex like the DRS, probably more like 25 minutes each, research is about 10 minutes and figure written communication which is on BEC about 15 minutes each. So that’s kind of the way that it’s structured, that’s the way that it’s organized again, we wanna make sure you have enough time to get through all four parts timely.

Now, what’s new for the 2020 exam? There’s been significant changes, especially in the FAR portion of the exam. First off we talk about something called credit losses and the credit loss used to be for receivables, what we call bad debt expense, but these changes are now called credit losses and these changes are pretty pervasive and complicated and it gives us more of what we call these bright-line rules that accountants are used to. So in other words, they’re used to using these and it requires a little bit more judgment. So they’re using more judgment, they’re using more data analytics in order to develop these expectations for the credit loss. So what it says for example and we call it the Cecil, current expected credit loss, but basically what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna sit down and estimate and say okay, instead of looking back historically, we’re gonna either look back, current or future because we’re looking at support future forecasts based on the predictive data analytics, we’re looking ahead. What they’re trying to say is instead of just you know, as we’re writing it off, we’re gonna look at what do we expect over the lifetime of this receivable, how much are we gonna get. So over the lifetime, we’re looking for more credit risk transparency because back in 2007, 2008 when we had the financial crisis, what happened is all these companies had a lot of bad debt expense you know, allowance for doubtful accounts on their balance sheet, but it wasn’t enough to cover the changes ’cause some of these receivables were getting worse and worse and worse so that’s why we had this big issue and the government had to bail out all these companies, all these banks. So because of that, they came up with these new changes and those are some of the credit loss expense. Also some of the credit loss, what we’re gonna look at is areas for investments, for held to maturity, debt securities and available for sale type debt securities. We’re gonna have to analyze those as well to look for the credit loss. So when expected credit losses increase, we’re gonna have an allowance for credit loss and that’s a contra account and then we’re gonna have credit loss expense, we’ve got a credit loss expense, credit allowance for credit loss so we’re gonna have those and then make adjustments as it decreases, and as it increases, if it increases, increase the amount, if it decreases, we’re gonna reverse out some of that allowance account. So those are some of the things that we’ll cover in the receivables, in the investment areas and anywhere else where we have this estimated credit loss. Another area of change was goodwill which actually kind of made it easier. It deals with goodwill impairment testing. Basically what they did is they eliminated the second step. So the second step in goodwill impairment testing which was calculating the implied fair value of goodwill has been eliminated, so it basically makes the process much easier. So now you just basically compare the fair value of the reporting unit with its carrying value and if the fair value is less than the carrying value, goodwill has been impaired, a loss should be recognized, we’re gonna write down goodwill. So it makes it a little bit easier. Other changes for 2020, for intangibles. It aligns the accounting treatment of implementation costs that are incurred when we talk about cloud computing arrangements and it’s treated as a service cost with the requirements to capitalize the implementation costs that are incurred and this would be with respect to internal use software. So software that you’re creating to use internally within the company. We have something called, which is kind of a tricky area, VIE, variable interest entities, but it expands the PCC, the private company accounting alternative for variable interest entities to provide an election, not to apply the regular VIE GAAP guidance when certain criteria is met. So that criteria is met then you can elect not to do that. For GASB, Governmental Accounting Standards Board, GASB 87 provides a single model for lease accounting. So for example it says all leases are essentially a finance lease with limited exceptions. So we talk in GAAP about finance leases and operating leases. Here it says they’re pretty much all financed with limited exceptions. 89 provides clarification on the accounting for interest cost incurred before the end of a construction prospering. So if we’re looking at a construction process, that would be one of the changes as well. So those are some of the updates that we will cover in the material and that starts showing up as of January first, 2020. The next thing is the ethics exam and this is an exam, hopefully it’s funny because I remember when I took the ethics exam, I always joke it’s one of the few exams they all seem to cheat on, oh gee, how ethical, but basically it’s a take-home exam and you need to get like a 90% or above or 87% or something like that and it’s multiple-choice questions, it’s self-study, it’s the books about as thick as our book. I mean, you can do it online, you can search and you can retake it if you need to. You can take it I believe before you pass the exam, but it’s an exam that you need to take in order to get your CPA certificate as well. Then we talked about work experience. So we had the educational to sit and then what do you need to get certified? Generally, you need to submit a certificate of experience to show that you need about a year which is about 2000 hours of accounting experience and that is generally under the supervision of a licensed active CPA. That means that they’re keeping their CPE, continued professional education up to date. So that would be a licensed active CPA. You can do this before, during or after. So if while you’re in college, you worked for a CPA, they can sign upon your certificate of experience for the hours that you work. So maybe I worked for six months while I was in school and then I got another job when I graduated, you can have more than one certificate of experience. The total has to be at least a year. Now, how did this change back in my day when I was your age what happened is we only needed a degree, an undergraduate degree of 120 units, but we needed two years of work experience. Now, you need not 120, but 150 and in some states just 120 to sit, 150 to get certified. Some states 150 to sit or a master’s degree, but you only need one year of work experience. Now, I suggest staying at least two to three years because you wanna supervise, you want a senior a job rather and it’s great experience.

So no matter what, even though after a year you get your CPA, you want to stay longer because that’s really where you get a lot of experience, but again, remembering you can do before, during or after and then after all that is done then submit your paperwork, become a CPA, stick it on your wall and carry it with you forever, right. I’m Rog Phillips, CPA CGMA, I’m so proud of it, I’m gonna put it on my tombstone. When I die it’s gonna say here lies Roger Phillips, CPA. Fully depreciated, right, ’cause there ain’t nothing left. All right, now thank you so much for all of this information as far as you listening to it and absorbing it. Again, I wanna thank you for your time, for your energy, hopefully you’re as excited about this exam as I am as you can tell I’m passionate and motivated about it. I want you to contact us and stay connected with us on social media. If you ever have any questions about the exam itself, career opportunities and so forth, please feel free to reach out to us. Again, thank you very much for your time and have a great career in accounting.