How to Prepare For Certified Public Accountant (CPA) Exam

Preparation Guide for Certified Public Accountant (CPA) Exam

Introduction

For practitioners aspiring to become CPAs, the Standardized Certified Public Accountant test is a credentialing exam. The CPA exam tests are graded and governed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and by the National Association of State Accountancy Boards (NASBA).

The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) is the United States' national professional association of Certified Public Accountants (CPAs), with more than 418,000 members in business and industry, public practice, government, education, student affiliates, and foreign associates in 143 countries. Established in 1887, the association sets ethical guidelines for audits of private businesses, non-profit organizations, federal, state, and local governments for the profession and U.S. auditing standards. It also establishes the Standardized CPA Test and rates it. The AICPA has offices in New York City; Durham, NC; Washington DC; and Ewing, NJ.

This exam guide is intended to get you to know about the exam details and help you to prepare for the Certified Public Accountant (CPA) Exam successfully. This guide includes information on the certification test target audience, recommended preparation and documentation, and a full list of exam targets, all to help you obtain a passing grade. To increase your chances of passing the test, AICPA strongly recommends a mix of on-the-job experience, a study of CPA exam dumps, course attendance, and self-study.

Free pre-sales experience

With the increasing marketization, the product experience marketing has been praised by the consumer market and the industry. Attract users interested in product marketing to know just the first step, the most important is to be designed to allow the user to try before buying the Audit & Insurance study training materials, so we provide free pre-sale experience to help users to better understand our products. The user only needs to submit his E-mail address and apply for free trial online, and our system will soon send free demonstration research materials of AA latest questions to download. If the user is still unsure which is best for him, consider applying for a free trial of several different types of test materials. It is believed that through comparative analysis, users will be able to choose the most satisfactory AA test guide.

Complete online services

In the process of using the Audit & Insurance study training materials, once users have any questions about our study materials, the user can directly by E-mail us, our products have a dedicated customer service staff to answer for the user, they are 24 hours service for you, we are very welcome to contact us by E-mail and put forward valuable opinion for us. Our AA latest questions already have many different kinds of learning materials, users may be confused about the choice, what is the most suitable AA test guide? Believe that users will get the most satisfactory answer after consultation. Our online service staff is professionally trained, and users' needs about AA test guide can be clearly understood by them. The most complete online service of our company will be answered by you, whether it is before the product purchase or the product installation process, or after using the AA latest questions, no matter what problem the user has encountered.

Learning is like rowing upstream; not to advance is to fall back. People are a progressive social group. If you don't progress and surpass yourself, you will lose many opportunities to realize your life value. Our Audit & Insurance study training materials goal is to help users to challenge the impossible, to break the bottleneck of their own. A lot of people can't do a thing because they don't have the ability, the fact is, they don't understand the meaning of persistence, and soon give up. Our AA latest questions will help you overcome your laziness and make you a persistent person. Change needs determination, so choose our product quickly!

DOWNLOAD DEMO

Strong sense of responsibility

To develop a new study system needs to spend a lot of manpower and financial resources, first of all, essential, of course, is the most intuitive skill learning materials, to some extent this greatly affected the overall quality of the learning materials. Our Audit & Insurance study training materials do our best to find all the valuable reference books, then, the product we hired experts will carefully analyzing and summarizing the related materials, such as: CPA AA exam, eventually form a complete set of the review system. Experts before starting the compilation of "the AA latest questions", has put all the contents of the knowledge point build a clear framework in mind, though it needs a long wait, but product experts and not give up, but always adhere to the effort, in the end, they finished all the compilation. So, you're lucky enough to meet our AA test guide, and it's all the work of the experts. If you want to pass the qualifying exam with high quality, choose our products. We are absolutely responsible for you. Don't hesitate!

Topics of Certified Public Accountant (CPA) Exam

The CPA Exam test consists of four, four-hour sections. You must clear all four sections within 18 months with a minimum score of 75 on each part. The core topics for each of the four sections are listed below. These contents are likely to be used for the examination. However, on any particular delivery of the test, other similar topics could also appear.

It is recommended that, where possible, the applicant uses these contents and/or other resources to provide background information on the exam objectives. The syllabus for the Certified Public Accountant (CPA) Exam is listed below with detail of each section and their topics:

1. Auditing and Attestation (AUD)

Objectives covered by this section:

Developing a Planned Response & Assessing Risk (20 to 30%)

• Materiality
• Entity's internal control
• Assessing and identifying the risk of material misstatement
• Debtor-creditor relationships
• Specific areas of engagement risk
• Planning an engagement

Professional Responsibilities, Ethics & General Principles (15 to 25%)

• A firm's system of quality control
• Communication with management
• Engagement documentation
• Communication with component auditors
• Ethics and professional conduct
• Nature and scope

Obtaining Evidence & Performing Further Procedures (30 to 40%)

• Sampling techniques
• Performing specific procedures to get evidence
• Subsequent events
• Written representation
• Internal control deficiencies and misstatements
• Acquisition and disposition of assets

Reporting and Forming Conclusions (15 to 25%)

• Reporting on compliance
• Review service engagements
• Other reporting considerations
• Reports on auditing engagements
• Reports on attestation engagements

2. Regulation (REG)

Objectives covered by this section:

Federal Tax Procedures, Professional Responsibilities, and Ethics (10 to 20%)

• Legal duties
• Federal tax procedures
• Responsibilities in tax practice
• Licensing and disciplinary systems

Business Law (10 to 20%)

• Agency
• Debtor-creditor relationships
• Government regulation of business
• Business structure
• Contracts

Federal Taxation of Property Transactions (12 to 22%)

• Estate and gift taxation
• Cost recovery
• Gift tax deductions
• Acquisition and disposition of assets
• Gift tax annual exclusion
• Determination of taxable estate

Federal Taxation of Individuals (15 to 25%)

• Gross income
• Reporting items from pass-through entities
• Passive activity losses
• Filing status
• Alternative Minimum Tax
• Computation of tax and credits
• Computation of tax and credits

Federal Taxation of Entities (28 to 38%)

• S corporations
• Partnerships
• Limited liability companies
• Trusts and estates
• Tax-exempt organizations
• Liquidation of business entities & tax treatment of formation
• C corporations

3. Financial Accounting and Reporting (FAR)

Objectives covered by this section:

Standard-Setting, Conceptual Framework, and Financial Reporting (25 to 35%)

• Standard setting for non-business entities
• Standard setting and conceptual framework for nonbusiness entities
• Conceptual framework
• General-purpose financial statements
• Public company reporting topics
• Special purpose framework

Select Financial Statement Accounts (30 to 40%)

• Long-term debt
• Income taxes
• Intangible assets
• Inventory
• Compensation benefits
• Cash and cash equivalents
• Property, plant, and equipment
• Investments

Select Transactions (20 to 30%)

• Business combinations
• Contingencies and commitments
• Fair value measurements
• Foreign currency transaction and translation
• Subsequent events
• Accounting changes and error corrections
• Research and development costs
• Derivatives and hedge accounting
• Differences between IFRS and U.S. GAAP
• Software costs
• Leases
• Nonreciprocal transfers

State and Local Governments (5 to 15%)

• State and local government concepts
• Specific types of transactions and events: calculation, measurement, presentation in a governmental entity, and valuation
• Government-wide financial statements
• Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR)

4. Business Environment and Concepts (BEC)

Objectives covered by this section:

Corporate Governance (17 to 27%)

• Internal control frameworks
• Regulatory frameworks and provisions
• ERM (Enterprise Risk Management) frameworks

Economic Concepts and Analysis (17 to 27%)

• Financial risk management
• Market influences on business
• Economic business cycles

Financial Management (11 to 21%)

• Capital structure
• Financial valuation methods
• Working capital

Information Technology (15 to 25%)

• Information security/availability
• Systems development of maintenance
• Processing integrity
• Role of information technology business
• IT governance

Operations Management (15 to 25%)

• Cost accounting
• Process management
• Planning techniques
• Performance management

CPA AA Exam Syllabus Topics: