PPR FAQs

Experience Reports

The Practical Experience Requirements Start Date (PER Start Date) is the day you begin to accumulate qualifying practical experience.

The PER Start Date is calculated in PERT when you meet the following three conditions:

  1. You are registered as a CPA candidate with the CPA Western School of Business (CPAWSB)
  2. You are working in a position within a Pre-Approved Program Route (PPR)
  3. You have a CPA mentor, provided to you by your PPR

You must submit all required information, including any mandatory attachments and CPA mentor information, within 90 days of either the date you registered as a candidate with CPAWSB or the date you started employment (whichever date occurred later). Once approved, the PER Start Date will be calculated to the date you registered as a candidate with CPAWSB or started in a position (whichever occurred later). Otherwise, your PER Start Date will be the date you logged into PERT and provided us with the required information.

You will create a profile in PERT and your PER status at this time will be 'Pending Enrollment'. You will be directed to create an experience report in PERT. As a student in a pre-approved program, you must create an experience report immediately that includes your job start date. Without an experience report containing your job start date, your employment cannot be confirmed and your status cannot be set to 'In progress'.

CPA PER defines leave as time away from work for any reason, including vacation, sickness, professional development or study time. Any time away from work in excess of 20 weeks will be added to the duration requirement. Please note that your Program Leader will not be able to sign-off on your report unless you have correctly captured your time away from work.

You are required to update your experience report experience twice annually, and discus it with your CPA mentor. Your Program Manager may ask that you complete separate experience reports for each reporting period.

When you update your PERT profile to indicate employment at a specific organization, location, and program, an automatic notification requesting confirmation of your employment is sent to your Program Manager. It is imperative that you create an experience report once you start employment in order to capture your job start date; otherwise, employment cannot be confirmed. Additionally, you will need to identify your CPA mentor in your PERT profile because it is required in order for your Program Manager to confirm employment.

The CPA Alberta Public Accounting Chargeable Hours Submission Form is only to be completed by CPA candidates who are reporting CPA practical experience through PERT, are employed with a registered public accounting firm and need to report chargeable hours for the purpose of seeking a right to practice public accounting. The completed form must be attached to the experience report created in PERT for that position before a Profession Assessment has been requested.

When a PPR candidate is changing employment they must have all of their experience reports assessed by CPA Alberta before they can change their employment information in PERT. The candidate must attach the completed Chargeable Hours form (signed by the Program Leader) to the experience report created in PERT for that position. The candidate must update and submit their final report and request their final Mentor Review, if needed, and request a Profession Assessment. Once all reports have been assessed, the Candidate will be able to update their PERT profile with new employment and mentor information.

Yes, the CPA Practical Experience Requirements allows for candidates to change experience paths. Your competencies and duration credited through your original experience path will be consolidated with the duration and competencies credited in the new experience path. You cannot change the experience path in your PERT profile until all experience reports submitted through the original path have been assessed by CPA Alberta.

A catch-up report is a specially-designed report that enables transitioning candidates to report their previously recognized legacy experience. If you have previously recognized legacy (CA, CMA, CGA) practical experience and would like to report it via a catch-up report in PERT, please contact PracticalExperience@cpaalberta.ca for further information. You should only use a catch-up report if instructed by CPA Alberta.

Prior Experience Reports

Use a Prior Experience Report. Once you have your profile created in PERT and your PER Status is set to 'In Progress', you will be able to create a Prior Experience Report and submit it for verification. If you are no longer employed at that position, we suggest that you create your prior experience as soon as you can and have it verified by your former supervisor. Once your report is verified, it will be reviewed once you submit a CPA Review request. If your prior experience is from a different program or experience route, a separate CPA Review is required for your prior, so we recommend you do this as soon as possible.

The maximum duration is 12 months. To qualify, the period of experience must be of at least three months duration and you must have achieved a minimum of one technical subcompetency to a Level 1 proficiency. If you are currently employed in the position that you are seeking to have recognized before the PER Start Date, the three-month restriction will not apply.
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