Model Policies for Granting of Credit & Transitioning for the Computer Based Uniform CPA Examination

The following model policies are recommendations of the Board of Examiners (BOE) only, and have no binding authority on state boards of accountancy. Each state board has a statutory authority to regulate the admission of persons to be qualified as Certified Public Accountants within its jurisdiction. However, the BOE encourages state board adoption of the recommendations to promote uniformity among the licensing jurisdictions.

Granting of Credit

Candidates will be allowed to sit for each section of the Uniform CPA Examination individually, and in any order.
Candidates will retain credit for any section(s) passed for eighteen months, without having to attain a minimum score on failed sections and without regard to whether they have taken other sections. Candidates will not be allowed to retake a failed section(s) within the same examination window.¹
Candidates must pass all four sections of the Uniform CPA Examination within a "rolling" eighteen-month period, which begins on the date that the first section(s) passed is taken.
In the event all four sections of the Uniform CPA Examination are not passed within the rolling eighteen-month period, credit for any section(s) passed outside the eighteen-month period will expire and that section(s) must be retaken.

¹ It is assumed that candidates will be able to take the computer-based Uniform CPA Examination up to four times per year. An examination window refers to a three-month period in which candidates have an opportunity to take the CPA examination (comprised of two months in which the examination is available to be taken and one month in which the examination will not be offered while routine maintenance is performed and the item bank is refreshed). Thus, candidates will be able to test two out of the three months within an examination window.

Transitioning

Candidates who have earned conditional credits on the paper-and-pencil Uniform CPA Examination, as of the launch date of the computer-based Uniform CPA Examination, will be given credits for the corresponding sections of the computer-based CPA examination as follows:

Paper-and-Pencil Examination	Computer-Based Examination
Auditing	Auditing & Attestation
Financial Accounting & Reporting (FARE)	Financial Accounting & Reporting
Accounting & Reporting (ARE)	Regulation
Business Law & Professional Responsibilities (LPR)	Business Environment & Concepts

Candidates who have attained conditional status as of the launch date of the computer-based Uniform CPA Examination will be allowed a transition period to complete any remaining sections of the CPA examination. The transition period is the period of time or maximum number of opportunities (whichever is first exhausted) that candidates who have attained some credit under the paper-and-pencil examination have remaining, at the launch of the computer-based CPA examination, to complete all remaining sections.

If, at the time conditional status was attained, a state board specified only a period of time (e.g., three years) to complete the examination, each year would be considered two opportunities to test and the candidate would continue to be able to take the examination six times within a three-year period. If a state board specified only a maximum number of successive examination attempts (e.g., 6 successive examinations) to complete, the candidate would continue to be granted six examination opportunities, limited by a three-year period. This recommendation is intended to assure that those candidates who have attained conditional status prior to the implementation of computer-based testing (CBT) are not disadvantaged by the change.
If a candidate who has attained conditional status as of the launch date of the computer-based CPA examination does not pass all remaining sections during the transition period, those credits earned under the paper-and-pencil examination will expire and the candidate will lose credit for the sections earned under the paper-and-pencil examination. However, any section passed during the transition period is subject to the granting of credit provisions of the computer-based examination as indicated in the aforementioned granting of credit recommendation. The exception is that a previously conditioned candidate will not lose credit for a section of the computer-based CPA examination that is passed during the transition period, even though more than eighteen months may have elapsed from the date the section is passed, until the end of the transition period.