[traceylynn089]

I am currently working through taking the exams but am worried about getting the PA required 1600 hours work experience needed for my license. I do not work for a public firm which is how everyone I know was able to get their work experience. I am senior accountant for a non profit hospital and do work under a CPA who has agreed to work with me on signing off on the hours but neither of us are sure what qualifies. The guidelines for qualified work provided by the state are very generic. I plan to reach out to the state to ask for more detailed guidance but thought I would start here. Has anyone out there gotten their required work experience not working for a public firm?

[HDCPA]

Don’t sweat it you’ll be fine. I just searched the requirements and it says government and industry work is fine. The requirements look pretty similar to Texas where I am at and plenty of people get their cpa without public practice experience. If you’re senior accountant than you are doing non routine accounting duties so as long as you have the hours within 5 years of passing the test, and your supervisor CPA signs off, you shouldn’t have anything to worry about.

[cpa1234]

Yes PA accepts government/industry work. The requirement is 1600 hours AND 1 year. I had 1500 in public and 10 months, so I had to have an internship supervisor (a CPA) to sign off on a previous 100 hours and 2 months. The only thing different was the people who receive everything for review through the online portal can approve public experience, but they have to send it to the actual board to approve industry experience. So it just takes a little longer. But they approved mine no problem. Be as specific as you can about your industry experience though, cause I feel like they do like to see a nice range of audit, tax, and accounting work. But if you can prove you have good experience as the senior accountant, then you should be fine.

[traceylynn089]

Hi Cpa1234, I knew PA accepted industry experience, I think I am just overly paranoid about the specific experience that is accepted and cannot find any good guidance online-it is all so generic. Could you give a few examples of the experience you included in yours? For example, I do account reconciliations and research. Could I include that as a sort of internal auditing?

I also am thinking of trying to find a CPA I can help out on nights and weekends that I could get some additional hours. That might be a far fetched thing to find but I’m going to try.

[cpa1234]

My internship was in AP. So I wrote the following: “accounts payable duties – employee expenses, trainee bonuses, vendor payment/management, assisting CFO with accounting related work as needed, bookkeeping duties.” It was basically copy and paste from my resume and I wrote it all on the accounting line. I had 350 hours of that signed off on by the CFO who was a CPA and my supervisor, but I only really needed 100. I also had 100 hours of accounting at my public firm and I wrote “assisting clients with bookkeeping for tax related purposes, journal entries assistance, accounting related research”. In my case I also had 800 hours of attestation and 600 hours of tax, but I hope it works out for you!

[traceylynn089]

Thanks for the information Cpa1234. It sounds like my job duties would certainly fit under the accounting section just fine. I think the problem may be that that is all I have in addition to some non-profit tax work to file my company 990. I did email the state and plan to call as well for some additional guidance.

[traceylynn089]

Just as a follow up in case anyone else stumbles across this topic…I did call the state board and got some additional clarification for work experience working in government or industry. The board does not give any guidance on specific job duties that qualify but instead leave it entirely up to the CPA signing off on the paperwork. The board does still review your application, but the girl I spoke with said that for the most part, as long as a valid CPA signs off your application will get approved. Just as an additional note, you do have to be under same payroll or employed by the CPA for hours to qualify-no volunteer hours.

I also asked about the allocation of your time amongst the 7 different categories. She said that it absolutely does not matter and that all hours can fall within a single category (for me and any other senior accountants out there this will probably be “accounting”).

[Author]

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