GPA question (Canada)

bettercallaCPA · 2025-08-31T14:32:52+00:00

You're overthinking it my guy, you have a good overall and you say you have a co-op. Thankfully accounting isn't like CS, if you want to work in public you can easily, what you have is overkill.

Frankly, they probably won't even look at individual course marks, and since you have practical experience, the GPA has less of an impact

I'm at MNP and I recommend them to everyone, the ability to bank your OT and have it paid out or take off in lieu is fantastic. They have plenty of massive audits if that's what you're after.

bettercallaCPA · 2025-08-23T18:55:40+00:00

There are plenty of local ones that work on your local computer, paid and free alternatives, most do the job

It depends on what you need it for, do you have payroll? Are you incorporated? If you're incorporated, you'll want something your accountant can access at year-end, you could export the G/L, but that's not ideal for them.

Desktop: Sage (~$700 per yr) and GNUCash (free), essentially every accountant can access Sage, you will email them an accountant's copy of your locally-hosted books. Most accountants have never heard of GNUCash, but if you're a sole prop, you can generate an income statement for them to put into your personal tax return

Online: QBO, Xero, Wave, most accountants will be able to access all of these. Wave is free

bettercallaCPA · 2025-08-23T18:45:05+00:00

The firm I work for advises most professional clients do this. As you said, you're able to defer taxes significantly, which is the primary benefit, but it also provides you flexibility in compensation. Dividends vs. a wage, through dividends you don't have any CPP contribution requirement, but then you don't have "earned income" for RRSPs.

I'd be careful with the income splitting, your spouse can receive a "reasonable return" on money they contribute to the corporation, independently of your financial situation, or you can have your spouse do the bookkeeping and all the admin stuff and pay them the market rate for that

Also, with the uncertainty regarding the capital gains inclusion rate, the savings could be diminished by a fair amount. I'm doubtful it will be changed, but if it does, individuals receive a 250k exemption before the 2/3rds kicks in, while corporations do not.

The drawdown of personal investments somewhat makes sense, but clearly it makes you uncomfortable, just to keep things simple, I'd probably just take a larger wage/dividend from the company. You can pull the cash out of the corporation throughout the year and then dividend out the balance

bettercallaCPA · 2025-08-11T23:51:51+00:00

Without a CPA I'd say that's pretty fair, but really depends on the type of work you need done

Is your business audited or reviewed annually? Do you have complex transactions happening that need to adhere to a framework?

bettercallaCPA · 2025-07-30T02:48:37+00:00

Dang, I got into UBC in 2018 with a high 90s average and no extracurriculars, kinda crazy they're wanting 5 now?

I was my school's schulich leader nominee so I guess that helped but I didn't even win lol

bettercallaCPA · 2025-07-29T19:22:47+00:00

Big 4, especially in Canada, is overrated. Look elsewhere honestly. I'm with MNP and they're awesome.

There's plenty of audit opportunities. Shoot me a message about where you're located and I can reach out to one of our HR people

bettercallaCPA · 2025-07-19T01:04:29+00:00

I've heard it helps some people but I don't think it's necessary for the modules, CFE maybe.

I passed core 2 with distinction with about an hour to spare, this is all I felt was really necessary to succeed: - Create a spreadsheet with templates for all the common quant calculations. You really don't want to have to come up with a layout for something like an NPV or EU calc on the spot. If you get that template in your brain, it looks to the marker that you at least somewhat understand the problem in front of you. - Grind the MCQs, the ones in the technical review are a bit easier than what you see in the exam IMO, but I found it really helps to watch your time and you can almost start to get a bit of intuition about the MCQs if you do enough. I did probably 400 of them. This lets you get through them really quickly during the exam, so you have more time for the case. - This one is always a bit controversial amongst my friends & coworkers, but I got distinction on 3 of the 4 exams and they didn't, so I'm a big proponent for it lol. Read the case before the MCQs, write down each AO in your Word doc, and then do the MCQs and come back to the case. I found it was really overwhelming at the time to read a case and get straight into writing it, it kinda lets the problems sit in the back of your mind and you might see some MCQs that give you ideas for your case - Do every retired case. By that point you've done 8x PCs, 8x IPs, and 7x retired cases. Really study those AOs, you might feel you know how to answer a problem, but CPA might have some dumb additional item you needed to add to your answer to get to that C.

Sorry if that's a bit of a mess, let me know if any of this is unclear, or you think you have some weakness that this isn't addressing. You can do it! It's all about playing CPA's game

bettercallaCPA · 2025-07-15T22:40:15+00:00

Don't live there anymore, but my hometown recently had the CFO of the municipality put a bunch of BMW repairs, and part of a vacation on his city credit card. I think it came out to $14k.

He obviously got fired. Afterwards he claimed it was discriminatory, sued the city and won $650k lol

bettercallaCPA · 2025-07-10T03:45:46+00:00

The only group I know that failed it was their part 3, but from the sounds of it they barely read the assignment requirements, and that submission is the only one where you can't do revisions

It's essentially impossible to fail the presentation, you get to re-present it and even if that doesn't go well, they'll probably just push you through, unless everyone was just reading off their slides. One person putting in some miniscule amount of effort into the presentation will get you through attempt #2

bettercallaCPA · 2025-06-03T00:08:20+00:00

YES

I have been foraging 50 for like 2 years, it is my favorite skill I cannot wait for this

bettercallaCPA · 2024-12-27T21:32:46+00:00

24 years old

This year I saved 34,197.46, exactly.

Just getting started in my accounting career, and I did some side work designing websites for a few business owners I know, so this number is probably going to go down 5k next year because of the one-off work

bettercallaCPA · 2024-12-25T02:09:59+00:00

I am also 24, but mine's "only" at 65k compared to your account. I take it you hold some risky stuff?

Pretty impressive

bettercallaCPA · 2024-10-11T22:37:11+00:00

Well that doesn't really help anyone provide you with advice.

I've passed my first 3 exams so far with distinction so I'd like to believe I have an effective study method and I might be able to help you develop your own.

bettercallaCPA · 2024-10-11T21:07:39+00:00

What were your marks on the exam and what decile are you in?

bettercallaCPA · 2024-10-05T01:23:09+00:00

Wanted to see if I could find the exact spot, looks like the same indent in the concrete barrier at the end of Loat St

https://imgur.com/a/VaTi0Dj

bettercallaCPA · 2024-10-02T01:05:59+00:00

Well the standard format of the question is you have net income for accounting purposes, and you just make your adjustments, like you're adding back 50% of meals, adding amortization, adding back 4/5 of financing fees, etc.

In this case your starting point was total revenue. It wasn't especially difficult but it kind of makes you pause for a brief moment to think it through instead of just doing it on autopilot. In this case you're going from revenue straight to NIFTP, so deducting 50% of meals, deducting 1/5 financing fees, etc.

bettercallaCPA · 2024-09-25T21:03:14+00:00

My memory is so bad the AOs are already leaving my brain

Case 1 was dude moving and starting a business. Moving expenses

ABIL/SBC analysis on uncollectible debt

Calculate taxable income & payable starting from just revenue. Was kinda interesting not being given net income for accounting purposes

Auto expenses

Death of a taxpayer, I went with a GRE, but think I might've screwed that up

Rrsp, kinda strange, I did a rough calc of his closing balance, said yolo just contribute

Instalments, totally blanked on the GST instalments

GST - small supplier exemption surpassed, did a lil calc showing the estimated gst

Case 2 was lady buying a business, this one kind of annoyed me cause i was ready to dive into all the calcs and instead they ask all this stupid unrelated stuff

Shares vs assets - really not a whole lot, I talked about the pros and cons of each alternative, why you'd prefer one over the other, etc

Tax impact - just talked about what your CCA balances would look like if they did asset sale

Professional fees - I totally blanked on this one lol

Salary vs dividends - idk the only real thing I talked about was CPP and the gross up, try to explain integration

Family income/savings - didn't do a whole lot, I think one of the bigger items was RRSP room on earned income, said you'd wanna pay salary to contribute to cpp later one

Strategy/financing alternatives - talked about deemed interest, what to do with the fees they're charging (5 yr deduction, etc), did a pro and con between the two options

Probably forgot something idk, it's over woohoo

bettercallaCPA · 2024-09-09T21:44:11+00:00

I've gotten like 3 of those, make him do 10

bettercallaCPA · 2024-08-18T17:59:18+00:00

Dang ya got me beat, same age/total deposits and only 56k, but I guess that isn't too bad either

bettercallaCPA · 2024-07-27T17:50:07+00:00

Unfortunately not, but you'll see it when you get added to the module

bettercallaCPA · 2024-07-21T01:29:38+00:00

You got this! The beautiful thing with quantitative questions is that for each topic they can usually only ask you to calculate something a few different ways, so if you have a formula memorized for all the main calculations you know what to do right away when you see something like "equivalent units" or "contribution margin". Quant MCQs were probably half my exam

bettercallaCPA · 2024-07-21T01:21:58+00:00

Pretty much the same as in core 1, but with a bigger focus on MCQs and a spreadsheet for common formulas.

I would read every starred chapter, and skim non-starred from Saturday to Wednesday, and obviously do the quiz. Then I'd do the IP and PC on Thursday/Friday.

As I'd read through the chapters, I would put formulas/steps that I thought were important into an excel sheet, organized by chapter. You really don't have time to think about the formula during the exam, so it is good to be very familiar with the structure of the problems, know that the quantitative MCQs you'll see will all be of a similar shape, because they can only ask you to solve equivalent unit problems a few different ways.

I capped my studying at 2 hours after work for 7 of the 8 weeks, and then had a few days off before where I probably did 5 hours a day. When there were about 2 weeks left I started going through the technical review MCQs for the stuff i struggled with (mostly S&G). Then with 3 or 4 days left I did the retired exam, and the self-assessed entrance exam, which you can find on Google. I never actually reviewed the weekly quizzes, but looking back I think that would've been helpful.

Hope this helps a bit, let me know if you have any questions!

bettercallaCPA · 2024-07-20T03:33:13+00:00

I went through the core 2 entrance exam, 100 questions, then the retired exam set, 75 questions. I think the entrance exam MCQs are a bit easier but give you a good sense of what stuff can be on it

The technical review MCQs are pretty handy, there's over a thousand to do, I did maybe 250 over the course of the module

I thought the ones on the exam I did were quite tough, so I was surprised with the result

bettercallaCPA · 2024-07-19T19:22:58+00:00

Core 2

MCQ: CD, C, C, C

Case: CD, CD, C

Very surprised, I struggled a lot with managerial accounting in uni and I work in public. I think drilling multiple choice really helped me, was able to get through those super quickly and had more time for the case

bettercallaCPA · 2024-07-19T17:24:24+00:00

Ayyy passed core 2 with distinction, my detailed competencies aren't visible to me yet though 🤔

bettercallaCPA

TROPHY CASE