Bundesportal | take one's chartered accountancy exams

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Publisher

Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy

Last update or date of publication

January 10, 2020

Contact

The government service telephone number 115 – your point of contact for questions related to the federal, state and local.

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To become a certified public accountant, you must take the auditing exam. The exam consists of a written and an oral examination.

You can take the exam in a shortened form if you have

have already passed the examination as a tax consultant or
are a sworn auditor.

In addition, you can have further examination achievements credited. This may mean that examinations are not necessary for you.

The examinations take place in the 1st and 2nd half of the year:

1st half-year:
- written examination in the first three weeks of February
- oral exams in May and June
2nd half-year:
- written examination in the modules "Applied Business Administration, Economics" and "Business Law" in the last week of June
- written examination in all modules in the last 3 weeks of August
- oral exams in November and December

The written and oral examinations take place at the seat of the regional office which has decided on your application for admission to the examination. Exception: The written exams in the last week of June in the modules

"Applied Business Administration, Economics" and
"Business Law"

take place in annual rotation at 3 locations each:

Berlin or Hamburg,
Düsseldorf or Frankfurt and
Munich or Stuttgart.

Current examination dates and locations can be found on the website of the Chamber of Public Accountants.

Invitation to the auditing exam
Identity card or passport

Forms: yes

Online procedure possible: no

Written form required: yes

Personal appearance required: yes

Label

Preconditions

You must register for at least one module examination with the application for admission.
You have been admitted to the auditing exam and have received an invitation to the exam.
To take part in the oral examination: at least an overall mark of 5.0 in the written module examination.

Examination fees: EUR 500.00 per exam

Basis for legal action

Wirtschaftsprüferprüfungsverordnung (WiPrPrüfV)

Wirtschaftsprüfungsexamens-Anrechnungsverordnung (WPAnrV)

§ 12 WPO (Wirtschaftsprüferordnung)

§ 7 WPO (Wirtschaftsprüferordnung)

Procedure

You will take the exam before the examination board at the regional office of the Chamber of Public Accountants where you registered for the module exam.

You do not have to take the exams all at once. You can spread the module examinations over several examination dates. You are free to combine modules within the 6-year examination period.

Written examination:
- Comprises 7 written examinations in the modules.
  - Business auditing, business valuation and professional law (2 written exams)
  - Applied business administration, economics (2 written examinations)
  - Business Law (1 written exam)
  - Tax law (2 written examinations)
- You will have 4 to 6 hours of processing time for each written exam.
Oral Examination:
- You will begin the oral examination in the module "Business auditing, business valuation and professional law" with a short presentation.
- You have a choice of 3 topics for the lecture.
- This is followed by two oral examination sections
- The oral module examinations in the other examination areas consist of one examination section each.
If you are unable to take part in a module examination due to illness or for a valid reason, please inform your regional office of the Chamber of Public Accountants immediately. In the event of illness, submit a medical certificate from a public health officer. Otherwise, it will be considered a withdrawal if you do not appear and the module examination will be deemed to have been failed.
If you have passed a module examination, you will receive a certificate of this.
If you were not admitted to the oral examination, you will also receive the result in writing.
You have passed the exam if you have passed all the modules to be taken. You can repeat each module twice within the 6-year examination period. A passed module does not expire during this period.
The exam is deemed to have been failed if you
- you have not passed a module within the examination period even after the third attempt, or
- the examination period ends without you having passed all modules.
If you have not passed, you can repeat the exam once. You must then repeat all module exams.
You will receive the result of your exam following the oral examination.

Deadlines

You have 6 years to complete all module examinations. The period starts with the admission to the examination.

Processing time

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