CPA Prerequisite Courses and the PREP Program: What You Need Before the PEP
By Muntasir Minhaz • Published May 01, 2026 • Fields of Study, Canadian Universities & Colleges
If your degree is not in accounting, you complete the CPA preparatory courses (PREP) before you can enter the CPA Professional Education Program (PEP). PREP covers 14 courses in total, and you need at least 30 credit hours of prior post-secondary study, or three years of relevant work experience, to start.
🎓 PREP has 5 non-core and 9 core courses, taken in a set sequence because some are prerequisites for others.
📩 Each course ends in an exam. You need at least 50% in non-core courses and at least 60% in core courses.
⏱️ You also need a cumulative average of 65% across all core courses to move into PEP.
💵 How many PREP courses you actually take depends on what your degree already covered.
Who needs PREP
The CPA Professional Education Program (PEP) requires a set of accounting, finance and business foundation topics before you start. If your undergraduate degree already covered them, usually a specialized accounting degree, you go straight to PEP. If it did not, you complete the CPA preparatory courses (PREP) first.
PREP is run by your provincial CPA body: CPA Ontario, CPA British Columbia, CPA Western School of Business (covering BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and the territories), and the equivalent bodies in other provinces. Course content is set nationally by CPA Canada , so the courses are consistent no matter which provincial body delivers them.
Getting into PREP
To start PREP, you need one of the following:
30 credit hours of post-secondary study, roughly 10 university-level courses, in any discipline.
Or three years of relevant work experience if you do not meet the credit-hour threshold.
The 14 PREP courses
PREP is made up of 14 courses split into two tiers:
5 non-core courses: introductory topics such as financial accounting fundamentals, economics, statistics, and business law that build the base for the core courses.
9 core courses: intermediate and advanced financial accounting, management accounting, audit, tax, corporate finance, strategy and governance, among others.
The sequence matters. Several core courses list specific non-core or earlier core courses as prerequisites, so you cannot take them in any order you choose. Check the CPA Ontario prerequisite and preparatory courses page or the CPA Western School of Business PREP overview for the current course map in your province.
Not everyone takes all 14. Your provincial body assesses your transcript and grants exemptions for topics your degree already covered in enough depth. A business or commerce degree without a heavy accounting focus often still requires several of the core accounting and tax courses.
Grades that let you move into PEP
Each PREP course ends with its own exam, and you need:
A minimum of 50% in each non-core course.
A minimum of 60% in each core course.
A cumulative average of 65% across all core courses combined.
Falling short on any of these means retaking the specific course before you can apply to PEP, not restarting the whole sequence.
Planning your timeline
How long PREP takes depends entirely on how many exemptions you get and how many courses you take at once. Students with a related business degree who need only 2 to 4 courses can finish PREP in under a year studying part time. Students starting from an unrelated degree with limited exemptions and taking one or two courses per term should expect PREP to take closer to 18 to 24 months before starting PEP.