ACCA to US CPA: No Exemptions, So Here Is the Actual Route

ACCA's own page for members moving to the United States opens with the sentence that settles the question: "Currently, ACCA does not have a mutual recognition agreement with the International Qualifications Appraisal Board." No ACCA paper earns credit toward any CPA Exam section, and ACCA adds that its qualification "is not found to be 150 hours on its own" when evaluators look at it.

That is the bad news, and it is complete. The rest of the route is the same one every international candidate walks, with two features that are specific to ACCA members: their degree is usually the three-year kind that evaluators count short, and their study has covered more of FAR, AUD and BAR than they expect. The Gulf has a large population of ACCA members in exactly this position, most of them in Dubai and Riyadh, and this is the route as it actually runs.

What you are evaluated on

A state board admits a candidate to the exam on the strength of their academic record, converted into US semester hours by a credential evaluator. ACCA's qualification is professional, not academic, and it is the underlying degree that gets converted. ACCA advises members to submit "a copy of the ACCA syllabus" with the evaluation application in case an evaluator will award some hours for it, and notes that "evaluations are conducted on a case-by-case basis." In practice the ACCA papers add little or nothing; the degree does the work.

Academic record	Typical evaluation outcome	What it means
Four-year bachelor's in accounting (most Gulf and US-pattern degrees)	Around 120 hours	Eligible to sit with most boards; 150 needed later for licence
Three-year bachelor's (India, Pakistan, the UK, some Egyptian and Jordanian programmes)	Around 90 hours	Not enough to sit for most boards without a master's or further credits
Three-year bachelor's plus a relevant master's	120 to 150 hours	Eligible to sit and often to be licensed
ACCA membership with no degree	Not an academic record	Not eligible; a degree is needed first

The evaluation itself, which evaluators boards accept and how a Gulf transcript is read, is the subject of Credential Evaluation for Gulf Degrees. ACCA names three services on its page: World Education Services, Josef Silny and Associates, and NASBA International Evaluation Services. NASBA's own service is the safest choice for a candidate applying through a NASBA-administered jurisdiction, because its report is written for the boards that will read it.

Two degrees are particular to ACCA members. Many hold the Oxford Brookes University BSc in Applied Accounting, earned alongside the ACCA papers, and ACCA's page mentions a University of London MSc in Professional Accountancy for recent graduates. Both are genuine degrees and both are evaluated as such, and a member whose only degree is one of these should get it evaluated before assuming anything about hours.

Which board

An ACCA member in the Gulf picks a jurisdiction the way every international candidate does, on five criteria: whether it participates in international testing (Alabama, Idaho, North Carolina and the US Virgin Islands do not), whether it lets you sit at 120 hours, whether it requires US citizenship or residency (a few do), whether its experience requirement can be met outside the US under a non-US supervisor, and whether it licenses candidates who will never live there. CPA Exam Requirements for International Candidates ranks the jurisdictions on those criteria and is the place to choose.

ACCA itself does not recommend boards. Its page directs members to "contact the State Board of Accountancy for which you would like more information," which is correct and unhelpful in equal measure. The practical answer is that ACCA members have no special board; they have the same shortlist everyone else has.

Where to sit

Nothing about ACCA membership changes the testing logistics. A Gulf candidate sits at Prometric in Riyadh, Jeddah, Khobar, or in the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan, Lebanon or Egypt, and pays the NASBA international surcharge of US$390 per section on top of the section fee. The booking mechanics and the surcharge are in the Gulf guide to the CPA Exam and the fee arithmetic in How Much the CPA Exam Costs. The total for a first-time pass is roughly SAR 13,900 in fees before study materials.

Where ACCA study carries, section by section

This is the part that is genuinely different for an ACCA member, and it should shape the order of sections and the time given to each.

CPA section	ACCA papers that overlap	How much carries
AUD	AA, AAA	Most of it. The ISAs and the AICPA's standards share the risk model, the evidence vocabulary and the reporting grid. What is new is the AICPA Code's independence rules, SOC reports, and US attestation and review standards.
FAR	FR, SBR	The mechanics, not the rules. Consolidation, cash flows, EPS and financial instruments transfer; leases, revenue details, contingencies, inventory (LIFO) and the entire governmental accounting area do not.
BAR	PM, AFM, SBL	The business analysis half well; the technical reporting half partly; the state and local government area not at all.
REG	None in substance	ACCA tax papers are jurisdiction variants. UK or Saudi tax teaches habits of mind, not one rule of US federal tax. Business law under the UCC is new.
TCP	None	Builds on REG only.

Three consequences follow.

Sit AUD first. It is the section where an ACCA member's preparation is worth the most, and a first pass early in the 30-month window is worth having for morale and for the window itself. The AUD study guide describes what is new for an ISA-trained candidate.

Study FAR as a differences course. An SBR-level candidate does not need to relearn consolidation. They need to learn where US GAAP diverges from IFRS, because the exam's questions cluster there. Prepito's articles on leases, inventory, contingencies and impairment are each written around one such divergence, and governmental accounting covers the area with no IFRS equivalent at all.

Give REG the most time. Every international candidate learns US tax from zero, and ACCA's tax papers do not change that; if anything the habit of a different system's rules is a mild hindrance. How to Study REG When You Have Never Filed a US Tax Return is the method.

The licence and the experience

Passing the exam is not the licence. The board then applies its education requirement, 150 hours for most boards with a bachelor's plus two years of experience emerging state by state since the 2025 model rule change, its experience requirement, usually one to two years verified by a licensed CPA, and in most states an ethics exam. Experience gained at a firm in the Gulf under an ACCA-qualified manager may or may not qualify, depending on whether the board requires a US CPA to verify it; that criterion belongs on the board shortlist above. Getting the CPA Licence from the Gulf and The Ethics Exam After the CPA Exam cover the year after the exam.

One thing an ACCA member does keep: ACCA membership itself. Nothing about the CPA requires giving it up, and in the Gulf the combination is common, ACCA for the IFRS reporting role and CPA for the US-linked or audit one. Which of the two an employer in Riyadh actually values, and what SOCPA thinks of each, is the subject of CPA, ACCA or CMA.

A realistic timeline

The route has four stages, and the first is the one candidates underestimate. A credential evaluation needs official transcripts sent by the university, and Gulf universities, like Indian and Pakistani ones, can take weeks to issue them; the evaluator then needs its own processing time. Two to three months from the first request to a report in hand is ordinary. Only then can the exam application go to the board, and only after the board approves it does NASBA issue the Notice to Schedule that lets you book a Prometric seat.

Stage	Typical duration	What decides it
Transcripts and evaluation	2 to 3 months	How fast the university issues documents; the evaluator's queue
Board application and first Notice to Schedule	4 to 8 weeks	The board's processing time; NASBA's
Four sections	12 to 24 months	Study time available, first-time passes, the Discipline windows
Licence application	2 to 6 months after the last pass	Experience verification, the ethics requirement, the board's queue

An ACCA member who starts the paperwork in one quarter and studies AUD while the evaluation runs is sitting the first section roughly four months later, and that overlap is the single largest saving available on the whole route.

Where to practise this

An ACCA member's preparation should be weighted toward the sections where nothing carries. Prepito's REG course is where the hours go, with the FAR course used for the US GAAP differences and the AUD course for the AICPA-specific material. The CPA programme covers all six CPA course options in English.

CPA questions and written explanations are in English. Prepito’s interface is available in English and Arabic, and the AI tutor can respond in either language.

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Sources: ACCA, Moving to the USA, NASBA, Mutual Recognition Agreements, NASBA CPA Examination jurisdiction pages. Evaluation outcomes vary by evaluator and board and eligibility rules change; confirm your board's education and experience requirements before paying for an evaluation.