Saturday, May 03, 2008

2008 Advanced Certification Testing

So who's tried taking Intuit's new Advanced Certification test? Personally, they've got to be joking! First, you have to download 11 QuickBooks files to your computer and restore them each to answer the appropriate question. If this doesn't take enough time, then you are supposed to troubleshoot and or manipulate the files without giving any thought to the way the file should be set up in the first place. I would open a file and find myself cleaning and organizing even before reading the question. Oops - I wasn't supposed to do that. There are supposed to be discrepancies in some places and you must ignore any others. It's like giving financials to 10 accountants and telling them that there is only one correct tax return. So if you spend the time to open a file, try to ignore all the implied and ignored issues in a question and then spend the time typing in the answers (yes, type in the EOY GJE and type in the Reversing entry), then you really must not be seeing many clients. For those of you who have made the effort to do all of this to pass the exam, I am impressed and I have some clients for you.

2 comments:

Custom Business Solutions said...

The sad thing is, once you put all the time and effort in - it is still virtually impossible to pass! I've done a search of major cities in the "Find a ProAdvisor" database, and don't see anyone who is Advanced since 2008.
We spent, conservatively, 10 hours on this test and managed only to score in the mid 50% range!
I'll be very impressed if anyone passes, and stunned if Intuit doesn't water down the test for 2009 when all of the old time 2007 Advanced people need to renew their credentials.

reality check said...

I completely agree. I too scored that range after about 5 hours of work (I skipped a couple of questions I didn't want to waste any more time on). The funny thing was that I got 0 correct for integrated applications although I've integrated more third-party apps than I can remember over the years for galleries, consultants, warehouses, etc. That alone made me realize that this was not an accurate determination of my abilities. Did you get the email that Intuit changed the test already so it is supposedly 'clearer'? I don't have the time to waste on it again (those downloads totally screwed up my Previous Companies lineup!) but I will have to do it next year, too.