Need advice on passing QBO advanced certification exam

We're glad to have you here, @Rawls19,

I appreciate the time you've given sharing your experience here in our forum. I want to make sure your concern with passing the QuickBooks Online Certification is addressed.

Giving you the best experience with completing the QuickBooks Certification is what we aim for. Our goal is to boost your confidence, establish your expertise, and help you earn your client's trust.

At the moment, we're unable to check your examination results in this public forum. But don't worry, we have a dedicated team that is working on monitoring and handling QuickBooks Accountant customers.

They have advanced tools to check your certifications and can share some insights on how to pass the examination. Here's how to contact us: How to contact QuickBooks Online Accountant support?

Should you have any questions on reconciling or anything else, please don't hesitate to let me know. Have a good day. 

I too have contacted support but they haven't been helpful.  I'm looking for any guidance on additional study aids for the one section 8, Period End Activities, that stands in the way of my certification.  The online training doesn't have material included that are on the exam.  I think that I am answering them correctly based on my experience but still fail.  I'm not asking for someone to give me the answers but it would like a resource to study that can help.  Does anyone have a suggestion for additional resources to help with that section?

This is discouraging, to say the least.

I am studying hard for the exam, but see where many others have said that there are questions that don't pertain to anything you learn from the training webinar or the other training they offer online. 

What else do you do to learn everything if they don't include it in the training?

Also, IMO, the multiple choice questions are ridiculous. I think you should be asked to do something, and then do it in QBO.  Not ask a question & expect you to know the answer. there are multiple ways to do things in QBO, and if you can get to where you need to be and enter the transaction (s), that should be good.  They can't expect you to memorize everything.  It may take a minute to find where you need to be, or to find what they are asking about. Again, JMO.  

Hey Hey 

i just finished section 1 on the Certification Test.

Jeez nightmare i tell you took me over an hour with 12 questions can you believe it!!!

wanna share some questions and answers? 

can email me [email address removed].

Regards

The QBO ProAdvisor exams seem to be unnecessarily difficult, but they are not impossible to pass. It may take more time and effort and strategy than you’d like to devote to such a relatively narrow credential, but if you want it, QB makes you work hard for it.

Requiring 80% to pass each section means that for all sections with fewer than 10 questions, you cannot pass if you miss more than one. One! So it is a pretty high bar right there. Offsetting that is of course the fact that the exam is “open book”. You absolutely have to use that to your advantage. I used a combination of live webinars and self study of the supplemental materials. I then opened the PDFs of the webinar slide deck and the associated supplemental guide before taking each section. I also kept the QBO advanced sample company open on a separate browser window. I did exam parts one or two at a time so that I wouldn’t get brain fried. I screen captured each question with my answers selected and pasted them into a Word doc to save in case I did not pass. Then I submitted my sections. I passed 7 out of 10 on first try and mind you, this was after doing all the above! And as other CPAs have noted, we passed the dang CPA exam, so how can we not pass this?

When it came to retaking the 3 sections I missed, I paid careful attention to what QB said I should review - that is your only useful clue to figure out which ones you got wrong. QB tells you what learning objectives you need to review and that corresponds to which questions you answered wrong. To verify which questions those were, I went back to the supplemental guide, went to the learning objectives page, and reviewed the parts of the supplemental guide that contained those objectives. The exam questions go in the same order of objectives as the study guide, so you can back your way

into which questions you missed. Now that you know what you got right, that will help in case you get those questions repeated on your retake. Then look at the ones you got wrong and work them hard until you are confident you know where you went off course. Then when you retake the test, be extra careful on each question, resisting the urge to speed up because it’s the same things over again. This is how I was able to pass the rest of the parts on my second attempt.

All this said, I agree with those who have said that many of the questions are intentionally tricky, and often are a level of difficulty or critical thinking beyond what is specifically covered in the training and supplemental materials. A cynic may argue that this is to keep pass rate low, but an optimist would see this as adding to the implied skill level of those who do pass. The silver lining for me was that those retakes forced me to take a deeper dive on the materials which in turn helped me get to a higher comprehension level on those topics, which I suppose is the aim of the whole certification.

I have taken 5 of the 10 tests for Advanced Certification. Doing one per week and have no clue yet as to

whether I am passing or not.  Am doing one test per week. 

I have passed the CPA exam on first try,  and I am quite irritated about the following:

1.  The answers to about 30% of the questions cannot be derived from any training material,

 nor from any other instructional texts found online.

2.   The test instructions are not clear. Example: Which 2 statements below are correct (choose all answers  

 that apply)? That is a serious test-designing mistake. Is it "2" or "all"? It shows me that  employees who are not trained in analytical thinking designed question/answer.   

3.  There are sentence structure- and grammatical mistakes in every section's test. They dilute the test taker's focus. 

In my opinion it takes a portion of good luck to pass this test.  That's not acceptable for such complex material. 

I am in the EXACT same boat.  I think its deliberate, and since the materials are in no way even close to the test, and the "trick" multiple choice questions that change each time it is impossible.  I have passed every other module with no problem and waiting 60 days to do it again is ridiculous since you study the same crappy material only to fail again

I think someone needs to relook at this portion.  Unless of course you want our clients to use other software.

Did anyone pass the first 3 times?  Id love to know!!!

Hi @Bookkeeping Etc,

We appreciate your feedback about the test instructions. They're something that we need to look into and improve our certification resources. I'd still encourage sending suggestions through this link: qbproadvisor.com/feedback.

For more queries about the ProAdvisor Certification, please don't hesitate to out our accountant support at this link here: https://quickbooks.intuit.com/accountants/support/.

We also have answers to common questions on the certification process found at this article: Frequently Asked Questions about ProAdvisor Certification.

Feel welcome to swing by anytime if you need help with anything else. We're always here to lend a hand. Take care and I wish you have a great day ahead.

I know exactly what you mean. I have failed section 7 twice and have absolutely no idea what I did wrong.  The first time I failed I only had two suggestions on studying. The second time I had four so I think I got four questions wrong.  Funny sort of, since I feel like I know the "real world" banking and tools inside and out. 

Yes, there are trick questions here. This is not a test of skill. I am sorry I have no advice for you but I did want to share that I feel your frustration too!

I just took the advanced test and failed 3 times. Passed two sections and failed three. I saved each test and print and compare with previous test.  I have copied and pasted all notes into word to find the answers.  I was assuming if you get the same answer again it meant that answer was correct and not need to revisit. That does not seem to be the case. Since there is no way of knowing what questions you get wrong, I don't' know how you are supposed to pass this thing.  I was confident in most of my answers only to fail.  Quickbooks needs to at least tell you what you got wrong.