The Experience Requirement

Report Your Experience

Get ahead of the game. You can report your experience at any time through the online experience reporting profile available in your CFP Board Account Dashboard. You will be able to review previously submitted entries, update hours for your current position and enter new experience.

Account Dashboard

How to Report Your Experience

Your experience can be reported to CFP Board at any time through the experience reporting feature in your CFP Board Account Dashboard. We encourage you to report early and update often to keep your profile current. If you have already reported experience, you can also use your Account Dashboard to review past entries and confirm or update your remaining hours balance.

There are 2 main pathways to completing the experience requirement. Review them today.

Completing Your Experience Profile

We will accept experience completed within 10 years before and 5 years after successful completion of the CFP® exam. Once your experience requirement is completed, your account will show a “Provisionally Accepted” status until final CFP® exam results are released verifying you successfully passed the exam. At that time, the “Provisionally Accepted” status will change to “Accepted.” Some helpful tips are below.

Refresh Hours

Current experience (with no end date) entered in your Experience Profile can be refreshed at any time. The Refresh Hours function recalculates hours from the date entered to the current date.

Experience Entered

You will enter experience or refresh hours for your position until you meet the required number of hours. You should assume that the experience you entered is provisionally accepted, unless otherwise noted. Some experience types will be automatically reviewed and/or verification requested.

Experience Submitted

Once you meet the required number of hours, you will need to submit your entered experience by clicking the “Submit” button that will appear. Once submitted, each experience entry will have an updated status of Accepted, Pending Verification, or Provisionally Accepted.

Experience Statuses Terminology

Below is some helpful terminology related to the status of experience that has been entered and submitted.

Entered

Your experience entries will have a status of Entered any time you add an experience entry, allowing you to Edit or Refresh hours until you reach the required number of hours. Unless otherwise noted, you should assume this experience is accepted.

Accepted

Once you meet the required number of hours and click the “Submit” button, your entries will change to “Accepted,” unless otherwise noted. If you have not passed the CFP® exam when you click the “Submit” button, your entries will change to “Provisionally Accepted” pending successful completion.

Pending Verification

Certain types of experience, including Apprenticeship, indirect support, self-employment, pro bono and volunteer experience, automatically require verification before the experience can be “Accepted” or “Provisionally Accepted.” Other experience may be randomly selected for verification before the experience can be “Accepted” or “Provisionally Accepted.”

Under Internal Review

Certain experience entries will trigger an automatic internal review. These reviews are typically completed within 3-5 business days, and you will be notified whether the experience is accepted, if more information is required or if experience has been denied.

Verification of Experience by CFP Board

The “Pending Verification” status means that we emailed an attestation request to the supervisor or qualified attester you identified with your job entry. The attestation includes verification of your position, start date, end date (if applicable), hours worked per week and the elements of the financial planning process that you used. Attestation requests are generated under these conditions:

Apprenticeship Pathway: All Apprenticeship hours reported are subject to verification. After you complete the 4,000 hours and click the “Submit” button, we will email an attestation request to your supervising CFP® professional.
Indirect Support, Self-employment, Pro bono or Volunteer Experience: All hours reported under these categories are subject to verification. Once these types of hours are entered, we will email an attestation request directly to the supervisor or qualified attester you identified.
Standard Pathway and Teaching: We may randomly select your entries for verification once you complete 6,000 hours and click the “Submit” button; if your profile is selected, we will email an attestation request directly to the supervisor you identified.