ACL Certified Data Analyst - ACDA

ACDA is a professional designation that ACL introduced at least five years ago.  Since it's introduction, it failed to be embraced by the ACL User Community.  There are several possible reasons for this.  For example, none of the top ACL users on the ACL User Forum were ACDA's.  Another possible reason was that the exam is only offered in several locations each year.  In order for somebody to take the exam, they would have to travel to a testing location, stay at a hotel, and incur significantly more expenses.

In 2008, ACL introduced an alternative method for obtaining the ACDA.  Rather than taking the exam, people could qualify for ACDA via their experience.  In order to do so, they had to mee the following requirements:

• Completed application form
• Required pre-requisites (ACL 100-level and ACL 200-level; OR ACL 300-level) documentation
• Narrative of how audit analytics was used on two data analysis engagements
• An ACL Project demonstrating capability (no data required)
• Certification fee of USD 250 to be paid by credit card

With these changes, more people are able to obtain the ACDA certification.  In the past six month, virtually all of the top users on the ACL User Forum have obtained the certification.  This proliferation of the credential among the most visible users will undoubtably cause an increase in demand for the certification.

While one can now use experience to obtain the certification, the exam is still offered and many people may be interested in taking the exam instead.  If you want to take the exam, you should know the following:

1) The first half of the exam is a short answer/multiple choice/essay exam.  While you are allocated 3 hours, most people finish well in advance of that.  While the exam wasn't overly difficult, one should familiarize themselves with some of the less common ways to load data into ACL.  One should also familiarize themselves with system generated variables.  Eg if they perform a statistics command what variables are created?

2) The second half of the exam is a case study.  Again you will be allocated 3 hours, and most people will take the entire 3 hour period to complete the case study.  This is not because the case study is overly difficult, but rather because there were a lot of questions.  In order to pass the exam one has to be familiar with the Impot to Print command.