How to Complete New York CPA Form 4B: Supervisor Verification of Experience

New York CPA Form 4B is the experience-verification document a qualifying CPA supervisor completes and sends directly to the New York State Education Department. You fill in a short applicant section at the top, pass the form to your supervisor with the instruction sheet (Form 4BInst), and the supervisor attests to the type, dates, and quality of the work you did under their supervision. The supervisor, not you, mails the finished form to the Office of the Professions in Albany.¹ The current version is dated March 2025, and there is no fee for the form itself.

How Much Experience the Form Has to Cover

The time you need to document depends on how you qualified educationally. Candidates who completed at least 150 semester hours in a qualifying accounting program need one year of full-time experience. Candidates under the older 120-hour pathway need two years.² Endorsement applicants transferring a CPA license from another U.S. jurisdiction need four years of full-time experience, earned since their out-of-state license was issued and within the last ten years.³

One year of full-time experience means twelve calendar months at a minimum of 35 hours per week across a five-day workweek, not counting overtime.² Part-time work of at least 20 hours per week counts at a two-for-one rate: two weeks of part-time work equal one week of credit.⁴ Work under 20 hours per week does not count at all.

Your duties must involve providing accounting services or advice using U.S. accounting, attest, compilation, management advisory, financial advisory, tax, or consulting skills. The work can be done at a public accounting firm, in government, in private industry, at a not-for-profit, at a law firm, or at an educational institution.³ Two of the service categories on the form, independent audits and compilations/reviews, are restricted to candidates who worked at a registered public accounting firm. The other categories are open regardless of employer type.⁵ Only work for U.S. clients or employers qualifies, and internships that earned academic credit on your transcript cannot be used.

Who Can Sign as Your Supervisor

This is where applicants most often run into trouble. Your supervisor must be a CPA licensed in a U.S. jurisdiction who was properly licensed, registered, and authorized to practice in the state where they maintained their principal place of business during the dates they supervised you. Experience signed off by a CPA who was not lawfully practicing in that state cannot be accepted.³ The supervisor must also have been employed in the same organization as you and must have acted in a direct supervisory capacity over your work.²

A CPA at another firm who mentored you informally does not qualify. Neither does a colleague at your own firm who holds a CPA license but never actually oversaw your day-to-day work. The form asks the supervisor directly, with yes/no questions, whether they were in the same organization and whether they acted in a supervisory capacity. A “no” to either invalidates the verification.

If more than one CPA supervised you during the experience period, you will typically need a separate Form 4B from each, covering the specific dates they oversaw your work.

Section I: What You Fill In

Section I is short. You complete it yourself before handing the form over.

Last four digits of your Social Security number, left blank if you do not have one.
Your date of birth.
Your name as it appears on Form 1 (last, first, middle). It has to match your main licensure application exactly.
A daytime phone number and email address.
The name on your degree or credentials, only if different from the name on your application.
The endorsement date, filled in only by endorsement applicants transferring an out-of-state license.

Older guides sometimes reference a full Social Security number or an employer identification number on this form. The current March 2025 revision does not ask for either.⁵

Section II: What the Supervisor Fills In

Section II carries a sworn affirmation, and most delays trace back to errors here. Walk your supervisor through the instruction sheet before they start. They will provide:

Their name, CPA license number, issuing state, and date of licensure.
The firm or organization name and the city and state where they supervised you.
Their title or position during the supervision period.
Their principal place of business. If this differs from the state of licensure, they must confirm they were lawfully practicing there.
A single employer-category checkbox: public accounting firm (with the firm registration number if applicable), government, private industry, not-for-profit, law firm, education, or other.
A checklist of eleven service categories covering the work you performed, with every applicable box checked. Categories range from independent audit and compilations/reviews through internal and government audit, forensic accounting, bookkeeping, tax, advisory and consulting work, and teaching college accounting.
Your job title, the from/to dates they supervised you, and whether you worked full-time or part-time.
The two yes/no questions on same-organization employment and supervisory capacity.
Their opinion on your moral character and fitness for the profession.

The supervisor signs and dates the affirmation. If the eleven service categories do not fully describe your duties, they can attach additional sheets.⁵

Extra Documentation for Part-Time Experience

Part-time candidates carry an added documentation burden. NYSED will not accept an average of weekly hours. Your supervisor has to provide records showing the actual number of hours you worked in each individual week across the entire period. Time cards, billing reports, or spreadsheets are acceptable.³ If your employer does not keep detailed time records, start tracking now. Reconstructing a week-by-week log after the fact is far harder than keeping one in real time.

Any individual week in which you worked at least 35 hours counts as a full-time week, even if your employment status was formally part-time.⁴ That reduces the calendar time you need to accumulate. Weeks between 20 and 34 hours fall under the two-for-one rule.

How the Form Gets Submitted

The supervisor mails the completed form, with any supporting documentation, directly to:

New York State Education Department
Office of the Professions
89 Washington Avenue
Albany, New York 12234-1000⁶

NYSED will not accept Form 4B if it comes from you. The form has to be mailed by the supervisor.¹ There is no online submission option, so a trackable or certified mail service is worth the small cost for proof of delivery.

After the Form Is In

NYSED asks applicants to wait at least six weeks after all documentation has been submitted before requesting a status update. Reaching out earlier can slow processing.⁶ Applications involving education from outside the United States, or experience descriptions that lack detail, tend to take longer.⁷

If the State Board for Public Accountancy finds a problem with the verification, say service categories that are too vague or dates that don’t add up to enough calendar time, you will receive written notice of what needs to be fixed. Your supervisor may then need to submit a revised Form 4B or additional supporting documents.

1
Office of the Professions. Form 4B – Verification of Experience by Supervisor
2
Office of the Professions. NYS Public Accountancy Laws, Rules and Regulations Part 70
3
Office of the Professions. Instructions for Completing Verification of Experience by Supervisor Form 4B
4
Office of the Professions. Initial License for Certified Public Accountants
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Office of the Professions. Certified Public Accountant Form 4B
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Office of the Professions. Contact Information for Certified Public Accountants
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Office of the Professions. Certified Public Accountants – Application Status