New Year’s Eve is one of the few holidays celebrated almost universally in countries around the world, with parties, champagne toasts, and fireworks. This year, December 31 will also be a key date for management accounting professionals. That’s because it marks the final day that AICPA voting members who meet relevant experience requirements are exempt from the upcoming CGMA exam.

    The exam’s unique strategic case-study format is designed to assess problem-solving skills in real-world business situations and test a broad range of competencies defined as crucial by businesses around the world. Since the case study format is quite different from traditional exam techniques like multiple choice or fill-in-the-blanks, we recently released a practice exam that candidates can use to prepare for the exam.

    Whether you need to take the exam or not, you may be interested in its key features, structure and format. You can view and/or take the free practice exam as many times as you like. You can even download practice exam answers that demonstrate how a high-performing candidate might respond to the questions.

    Before taking the practice CGMA practice exam you should download the sample advance reference materials.­ They illustrate the nature of the materials that will be available to test-takers seven weeks prior to the exam (the first exam sitting will in May 2015). In addition to the practice exam itself, we’ve made available a number of additional resources.

    It’s been an exciting year for the CGMA designation — a year that will end with a bang—not just with noisemakers, but with the ushering in of the new CGMA exam.