Online Accounting CPE

What Online Accounting CPE is

Online Accounting CPE is a continuing education store for accountants. It sells self-study CPE courses as downloadable PDFs, tests the learner online and issues a certificate of completion once the test is passed. The site's own tagline is "Fast, Easy and Affordable Continuing Education for Accountants!", and the home page promises "hundreds of Fast, Easy and Affordable CPE Hours" with "Instant CPE Course Downloads, Testing and Certificate Printing!" The contact page names the business behind it as Online Continuing Education LLC, with a mailing address in Reno, Nevada. The testimonials on the site are signed by CPAs and by an EA, which gives a fair picture of the audience: licensed practitioners who have a CPE deadline and want to meet it at low cost.

The catalog

The home page sorts the courses into nine categories: Accounting, Auditing, Business Law, Business Management, Ethics, Financial Planning, Information Systems, Real Estate and Taxation, plus an All Courses view. The All Courses listing reports 324 results, and the category pages are smaller: Financial Planning shows 47 courses and Business Law shows 24. Each listing can be sorted by product name, filtered by category or by a manufacturer filter, and shown 20, 40, 48, 80 or 200 to a page.

Course titles carry their credit hours and, for most topics, a year. Many subjects come in several annual editions side by side, so a learner can choose the 2026 edition of a course or an older one. Estate Planning, for example, is listed in 2023, 2025 and 2026 editions, each worth 2 CPE. Some 2026 editions open their description with "Texas Compliance Pending", which matters to a Texas licensee choosing between editions. Several topics also exist in two sizes, a short "mini-course" of 2 to 3.5 CPE and a long version of 14.5 CPE or more on the same subject, such as Assets Income and Cash (2.5 or 14.5 CPE) and Fast Track Retirement Planning (2.5 or 17.5 CPE).

A sample of what is on offer, with the credit hours and prices the site lists:

• 1040 Workshop 2026, 24.5 CPE, $75.95
• Essential Legal Concepts with Tax Analysis 2026, 29.5 CPE, $110.95
• The Ultimate Guide to Retirement Planning 2026, 31.5 CPE, $95.95
• Complete Guide to Estate & Gift Taxation 2025, 35 CPE, $115.95
• Essential Provisions of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, 13 CPE, $52.95, alongside shorter Big Beautiful Bill courses of 4 and 4.5 CPE at $20.95
• 2026/2025 Easy Update & Inflation Adjustments, 6 CPE, $24.95
• Wage and Hour Laws, 9 CPE, $26.95, an overview of the Fair Labor Standards Act
• Network Security for Internal Control Assurance 2024, 8 CPE, $30.95
• Defensive Divorce 2025, 15.5 CPE, $60.95, on the tax side of marital dissolutions
• Bankruptcy Tax Issues 2026, 2 CPE, $10.95

Ethics gets particular attention, because many state boards set their own ethics requirement. Alongside general titles such as Ethics: An Overview for All Accountants and AICPA Ethics Interpretations and Guidance for CPAs, the catalog lists state-named ethics courses for Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado and Connecticut, among others. The 4-hour ethics courses are listed at $39.95 and the 2-hour ones at $19.95. Auditing titles include Assessing Audit Risk and Materiality, Auditing for Fraud, Auditing Internal Controls and Complying with Government Auditing Standards and Professional Ethics.

Prices and the unlimited subscription

There are two ways to pay. Courses can be bought one at a time: the course prices on the All Courses listing start at $2.95 for Corporate Fraud Case Studies part 1 (1 CPE) and reach $115.95 for the 35-hour estate and gift tax course. Short 2-hour courses mostly sit between $5.95 and $13.95.

The alternative is the "$129 Unlimited CPE Subscription", which the site says "includes 365 Days of Online access to all of the Accounting CPE Credits you need." The FAQ is direct about the scope: "The subscription is site wide. Every single course on our entire website is included in your subscription." It also answers the heavy user's worry about a hidden ceiling: "We say unlimited very literally. There is no limit to how many courses you can take once you are a subscriber." The subscription panel adds that "Subscribers can access discounted Ethics for less than $10/course!" One testimonial from a CPA points out the practical effect of the 365-day window: courses taken under one subscription can count toward this year's deadline and the next reporting period.

Firms get volume discounts, set out in the FAQ by number of accounts: 20% for 2 or more, 25% for 5 or more, 30% for 10 or more, 35% for 20 or more, 40% for 40 or more, 45% for 60 or more and 50% for 100 or more. The discount is earned on the size of the purchase or on accounts signed up before. The FAQ's example is a firm of 50 accountants that signs up 3 people now: it gets the 20% code, and the 25% code once 2 more join.

There is one free course. The Free CPE section offers "2 FREE CPE Credit Hours - The Detection and Prevention of Fraud in Financial Statements: Corporate Fraud Case Studies Part 1 & 2", which a learner adds to the cart and claims by picking the "give it to me free!" payment option at checkout. The home page backs every purchase with a "100% Money Back Guarantee (Including our Unlimited CPE Subscriptions!)".

How a course works

Everything is text. The FAQ answers the question about video plainly: "Do you offer Video or Webinars? Sadly not yet. We are working on that. At the moment all of our courses are PDFs." There are no recorded lectures or live webinars to sit through.

The steps are simple. A subscriber puts the subscription in the cart, picks a username and password at checkout, and can then order any course on the site for free. Ordered courses appear under "My Account", then "My Courses", where a green Download button fetches the course materials; a confirmation email also carries a download link. After reading, the learner clicks the orange "Take Quiz" button next to the course. The test at the end of the PDF is the same test as the one online, so a learner can work through it on paper and enter the answers later; one CPA's testimonial describes finishing a test on a flight and entering the answers after landing. Tests are graded once submitted, and "All of our tests save every 5 questions automatically", so a long exam can be left and resumed. If a learner fails, the FAQ says "You can retake the test as many times as you need to pass", with a review that shows what went wrong.

A passed course shows a green "Passed" status. The purple "Quiz Results" button opens the results and the certificate of completion, which the learner downloads or prints from the browser.

Where the credit is accepted

Every page carries the same panel: "Our CPE is currently accepted in: AL, AK, AZ, CA, CO, CT, DE, GA, ID, IN, IA, KY, ME, MD, MA, MI, MO, MT, NV, NH, NM, ND, PA, RI, TX, UT, VT, VA, WA, WI, WY". For anything beyond that list, the FAQ sends the learner to its State CPE Requirements page, "where we list the requirements of each state."

Support and teaching

Support runs by phone and email. The home page advertises "Excellent Phone Support from 7a-3p PST Monday through Saturday", the header gives a sales and support phone number, and the contact page lists an email address. The testimonials are mostly about that support: "Wow, an email from a real person and not a pre-written response," writes Sharon EA, and Paul CPA thanks the team "for responding to me on a Sunday." The FAQ also covers two common login errors ("Invalid Token" and "Plugin failed to load") with step-by-step fixes.

Accountants who want to teach have a way in. The FAQ invites anyone interested in offering video or webinars to get in touch, and says "You can receive both CE Credit and Royalties for Teaching."

Who it suits

Online Accounting CPE suits a CPA or enrolled agent licensed in one of the listed states who is comfortable learning from reading and wants a low cost per credit hour. A heavy user, or anyone with a large annual requirement, gets the most from the $129 subscription, since it covers every course for 365 days; a practitioner short a few hours, or needing one state ethics course, can buy single courses instead. Small firms can use the volume discounts to put several staff on the same plan. Learners who need video, live webinars or an instructor to talk to will not find them here.