EMPLOYER PROFILE
Metrics Chartered Professional Accounting
Victoria Firm Provides Unique Training Environment
This summer, Metrics Chartered Professional
Accounting in Victoria became the first firm
in Western Canada able to train CPA students
in the pre-approved program route (PPR) with
no assurance hours, called the Compilation,
Tax and Advisory path.
It’s just one example of the Victoria-based
accounting firm’s progressive ethos. Another
is its entirely cloud-based, paperless environment, which helped garner the firm gold status
certification from the Vancouver Island Green
Business Certification program in 2014 and
2015.
“I try every day to keep Metrics on the cutting
edge,” says founder Regan McGrath, CPA, CA.
She goes on to describe how the firm recently
entered into a brief “hibernation” to revisit its
mission statement:
“We had a lot of discussion about shaking
things up—about advancing and improving
the accounting experience. We want to challenge and disrupt the accounting model. We
are always striving to improve processes and be
ahead of the curve—it’s what drives us in our
daily work, and it’s a huge part of our culture.”
Regan is also focused on making the firm an
exemplary training ground.
“We never considered not being a training
office,” she says. “Technical excellence and
54 CPABC in Focus • Sept/Oct 2015
community represent two of our key values at
Metrics. We’re also a growing firm. Becoming
a training office allows us to stay current in
our practices, support the CPA community,
and attract the best talent. We all embrace and
enjoy the mentorship role and our firm benefits from it so much. It’s just a natural fit.”
With its various program paths, the new
CPA training system gives smaller firms like
Metrics the opportunity to train CPA students
without providing assurance experience.
“Previously, any small firm that wanted to
train pre-approved program CPA students
needed to have some assurance work within
their practice,” explains Harp Bagri, CPA, CA,
director of outreach for the CPA Western
School of Business. “With the Compilation,
Tax and Advisory path, accounting firms can
now train CPA students without needing to
perform assurance engagements.”
Regan describes the process of gaining training approval from CPABC as both thorough
and informative.
“It was really [