CPE Catalog & Events

George Washington once wrote, "We ought not to look back, unless it is to derive useful lessons from past errors, and for the purpose of profiting by dear bought experience." The cost of fraud, dearly paid by governments and nonprofits, is too severe not to learn and profit from. In this course, we will look back at real-world government and nonprofit frauds and derive useful controls to stop them. The course materials utilize a highly illustrative and innovative format. Over 15 focused exercises are included to provide an enhanced working knowledge of fraud and anti-fraud controls to both auditors and industry professionals.

Master the essential skills to build a high-performing team with our online course on interviewing, onboarding, and training. This comprehensive program dives into proven best practices for identifying top talent, creating a seamless onboarding experience, and fostering a culture of continuous development. Whether you’re a seasoned manager or new to hiring, this course equips you with the tools to make confident decisions, engage new hires effectively, and set your team up for success from day one.

**Strategies for small firm success** Small Firms Issues sessions spotlight the most pressing issues facing practitioners today. Each session focuses on one or two key areas, exploring: Their impact on the practice What firms are doing to address them Offering practical guidance for implementation within your firm These webcasts are ideal for small firm owners seeking insights into the latest challenges and effective solutions for success. This is the companion webcast to the Small Firms Update webcast series. Learn more about the series: https://www.aicpa-cima.com/cpe-learning/webcast/small-firm-update View the full webcast schedule for both free and paid Small Firm webcasts here: https://us.aicpa.org/interestareas/peerreview/cpeandevents

Understanding your own and the people style of others whom you are dealing with which can establish rapport more easily, help you become more persuasive, and avoid miscommunication with the possibility of rubbing someone the wrong way.  In our session, you will gain insights into your people style, ways to improve communication connectivity and how to understand your team's functionality (or more likely dysfunctionality).  

What obligations does an employer have when an employee needs to take a leave of absence? This presentation will provide an overview of the complicated, intertwined compliance obligations triggered when an employee requests a medical leave of absence (including for pregnancy, mental health, or addiction).  

Creating a culture of safety in a workplace requires attention in many different areas.  We will bring these areas into focus and provide attendees with information on how to make their individual workplaces safer for everyone. 

External auditors understand concepts like materiality, reasonableness, and risk of material misstatement.  This course will explain how to think like an auditor when preparing and fairly presenting your financial statements and related disclosures.

The ability to create and ask good questions as well as the ability to know when someone is being deceptive are important skills for managers, auditors, and investigators. This session will improve your interview techniques and your lie detection abilities. Multiple videos from various movies, TV shows, and public figures showcasing the behaviors of liars are included.

Required minimum distributions (RMDs) must begin for the year in which the account owner reaches age 72 (older if they were born after 1950). RMDs must also be taken from inherited accounts, and the process for determining RMDs for these accounts is more complex than those that apply to RMDs for non-inherited accounts. Failure to comply with the RMD rules will result in the account owner owing the IRS an excess accumulation penalty on any RMD shortfall. Interested parties must understand the compliance requirements that apply to RMDs to be able to assist in ensuring that penalties are avoided. Additionally, the recent changes that affect RMDs must be considered when advising clients about their RMD obligations.

When putting together a financial plan, it is important to remember that the tax situation of the business and the individual are often intertwined. Therefore, decisions about entity type are vitally important. Practitioners need to understand not only how different entities are taxed, but also which taxes will have the greatest impact on the individual owner. In this course, we will explore when self-employment taxes apply to business income, as well as some of the lesser-known taxes that apply to flow-through entities. We will even explore when a PTE election could be helpful to a small business owner.

When we verbally communicate with an individual, we must make a conscious decision as to whether we believe what we have heard.  Little do we realize that we are not making a decision based on what we have heard; rather we make a subconscious decision based primarily on what we have seen, or how the body was behaving when the subject was speaking.  We often walk away from a conversation with a gut feeling that the person was not telling the truth.  That gut feeling is your subconscious.  Yet we often have no idea as to why we have that feeling. This presentation is designed to provide the participant with the tools to identify those both verbal and nonverbal indicators that we all give off when we are under stress.  Normally, telling the truth does not create stress.  When we lie, we know that we are not supposed to and that creates stress, and it will manifest itself in some manner, and that is what a trained interviewer is looking to observe. When we observe indicators of deception, how do we deal with it?  How do we get the subject to admit to a wrong-doing when it is not in their best interest to do so?  That is one of the many things that will be addressed in this presentation.  Whether you are a parent dealing with you kids; an employer dealing with employees or and investigation interviewing a suspect, this presentation will provide you with the tools to assist you in finding the truth.

This course will look at the various rules related to Independence and compare and contrast the requirements. This overview course will help auditors understand the nuances of independence and ensure they meet the requirements to perform attest services for their clients. We will review the requirements for the AICPA, GAO, DOL, and PCAOB.

A multitude of tax changes have are currently taking place, challenging tax practitioner to stay well-informed. This 4 hour program will cover tax developments specific to business, including new court decisions, recent IRS publications, and the latest tax legislation that will impact individuals.  The remaining time will be spent on IRS procedure and other issues. This course will provide a concise look at the hottest topics affecting every tax practitioner.  **Please Note:  If you need credit reported to the IRS for this IRS approved program, please download the IRS CE request form on the Course Materials Tab and submit to kori.herrera@acpen.com.  

Most financial leaders would agree that budgeting is easy when business and the economy are stable. When revenues and expenses are expected to remain the same, the process becomes merely an exercise in carrying over what was done before to the current year. However, what happens when we are not sure about how the market will react to our product? What happens when the competitive landscape changes? In this course, we will discuss budgeting techniques and considerations when business lacks stability. Through a combination of theory and real-world examples, we will explore how to build flexibility into our budget - so that it can inform and drive decision-making when we don't quite know what is ahead. This event may be a rebroadcast of a live event and the instructor will be available to answer your questions during the event.

This course will provide a detailed analysis of how to determine a partner's tax basis for a partnership interest, with an explanation of the use of both "inside" and "outside" basis determination. An illustrated example with filled in forms will demonstrate how the process works and the potential pitfalls. This event may be a rebroadcast of a live event and the instructor will be available to answer your questions during the event.

The new Global Internal Audit Standards were released on January 9, 2024, and will become effective January 9, 2025. The previous version, the International Standards for the Professional Practice of Internal Auditing, released in 2017, remains approved for use during a one-year transition period. The Global Internal Audit Standards guide the worldwide professional practice of internal audit. They serve as a basis for evaluating and elevating the quality of the internal audit function. The Standards use 15 guiding principles with five separate domains that enable effective internal audit implementation and examples of evidence of conformance. The Global Standards are organized into five domains. Domain I: Purpose of Internal Auditing Domain II: Ethics and Professionalism Domain III: Governing the Internal Audit Function Domain IV: Managing the Internal Audit Function Domain V: Performing Internal Audit Service

Providing a practical overview of the IRS Power of Attorney, Form 2848, and IRS Tax Information Authorization, Form 8821. Participants will explore the differences between these forms, understand when each is required, and how to comply with IRS requirements for representing clients and accessing their tax information. The course will cover practical issues, ethical considerations, and best practices for managing client authorizations through the IRS Centralized Authorization File (CAF) system. This event may be a rebroadcast of a live event and the instructor will be available to answer your questions during the event.

Getting ready for busy season involves not only knowing the tax rules for 2025, but also knowing how those rules are incorporated into the IRS tax forms practitioners will be using to prepare 2025 tax returns. This course provides tax return preparer attendees with an up-to-date review of important new tax forms, key tax developments, and tax law changes as they are reflected in IRS forms for 2025 and IRS filing issues and deadlines as they relate to 2025.

People skills are the most significant skills that professionals need to develop and yet are often the last skills perfected. This course will help participants understand personality types and the successful interactions with clients, peers and family. In addition, participants will learn Neuro-linguistic programming and develop the ability to better understand nonverbal language, which is key to communication. Participants will also learn techniques to enhance memory and to improve the ability to recall key facts.

If you use Outlook on a daily basis to process your email, chances are pretty good that you are missing out on a lot of opportunities to improve your efficiency in composing, processing and organizing your messages. There are many different features in Outlook that often get overlooked, even though we are working in the app all day, every day. John Higgins, a strategic advisor to the profession on Microsoft 365 deployment, will review numerous tips and features to improve your productivity in Outlook. You will learn many time-saving, practical ways to improve the quality of your email message. This event may be a rebroadcast of a live event and the instructor will be available to answer your questions during the event.