CPE Catalog & Events

This comprehensive course provides the critical updates governmental accountants and auditors need to stay informed. We'll begin with a review of recent GASB standards, including compensated absences, asset disclosures, risk and uncertainty disclosures, and financial reporting model improvements. Participants will also gain insights into GASB's current projects, exposure drafts, and agenda progress to ensure they are up to date on what's ahead. For auditors, we'll cover key changes to governmental auditing standards, including the 2024 Yellow Book updates, the transition from quality control to quality management, and implementation timelines, with early adoption options. Single Audit updates will include the 2024 Uniform Guidance changes, the 2025 Compliance Supplement, GAO reports on improper payments and government fraud, the Financial Data Transparency Act (FDTA), and recent Department of Education guidance on related parties.

With the increasing complexity and ever-changing nature of tax laws and issues, today’s accountant needs a S corporation course focusing on the birth, growth, maturity, and death of a closely held S corporation. This case driven course will deal with S corporation income tax laws from formation to liquidation.  **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

Microsoft Teams is one of the most exciting personal and organizationally productivity tools to ever appear on the business landscape. With Teams, you can communicate and collaborate easily and securely with others, including colleagues outside your organization. Further, you can extend the already-robust functionality in Teams by incorporating add-in solutions with just a few clicks of the mouse. Unfortunately, despite Teams’ power and relatively simple interface, many organizations struggle with deploying and using Teams.  In this session, you will learn how you can get up and running quickly in Teams so that you can take full advantage of this powerful tool. More specifically, you will learn how you can get started in Teams and critical decisions that will affect your deployment. Also, you will learn how to work in Teams, including how to take advantage of the chat, voice, and video call services and how to share documents securely with others. Moreover, you will learn how to extend your Teams platform to external organizations for improved communication and collaboration. Additionally, you will identify how you can add other applications into Teams and optimize Team's configuration for the best overall efficiency and security. If you are working with Teams or plan to do so, this is one CPE session you can’t afford to miss!

Developing a Strong Risk Management Culture Successful leaders are anticipatory, understanding the potential effect and wider implications of risks. You can guide staff and correct behaviors with policies and procedures. But to fully actualize a risk management culture, leaders must convey integrity and must step up their commitment to enterprise risk management (ERM). Enterprise risk management means dealing with uncertainty. It requires leaders to make informed decisions managing people, processes and technology. In this webcast, you'll learn what it means to be an anticipatory leader, the five levels of defense in risk management and much more.

This is a specialized course designed for experienced accounting professionals who are looking to strengthen their interpersonal and professional skills in maintaining appropriate boundaries within and beyond the workplace. This course delves deep into the complexities of workplace relationships, personal practices, & ethical dilemmas, providing participants with advanced strategies to effectively manage professional distances and avoid problematic conflicts of all kinds. Through interactive sessions, case studies, and expert guidance, attendees will learn how to navigate sensitive situations with tact and integrity, ensuring that their professional conduct remains impeccable, and their careers continue to thrive in an increasingly complex business environment.

Loans, rental agreements, business combinations - what do these all have in common? They all have the potential of creating a related party transaction. This program presents a detailed analysis of the financial accounting rules for transactions with related parties, as well as compares and contrasts those rules with the AICPA financial reporting framework for small and medium-sized entities. This course does not qualify for IRS credit.

Enterprise Risk Management for SMEs

Organizations of all sizes often fail to successfully install needed foundational components of an internal control system. Whether large or small, entities must view policies, procedures, and all controls in a wholistic manner in order to develop a system of controls that will keep the entity on its intended course. Moreover, those that design policies and procedures benefit by knowing why control measures are necessary. This session sets forth internal control concepts and explains the importance of strong internal control policies. It provides an understanding of the interrelated nature of all controls created by any organization. This event may be a rebroadcast of a live event and the instructor will be available to answer your questions during the event.

Join us for an insightful presentation featuring John Higgins, a renowned technology advisor to the CPA profession, who has assisted many firms with Microsoft 365 deployment. Discover how to leverage the Microsoft 365 suite of applications to unlock new efficiencies and opportunities within your business organization or CPA firm. Don't miss this chance to supercharge your operations with cutting-edge tools! Whether you are working in public practice or business and industry, this event will provide you with a return on investment many times greater than your investment to attend. This event may be a rebroadcast of a live event and the instructor will be available to answer your questions during the event.

Numbers and especially the digits within those numbers can conceal a lot of information.  Benford's Law and other digital analysis techniques can be the keys to unlocking that information.  This session will explain what Benford's Law is, how it works, and how it can be used to reveal bogus information and made-up data.  Accountants and auditors should understand how to use this valuable audit tool as well as other digital analysis techniques.  But, if you attend this session, you must promise not to reveal the secret behind these techniques to any fraud perpetrators.

You often can perform an audit in accordance with all of the standards, and still have a substandard audit IF you did not get out among the clients employees (let them know you are there and where you located), talk to as many people as you can regardless as to whether you may think that they may have any helpful information; constantly observe your surrounding where ever you are at (you never now what you might see) and lastly, listen to not only what people are saying to you but are also saying around you. This presentation is designed to illustrate the importance of making yourself available to your client’s employees, let them know that you are there and where you can be found. Talk with them because if there is a problem, somebody knows and they will often tell you all about it IF you just ask them.  Look at your surrounding everywhere you go.  What are you looking for?  I don’t know but I’ll know it when I see it. Lastly, listen to what they have to say.  Every word is important because they may say something that you had not asked about.  Remember, you never want to discover something and go to an individual who you determined knew about it and ask, why didn’t you tell me about this and their response was, you never asked me!

For the ambitious female finance professional, working hard and going above and beyond are necessary for success. Sadly, taking time to care for themselves can be seen as counter-productive to meeting their career goals. Over ninety percent of women executives are feeling significantly higher levels of stress that they attribute to increased responsibilities and priorities outside the workplace compared to life before the pandemic. Burnout is a syndrome resulting from chronic workplace stress that causes exhaustion, negativity toward one's job and reduced professional efficacy. It has become so pervasive that it's now recognized as an occupational phenomenon by the World Health Organization. To reignite your enthusiasm at work, you don't necessarily need to find a new job or time for a spa day or bubble bath. You need concrete strategies to invest in your mental health without compromising your ability to rise to the next level in your career. This event may be a rebroadcast of a live event and the instructor will be available to answer your questions during the event.

Accounting and finance managers and executives must demonstrate sound technical and analytical necessary for personal growth and organizational success. This course will provide insights into the most critical technical and analytical skills needed by CFOs and Controllers - or those that want to be!

Transforming your practice or business to a digital model is a journey, not a destination. There are some digital initiatives that require a great deal of time and money to deploy. There are also many "low hanging fruit" initiatives that are relatively easy and inexpensive to deploy. E-signature software is a perfect example of the latter. John Higgins, a nationally recognized leader in accounting technology, will guide you through the process of evaluating, selecting and implementing e-signature software to streamline a solution, and secure your document signing processes. You will be surprised to discover how easy it is to take your engagement letter and contract signing workflow digital. This event may be a rebroadcast of a live event and the instructor will be available to answer your questions during the event.

This session will address the complex rules of retirement distributions, review key provisions of the SECURE Act 2.0, and provide practical strategies of maximizing tax benefits for your client. **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.

This course explores the complex rules of installment sales, with a focus on their tax treatment and strategies to maximize the benefits. This event may be a rebroadcast of a live event and the instructor will be available to answer your questions during the event.

Balancing the demands of a career and family life is a challenge faced by many working parents. The pressure to excel at work while being fully present at home can leave little room for self-care, often leading to burnout and mental fatigue. This course is designed to address these challenges head-on by providing actionable strategies to prioritize your mental health and overall well-being. The course emphasizes practical, easy-to-implement techniques tailored for busy working parents. From setting boundaries to prioritizing sleep and physical activity, you'll learn how to create sustainable habits that enhance your well-being. You'll also explore how to recognize the signs that additional support -whether from friends, family, therapy, or other resources- is necessary, and how to seek help without guilt or hesitation. Ultimately, this course will help you regain a sense of balance and control in your life by equipping you with tools to manage stress, build resilience, and rediscover joy in both your professional and personal roles. This event may be a rebroadcast of a live event and the instructor will be available to answer your questions during the event.

The business structure a client chooses influences virtually every tax and financial issue associated with the business, including the business's day-to-day operations, its tax liability, how much of the owners' personal assets are at risk, and much more. For this and many other reasons, it is critical that a client choose a business structure that gives the right balance of legal protections and tax benefits. From a tax perspective, in terms of selecting an entity to do business in, the universe shifted with the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act enacted at the end of 2017. The tax rate for C corporations was lowered to 21% and the 199A deduction offered pass-through entities the chance to significantly lower the rate at which they are taxed. But how do all these options work and which option is best for which business? Those questions are at the heart of this webinar. In this program, we discuss whether there is a "best entity" for our clients. Tax practitioners know that re-examining choice of entity determination is at the top of the agenda for client meetings because clients continue to want reassurance that they have the most tax-efficient entity structure. This program will equip you with the knowledge and insights you need to lead those discussions.

Budgets are the vehicle for allocating resources, measuring activities, and identifying needed changes and improvements. An organization's strategy is the primary driver of costs. To be effective, the budget must be linked to strategy and long-term plans. Numerous organizations have achieved a series of short-term targets (budgets) but failed longer term, demonstrating the lack of this necessary linkage. Forecasting, a critical part of any successful budgeting process, can be flawed by technical errors, organizational structure, or emotional forces. The establishment of a system to collect, process, and analyze big data can provide significant insights into the budgeting and forecasting process. An efficient system of incorporating big data and analytics into normal activities will improve management's decision-making. This brief program offers specific actions to improve your forecasting and budgeting activities. In addition, more advanced techniques are identified for the participant's further review, which can be applied throughout an organization. Good budgets effectively allocate resources, provide information for decision-making and serve as an early warning system for unforeseen events. A poor budgeting process fosters a false sense of security, provides inappropriate or inaccurate data, and reinforces the status quo. Budgets are about the organization's story, not just the raw numbers!

It is virtually impossible to pick up the daily newspaper and not find an article on some type of fraudulent event. In the wake of the “Era of Fraud, Waste and Excess,” one might suspect that potential fraudsters would think twice before committing illegal acts. However, just the opposite seems to be the case.  Is there really more fraud or is there simply more fraud awareness?  The harsh reality is that it is a little bit of each.  Not only has fraud worldwide reached a level of over $7.0 billion in lost  revenue but savvy C-level executives now realize that it could happen to their companies—very easily. When you put these facts together, it adds up to a completely new era of vigilance.