CPE Catalog & Events

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. This class will review S corporation tax law by looking at case studies addressing issues and problems at both the S corporation and shareholder level. Each attendee will receive the most comprehensive reference manual with numerous practice aids and real-world examples and case studies.

Microsoft 365/Office 365 continues to grow and evolve, yet most utilize only a fraction of the tools available in their subscription. For example, powerful resources such as SharePoint Online and audio and video conferencing can change how your organization communicates and collaborates. In contrast, more personal apps such as Teams, Planner, Flow, and Sway allow individuals to work more efficiently and effectively in virtually all facets of their jobs. Further, security enhancements to Office 365 mean that your organization can take advantage of all these features in a highly secure environment.  Isn’t it time you learned how to move beyond the traditional Microsoft 365/Office 365 applications such as Excel, Word, and Outlook and unleash all your subscription offers? Join us in this fast-paced and highly interactive seminar where you will learn what you need to know to succeed with Microsoft 365/Office 365.

Each year brings its own set of tax planning challenges, and this year is no exception. This course aims to arm tax planners with planning strategies and ideas that all clients, but in particular, wealthy clients, middle-income clients, and closely held business owners need to consider right now to take advantage of present opportunities and plan for future tax advantages. Learn strategies that can really have an impact on client lives, while also bringing value to you and your firm. This material is continuously updated for recent legislation impacting individual taxpayers.

Whether you are responsible for managing 1 employee or 20, your leadership can make or break your team. Learn practical leadership strategies that you can implement when you return to your office. In today’s competitive market, it’s more imperative than ever that as leaders we are inspiring and motivating our teams to success.  

In this course, participants will learn about the five principals of COSO's Fraud Risk Management Guide and the linkages each principal has to the use of forensic data analytics to measurably demonstrate effectiveness and ROI.  We will also explore key elements to a successful program that is sustainable as well as pitfalls to avoid. Finally, we will cover several case studies that demonstrate the key concepts discussed. 

The current environment could be having an enormous impact on accounting and financial reporting for all entities, including nonprofits. This course will provide insights into the most critical disclosures related to liquidity, accounting uncertainty, and going concern for nonprofits.

Many organizations have a process documented for their employment life cycle but do not look at it wholistically. Having a longer view of the employee life cycle can provide more value to your company that you might think. Join us for an interactive discussion around the entire life cycle of employees with best practices discussed on continuous improvement for your organization. This session will provide an overview of each of the steps in the timeline from multiple perspectives, to provide keen insights on actionable ideas to take back to your workplace and implement today.

If sales increase, so should profits.  Yet, the opposite result often leaves executive’s scratching their heads.  When organizations work with inferior cost information, they make mistakes in four specific situations.  Bad information causes sellers to overprice easy, high-volume work and under-price difficult, low-volume work.  This session discusses how to use activity-based costing to build accurate costing models that consider far more than just the labor and materials necessary to provide goods and services. 

In this innovative course, participants will learn to combine the power of artificial intelligence with the functionality of Microsoft Excel. You will learn how to leverage ChatGPT, OpenAI's powerful language model, to improve your Excel skills and decrease the time it takes to build spreadsheets. The course will include a quick introduction to ChatGPT but the majority of the time will be spent using ChatGPT to create an Excel spreadsheet. 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 enlightening presentation where we delve into the pivotal technology trends reshaping the accounting profession. This course covers an array of topics including cloud computing, big data, data analytics, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Machine Learning (ML), Artificial Intelligence (AI), cryptocurrency, blockchain technology, and the metaverse. We will also cover provide an update on the current market for cloud based accounting / ERP and personal productivity software. Designed for forward-thinking professionals, this session offers insights into how these technologies impact your business, your firm, your clients and most importantly, your career. Stay ahead in your field by understanding these emerging technologies and their practical applications in business. This event may be a rebroadcast of a live event and the instructor will be available to answer your questions during the event.

Congress was EXTREMELY busy. There are over 50 tax-related provisions within SECURE 2.0 which an advisor needs to be able to master.  This course will provide the participants with everything that they need to know about SECURE 2.0 so that they will be able to better serve their clients’ retirement planning needs. **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 it to kori.herrera@acpen.com.

In this comprehensive course, practitioners gain a deep understanding of strategic planning considerations and potential hurdles encountered when clients face difficult circumstances. Delving into an array of scenarios often classified as "challenging," the course offers tax insights. From divorce and personal bankruptcy to intricate personal relationship matters, participants will equip themselves to adeptly guide clients through these challenging scenarios by understanding the tax implications. **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.

Mastering two leadership skills will decrease your stress, and give you room to enjoy your career. Delegating and listening are key essential skills to hone to elevate your career. You were born with two ears and one mouth. And yet, good listeners aren't born. World-class listeners deliberately practice this skill, even when their audience is challenging. This is a skill which can be learned. Participants will gain awareness into their blind spots to listening, strategies to regain focus, how to stop interrupting, and demonstrate to their audience they are listening. How often have you said, "It would just be easier if I did this myself?" or "Nobody can do this task as well as I can, so I'll just do it myself." If this sounds like you, then it's time to start working on your delegation skills. Delegation is not only important as a means to save you time, but it is also about developing the next generation of leaders. This event may be a rebroadcast of a live event and the instructor will be available to answer your questions during the event.

Overview: Understanding your company's financial health requires more than just traditional metrics. This webinar is designed to reveal deeper insights through advanced, underutilized financial ratios. In this session, accounting and finance professionals will explore metrics such as operating leverage, free cash flow yield, and margin of safety-tools that go beyond standard ratios to deliver nuanced perspectives on profitability, risk exposure, and operational efficiency. This event may be a rebroadcast of a live event and the instructor will be available to answer your questions during the event.

Literally thousands of individual taxpayers may have increased deductions or exclusions from gross income as a result of the Disaster Relief Act of 2024. Casualty provisions of the Act are retroactive to December 19, 2019 through early 2025. Both low and high income taxpayers may benefit from the Act through exclusions of payments received as compensation for wildfire damages - retroactive to 2014! This course will review the provisions of this new act. *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

Financial Acumen for the HR Professional is a part of the series "The HR Professional's Guide to Evolving Business Strategy, Finance and Development." This course identifies how HR Professionals can increase their financial understanding to participate more effectively with management as well as understand the financial results and implications for the business.

This course focuses on the main elements of financial education and will help accounting and finance professionals guide their clients, and their clients' children, through a personalized teaching roadmap. Clients with wealth face questions about how to teach their children about money to raise financially capable children. Often, clients' first contact is with their accounting and financial professionals, so it is important to be able to provide a framework to help teach clients how to prepare their children for life with privilege. This course is designed for all practitioners who want to help their clients navigate the process of teaching the next generation about personal finances. Because every family and child are different, it is critical to develop a specific plan for each client, and likely each child and grandchild. By working with their clients' descendants, accounting and finance professionals not only build rapport and trust but also get to know the children and grandchildren, building firm value and long-term connection. With new and updated information and tactics, professionals can learn best practices to engage clients and their children.

When real property is sold for a gain, we always try to find ways to defer recognizing income so that it won't be necessary to send a check to Uncle Sam. There is a provision within the Internal Revenue Code that allows the taxpayer to defer recognition of immediate taxable gain in the year of sale known as a "like-kind exchange." Knowing how and when to utilize this provision makes the Accounting and Finance Professionals very valuable to either their client or the entity they work for. We will also discuss recent proposals that could impact the future of this provision.

All organizations are looking for ways to gain an advantage over the competition. This practical and interactive session will present a toolkit of ideas to help CFOs, controllers and finance professionals better position their organizations for the future. We know change is occurring at an exponential rate, and that has proven to be the case in all areas of finance, management, and leadership over the past year. The course deals with these new issues and will continue to be updated as necessary throughout the year. Become the "financial hero" of your organization and make a positive impact on the bottom-line.

As financial and tax professionals well know, information overload is a constant struggle we face because things change quickly, and the sheer number of changes being made on a daily basis is enormous. Of great importance to small and medium tax and advisory firms is differentiating between changes that are relevant to our practice and our clients and changes that are new but totally irrelevant. Distinguishing between the two is difficult and time-consuming. Mike Tucker and a team of experts are pleased to present a weekly series designed to eliminate the clutter and get you what you need to stay up-to-date and perform for your clients. Mike and his co-presenters will dispense news on current events impacting taxes, finance, and industry. The subject matter will differ each week and intermittently include topics such as Social Security and Medicare. The panelists will discuss personal and corporate tax matters as well as other late-breaking news related to practitioners' personal finances and those of their clients. Every financial professional will benefit from this series. This is a cost-effective way for accountants to fulfill their compulsory continuing education because this weekly series will include almost 40 one-hour presentations. Sign up today - your clients and your bottom line will thank you.