CPE Catalog & Events

This course will review the fundamentals of fiduciary accounting and provide a reporting guide for determining whether receipts and expenditures are assigned to income or principal/corpus. Critical issues, rules, and special opportunities when preparing your clients' Form 1041 U.S. Income Tax Return for Estates and Trusts will be examined, including what is considered taxable income and allowable deductions. Planning and potential pitfalls will also be explored.  This course only qualifies for 2 IRS credits. *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

Examine significant real estate tax issues and concepts, including planning and compliance topics emphasizing tax elimination or deferral. Discuss the qualified business income deduction (Sec. 199A) as it relates to real estate investments; limited discussion of opportunity zones (Sec. 1400Z-2) relating to real estate; 1031 exchanges; home sale exclusion (IRC Sec. 121); passive activities loss rules; estate planning and gifting with real estate; and California property tax issues, updated for passage of Proposition 19 affecting parent-child transfers and transfer of assessments to a new principal residence.

Though many clients see Social Security as a government benefit, it is a covered worker's investment asset to be managed like any other asset. Examine issues like how Social Security benefits are calculated, identifying benefit-claiming strategies, and what spouses can do now to maximize benefits at retirement. You'll learn how Social Security works and explore common planning situations?including workers with and without spouses, sandwich-generation families with dependent parents and minor children, and surviving and/or divorced spouses?and techniques to maximize your clients' benefits.

This course provides a concise overview of how to utilize ChatGPT for advanced financial analysis in accounting. The session reveals how to combine sophisticated evaluation and interpretation of financial data with the cutting-edge AI capabilities of ChatGPT. Aimed at enhancing the understanding of an entity's performance, predicting future financial health, and aiding in informed business decision-making, this course goes beyond basic financial statement analysis to include a wide array of techniques and tools. This event may be a rebroadcast of a live event and the instructor will be available to answer your questions during the event.

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.

You have more to do than time to do it. When you finally find the time, distractions steal it away again. As a leader with multiple layers of demands on your time, how can you possibly get it all done? In this course, I will help you learn practical productivity strategies so you can tame your to do list and multiply your time. It’s just wrong for a to-do list to rule your life. Learn how to take back your time…and your life.

What exactly is cryptocurrency and its cousin named blockchain? Are they here to stay? This session will provide a big picture examination of the technologies and currencies by explaining how we got here. We discuss the systems and technical aspects of cryptocurrencies and blockchain. What is the broad view of the technologies that currently do, and will continue to, impact our workplace and lives?

The AICPA issued the new Quality Management Standards as a part of its overall quality improvement initiative.  This course will highlight the foundational principles within the new approach that everyone in the CPA firm should know. 

If there is a potential error, the IRS will assess a tax and add a hefty penalty, without even knowing the facts. As a tax professional, you will be exposed to the IRS and their methods of penalizing taxpayers for the smallest of violations. This presentation will focus on the rules and regulations that create the penalty, and the reasons that exist that the IRS will consider to remove those penalties. This event may be a rebroadcast of a live event and the instructor will be available to answer your questions during the event.

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.

Organizations are challenged with identifying, evaluating, and responding to a wide variety of risks. This course will discuss tips and best practices for enterprise-wide risk management for accounting and finance professionals. This event may be a rebroadcast of a live event and the instructor will be available to answer your questions during the event.

Most organizations have many of the basic controls required to operate in place. However, a notable percentage of these companies do not have important measures that can help enhance security, productivity, and the quality of information available for decision making. In this session, we work to identify areas where important internal control measures are needed. We spend time explaining why these controls should be created, and show in detail some specific controls that would be beneficial if utilized. Those wishing to strengthen an internal control system should strongly consider attending this session. This event may be a rebroadcast of a live event and the instructor will be available to answer your questions during the event.

What would you do if you only had one workday to complete a financial statement audit? How would you optimize just a handful of hours? What would you test? More importantly, what would you minimize or eliminate? Although one day is unrealistically short, it illustrates how risk-based auditing can help auditors optimize professional effort. This course emphasizes the importance of risk assessment for enhancing both the effectiveness and efficiency of audit procedures.

Each event is a rebroadcast of the live Town Hall webcast from the previous week. The AICPA Town Hall Series delivers: Timely & Critical Information Interpretation & Analysis Firm and Business Strategies Practitioner Capabilities **Free for AICPA members Not an AICPA or CIMA member? Become one today.

Appreciation isn’t a soft skill—it’s a strategic advantage. In today's competitive professional landscape, your ability to express appreciation effectively can be the difference between retaining top talent, building strong client relationships, and creating a thriving team culture—or not. This course introduces a powerful, research-backed framework for understanding how appreciation works—and how to use it to fuel performance, loyalty, and engagement across your firm, practice, or department. Based on the work of Dr. Gary Chapman and Dr. Paul White, you’ll explore the four core "languages of appreciation" and learn how to recognize and use them in a way that resonates with clients, colleagues, and team members. The truth is, everyone wants to feel valued—but not everyone receives appreciation the same way. In this hands-on session, you’ll discover your own appreciation style, learn to spot others’, and develop practical tools to build a more energized, connected, and committed workplace.  

This Masterclass is a one-hour training exclusively for CPAs and accountants. Rely less on tax season and use your expertise to help business owners have a better future! Designed for CPAs, but also applicable to enrolled agents and accountants, this webinar covers the steps necessary to effectively transform a tax or accounting practice into an advisory service. We explore what it means to be a CFO/advisor to small-to-medium sizes businesses and what qualifications are necessary to offer such a service. We will also cover how to find and convert leads and how to price and package services, including combining advisory services with the firm's current offerings. This event may be a rebroadcast of a live event and the instructor will be available to answer your questions during the event.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the hottest topic in technology circles today. And for good reason! AI can help all business professionals – including HR professionals – work more efficiently and effectively. AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot are proving themselves daily as valuable assets. These tools can help you automate research, draft documents, summarize emails, analyze Excel data, and even create PowerPoint presentations for you. If you haven't yet explored what today's AI tools can do, you'll want to participate in this session to become more productive and efficient with this very practical technology.

As the complexity of GAAP drives preparers of financial statements to seek GAAP alternatives, many are finding tax-basis financial statements can meet their needs. This 2-hour program covers many of the matters to be considered when choosing the tax-basis for financial statement presentation.

The course will start with the Accounting Standard Updates effective in 2024 for public entities, private entities, and nonprofits. We will also review year 2 implications of the leases standard including modification accounting. We will then switch our attention to the items coming down the pike, including a look at the projects identified by the FASB's Invitation to Comment: Agenda Consultation. This event may be a rebroadcast of a live event and the instructor will be available to answer your questions during the event.

Recent research shows that emotional intelligence is twice as important as IQ in the development of business leaders. But what's the difference between emotional intelligence (EI) and manipulation? This course is designed to help you understand how EI is linked to leadership success. You'll learn how to assess your own emotional intelligence and how to identify the negative consequences of unmanaged emotions. You'll learn techniques that will improve your self-awareness, self-control, and self-motivation and you'll create a plan that increases your EI so that you can achieve optimal results in your relationships with others.