CPE Catalog & Events

Tax planning is more than an estimated tax calculation, it's a process.  Where are we now and what can we change?  This timely program will highlight significant 2022-23 tax developments and discuss key tax planning ideas for your clients as you prepare for the upcoming tax season. Don’t wait until late December to start planning for your clients! **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 will provide an overview of 6 key areas of automation that accounting firms can leverage to effectively increase their lead generation and client retention efforts while reducing the burden on their time and budget. These areas include: 1. Social media 2. Content development. 3. Email marketing. 4. Text (SMS) marketing. 5. Chatbots and other interactive AI tools. 6. Drip marketing campaigns. Attendees will receive a practical guide to the technologies and tactics needed to improve marketing efforts with efficiency and ease! This event may be a rebroadcast of a live event and the instructor will be available to answer your questions during the event.

With approximately 500 functions now available in Excel, some newer and more powerful tools are easy to overlook. But, if you do that, your productivity will suffer. In this session, you will learn how to take advantage of many of Excel’s more advanced features – some new and some legacy – to elevate your productivity to higher levels. In this session, you will learn about many of Excel’s newer tools, including XLOOKUP, SUMIFS, SWITCH, and STOCKHISTORY. Also included in this session are discussions of advanced financial functions, such as IPMT and PPMT, and how to retrieve summarized data easily using GETPIVOTDATA and CUBEVALUE. Additionally, you will learn how to make sophisticated calculations easier with Dynamic Array formulas, harness the AGGREGATE function's power, and create more accurate forecasts with Excel’s FORECAST.ETS function. No matter your experience working with Excel, participating in this course will help you work more efficiently and effectively in Excel.

This CPE course provides an examination of the recent reports from a selection of Single Audit results. The instructor will go over the most common deficiencies found in Yellow Book and Single Audits and common peer review findings and OIG investigations. This course will also provide examples of common controls, best practices, and mitigation techniques. This event may be a rebroadcast of a live event and the instructor will be available to answer your questions during the event.

Managerial accounting provides economic and financial information for managers and other internal users. Managerial and Financial Accounting have similarities and differences. Each field of accounting deals with the economic events of a business. Both managerial and financial accounting require that a company’s economic events be quantified and communicated to interested parties. This another course in our series on the controller’s role. The controller’s role encompasses many traditional functions. Within this segment of our controllership series, we discuss the area of managerial accounting and the basic concepts that surround this discipline as it primarily relates to cost accounting issues.  

Your home is now the digital center of your world, and even if you go to an office every day, you have more options to help you manage everything from shopping lists to email accounts. Unfortunately, many new devices your family connects to your WiFi can create security risks and may make remote work and school less secure. For example, tracking devices and services can help parents monitor children and seniors, but outsiders can use the same tools to stalk their loved ones digitally. This session will help you learn about devices, services, and app suites for families, share files, organize photos, manage passwords, and keep your home secure. Attend this breakout and learn about innovative new tools to help you stay safe and make the most of your time away from the office.

A project doesn't just happen, it takes a dedicated person to help a team create something from nothing. The best project managers incorporate the art of people management and science of execution to guide an initiative from an idea to reality. Not everyone can hire a project manager, so the great news is these skills and techniques can be learned. This class will show how a project manager breaks down a concept and applies techniques needed to effectively lead a team through the visioning, scoping, testing and rolling out of an initiative. This event may be a rebroadcast of a live event and the instructor will be available to answer your questions during the event.

Navigating the challenges of estate and gift taxation can be overwhelming for practitioners, especially those lacking extensive experience in this field. In this comprehensive course, participants will undergo a practical exploration through the preparation of the Federal Forms 706 and 709 - line by line. Through hands-on instruction, attendees will gain invaluable insights into the complexities of tax compliance, equipping them with the skills and confidence needed to seamlessly integrate estate and gift tax preparation into their practice. With a focus on practical application, this course offers participants a unique opportunity to master the preparation of crucial tax returns, enhancing their professional expertise and strengthening client service offerings. From a detailed overview of the Federal Forms 706 and 709 to insights on complying with "Portability" and navigating postmortem estate planning issues, attendees will emerge with a newfound proficiency in estate and gift tax preparation, ready to excel in their practice. **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.

Nonprofit entities have a high degree of public accountability. This course will examine the most common fraud schemes and provide multiple examples of how to prevent or detect these schemes. Nonprofit entities have a high degree of public accountability. This course will examine the most common fraud schemes and provide multiple examples of how to prevent or detect these schemes. This event may be a rebroadcast of a live event and the instructor will be available to answer your questions during the event.

The QuickBooks platform is robust with features and capabilities that many users are unaware of or do not know how to utilize effectively. This course helps you get more out of QuickBooks Desktop and QuickBooks Online and resolve the issues even experienced QuickBooks users struggle with, such as locking down prior periods. This program starts fast with a chapter covering the top issues accountants face with QuickBooks. Then, the day continues with practical guidance and solutions designed to help accountants get the most out of QuickBooks for themselves or their clients. You will learn about issues like setting up a new company, configuring and customizing QuickBooks preferences, and enabling system security and password protection features. Also, you will learn how to lock down transactions in prior periods, use the audit trail, customize reports, export reports to Excel, and extend QuickBooks' usefulness with tools such as the Fixed Asset Manager and Loan Manager.

This course is designed for accountants in public practice and industry who focus on nonprofit and governmental entities. We will cover the basics needed to understand what makes nonprofit and governmental accounting & auditing unique. The course starts with the key financial reporting differences for governmental and nonprofit entities and then switches focus to review the fundamentals of Yellow Book and Uniform Guidance audits. This foundational course is perfect for those getting started in the nonprofit and governmental arena and those looking for a refresher. This event may be a rebroadcast of a live event and the instructor will be available to answer your questions during the event.

One of the most favored employee benefit plans, the 401(k) plan, provides unique challenges for auditors. Also, as many 401(k) plan administrators opt for ERISA Section 103(a)(3)(C) audits, audits of 401(k) plans will be significantly impacted by the now-effective SAS 136, the AICPA's new employee benefit plan auditing standard. Through this course, auditors will obtain an understanding of the rules and regulations unique to employee benefit plans and obtain practical guidance on applying them. Auditors will enhance their knowledge of the performance and reporting requirements of SAS 136 through real-world examples, best practices, and efficient audit techniques that can be utilized in various audit engagements. Make sure your audits don't trigger a DOL inspection by conforming to all applicable rules and regulations.

This course will identify the factors in the choice of entity decision while considering the impact of various recent tax act provisions. This event may be a rebroadcast of a live event and the instructor will be available to answer your questions during the event.

This is a continuing part of our series on forensic accounting. Within this segment we discuss the concepts that are part of computer forensics known as cryptology. The term cryptography is from Ancient Greek and means “hidden secret”. It is the practice and study of techniques for secure communications in the presence of adversarial behavior. Cryptography is about constructing and analyzing protocols that prevent third parties or the public from reading private messages. Cryptography starts with secrets. Various aspects in information security such as data confidentiality, data integrity, authentication and non-repudiation (where a statement’s author cannot successfully dispute its authorship) are central to modern cryptography.

Pro forma statements are used by businesses to make decisions on planning and control, as well as for external reporting to owners, investors, and creditors. For example, giving financial estimates for a given period in a standardized manner is known as “presenting pro forma,” a Latin phrase that means “as a matter of form.” Pro forma statements can be helpful tools for business owners, investors, creditors, or decision-makers to analyze various scenarios of future events based on certain financial assumptions. It might aid in making predictions performance of the company. A pro forma income statement displays a firm’s anticipated sales and revenue. It also highlights anticipated fixed or variable operational expenses and, in the end, displays the potential profits and retained earnings for a future financial quarter. There are various types of pro-forma statements and methods to develop them. The responsibilities/competencies of the Financial Controller position (FC) has changed in recent years. However, the creation of pro forma financial statements is still a core part of their responsibility.  

The objective of corrective action is to change conduct through teaching.  Corrective action may be sequential, out of order, repetitive, or not appropriate to take at all.  The action selected should reflect the type, frequency, and severity of the misconduct.  Changing conduct through teaching requires effective employee relations skills. This course provides practical knowledge and scripts for handling a wide array of sensitive misconduct situations with good judgment, such that personal and employer liability is avoided.

HR Professionals are business leaders who, regardless of their level of experience, are responsible for maintaining a high level of interpersonal proficiency in their job function. The willingness to gain a genuine understanding and respect for diversity and the incorporation of a safe and inclusive environment of employees in the workplace, is a strong measure of the HR Professionals’ efficacy in this area. This training is geared towards improving and/ or elevating the HR Professionals’ knowledge of cultural competence in the workplace and what it means to truly adopt a culture of diversity and inclusivity. When HR professionals take responsibility for teaching others about the differences and benefits that multiple cultures and diverse backgrounds bring to the organization, research shows that companies are more likely to win top talent and yield improvement in customer orientation, employee satisfaction and decision making, as well as a cycle of increasing returns.

Power Query and Power BI offer great opportunities for accessing your data and making it more useful in reporting scenarios. Learn how to benefit from these tools in this session.

The most recent recession and its fallout, weather (look at 2017), process and product failures, and unethical behavior have again highlighted failures by numerous organizations in identifying and managing risk. The size and reputation of organizations proved not to be the key to success. Again, we saw that failures can result in areas/industries thought to be "under control" through their policies, practices and/or regulations. A core activity of financial management is to effectively protect the assets of their organizations, without significantly reducing new ideas and growth. This brief program provides insights and approaches to identify risk and manage the above noted trade-off. The course is designed for financial managers looking to quickly build upon their existing knowledge and experience, as well as to help to start the less experienced individual. It offers ideas that can be used immediately, as well as longer term approaches. Updated to include new information particularly in the areas of disaster planning, business continuity, and ethics, as well as a sample group exercise to test your current risk management systems.

Enter the complex world of elder planning with this comprehensive course tailored for financial professionals. Gain invaluable insights into estate and financial strategies designed specifically for older clients, equipping you with the knowledge and skills to address their unique needs and challenges. Throughout the course, participants will explore a wide range of topics, from understanding the complexities of Medicare and various life insurance types to navigating Social Security considerations and exploring Medicaid planning details. With a focus on practical application, attendees will learn to customize estate planning strategies, explore housing and care alternatives, and address gifting complexities relevant to older clients. By the end of the program, you'll develop expertise in executing specialized planning requirements for mature clients, ensuring you're well-prepared to provide informed counsel and support in this important aspect of financial practice. Join us and enhance your knowledge in estate and financial planning for the older client today.