Professional Development and Event Catalog

This course will provide a general understanding of the current and prospective reporting and disclosure requirements for employee benefit plans. Participants will be provided with an insight into the common errors and mistakes made by auditors and plan administrators. Results from the Department of Labor's ("DOL") audit quality study will be discussed and reviewed. This material will provide auditors and plan administrators with up-to-date information regarding defined contribution plans auditing, reporting and disclosure requirements.

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Each year, more states legalize cannabis (i.e., marijuana) for medical or recreational purposes. As legalization grows, so too does the cannabis industry. While some financial professionals have stayed away from this growing sector of the economy, others have embraced the opportunities the cannabis industry has to offer. The legalization of cannabis brings with it a complex regulatory landscape, which includes strict compliance with federal and state regulations. However, the complexity of this emerging market provides opportunities for accountants and other financial professionals. Behind the cannabis dispensaries are scores of related business sectors including food production, retail, farming, and chemical production, as well as facilities, design, and construction. Simply stated, the commercialization of marijuana offers financial professionals an opportunity to participate in an industry expected to reach $73 billion worldwide within six years.

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Arguably the most discussed topics to come out of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) are the taxation of tips and overtime. Practitioners need to understand these provisions now, as they are effective for 2025 tax returns. This program provides practitioners with the background currently available to advise clients regarding these two important tax developments. Both employers and employees need to understand these timely changes to taxation.

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S corporation taxation has a lot of pieces. There are helpful elections you can make that can potentially save your client money, but there are also rigid rules to adhere to. For example, if there is more than one class of stock, it can terminate the S corporation election. Learning how to successfully navigate these rules can make all the difference. In this course, we will discuss some of the more common specialty areas experienced by practitioners — late filing relief for S corporation elections, disproportionate distributions, and selling S corporation shares. While these items may not come up on every single Form 1120-S, you will be able to add more value to clients when they do.

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The employer-employee relationship strains both sides in uncertain times, and businesses need CPAs, controllers, and other advisors to provide understanding of the complex legal, tax, and health care issues associated with all aspects of employment. This course provides in-depth coverage of this critical area.

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What The Big Beautiful Bill (OBBBA) Means for You and Your Clients: Breaking Down Key Tax Provisions The “Big Beautiful Bill” is the most significant tax law package since the TCJA, and it’s now law. With dozens of TCJA provisions made permanent and plenty of new rules introduced, this session is packed with critical content for tax professionals. You’ll walk away understanding what’s changed, what’s new, and what to prepare for across individual, business, and estate taxation. Art Werner breaks down key topics like bonus depreciation, enhanced 199A deductions, Trump accounts, SALT cap changes, estate planning, charitable limits, 1099-K thresholds, and much more. He’ll also examine areas with future sunsets, business incentives, and international tax provisions that could impact clients at all income levels. *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

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Excel gives you multiple ways to solve the same problem - but which formula is the right one? This course teaches a decision-based approach to function selection, helping you confidently choose between similar and competing functions. Through real-world examples and side-by-side comparisons, you'll learn when IFS or SWITCH is cleaner than nested IFs, how SUMPRODUCT can help with complex summarizing data, how to use LET in place of defined names, and much more. Ideal for professionals who want to make smarter, faster formula choices that are easier to maintain and audit. This event may be a rebroadcast of a live event and the instructor will be available to answer your questions during the event.

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If you work with governments or not-for-profits, mastering the fundamentals of Yellow Book and single audits is essential. This beginner-friendly course breaks down the key requirements of the Yellow Book and the Uniform Guidance for Federal Awards into clear, manageable concepts. You'll learn the essentials of performing Yellow Book and single audits with confidence—building a strong foundation, boosting your understanding, and equipping you to conduct audits efficiently and effectively.

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We believe in fairness. When others do wrong, and their action hurts us - the natural reaction is to fight back and seek retribution. Simple human nature and we are all human. We want fairness and want to fight back, but this is one of the toughest ethical dilemmas we all face.  What should we do and what we do are not always the same. What if being nice, or specifically being a positive best version of yourself, makes you a more effective leader?   Ethical leadership is effective leadership.  That’s what Dr. Cohen, noted psychologist, transformational speaker, executive coach, and author of Be The Sun, Not The Salt, has been teaching organizations to do for years. Dr. Cohen’s work is based on scientific studies of human behavior broken down into simple, easily digestible pillars structured around the Heliotropic Effect.  In this webcast we will discuss Dr. Cohen’s path to this work, what the Heliotropic Effect is, and how Be The Sun, Not The Salt is the perfect reminder to Do More of That every day.

In today’s business world, there is a war for talent and organizations with the best talent will win. We clearly need to motivate talented personnel. Equity compensation plans are useful to retain, reward and recruit. The GAAP and tax accounting for equity compensation plans is not static and decisions that you make during plan set-up can have major consequences to your organization’s bottom line and your management team’s personal tax situations. We will review nuances and details that impact proper accounting. Whether you are the CFO or CEO who has not been happy with prior equity compensation plans or the accountant who performs the intricate analysis and detailed accounting for these plans - this session will help you understand the issues and get it right the first time.

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This seminar reviews situations in which a CPA or accounting professional may be in danger of being sued. We cover common law causes of action, such as negligence, and the relevant standards and case law defining what constitutes reasonable practitioner behavior. This course is ideal for lawyers, CPAs, EAs, tax preparers, accountants and insurance personnel. This event may be a rebroadcast of a live event and the instructor will be available to answer your questions during the event.

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Anytime someone says "I want," "I need," or "Will you," you are in a negotiation.  For decades, the negotiation techniques described in Getting to Yes by Fisher and Ury of the Harvard Negotiations Project were the world's standard negotiation methods.  These techniques involved collaborative methods for discovering how to make the "pie" bigger and then split it.  More recent research on human psychology has revealed new methods that will allow you to do even better.  Sometimes, you can't settle for getting half of what you want.  Sometimes you have to have it all.  This session explores negotiating's human side, to give you powerful people skills that will help you get more.

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When a purchaser buys an existing partner's partnership interest or the interest of a member of a limited liability corporation (LLC) taxed as a partnership, the amount paid becomes the basis for the purchaser's partnership interest (outside basis). If the partnership's assets have appreciated sufficiently, the difference between the new partner's inside and outside basis can be substantial. This disparity can deprive the new partner of depreciation deductions and inflate his or her share of the gain from subsequent property dispositions unless a Section 754 election is in effect. The Section 754 election can also apply when a partnership makes a distribution of property and the basis of the distributed property to the partnership and the basis the partner/distributee will take in the distributed property are not equal. In this case, a partnership can recover basis it would otherwise lose if the 754 election were not in effect.

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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.

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Artificial Intelligence ("AI") can do and does amazing things, but there are myriad ethical issues involved with AI. We will discuss the many ethical questions that AI raises and how to prevent them from having an adverse impact. We must be more diligent and aware of the ethical issues.  AI has severe ethical pitfalls that we should understand clearly. AI is here to stay and we must understand how to mitigate the ethical issues.     

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Every CPA must comply with a Code of Professional Conduct, which is a hallmark of the CPA designation. CPAs in public practice must overcome higher barriers, such as when attest service providers must also retain independence. This course will provide an overview of the core principles from which the CPA profession is built upon. This event may be a rebroadcast of a live event and the instructor will be available to answer your questions during the event.

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Two college graduates built impressive careers: One worked in sales, the other in technology and investing. Both of those people made decisions in the course of their business that led to government investigations. They had to hire attorneys, go through judicial processes, face charges, and plead guilty. Each of those people are on their way to prison. Learn from the lessons they offer. We interview both financial professionals, and they tell us more about how their decisions influenced the consequences that followed. This event may be a rebroadcast of a live event and the instructor will be available to answer your questions during the event.

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Audit Risk Assessment in Plain English, is a 2 hour webcast highlighting the AICPA’s clarified risk assessment standards, along with a new Statement on Auditing Standard (SAS 145) related to understanding the entity, the entity’s environment, the entity’s internal controls, and assessing the risks of material misstatement.  This session will attempt to simplify the requirements using common sense examples and language.

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This course provides a concise overview of how artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming financial strategies, tax compliance, and audit practices in the global retail industry. As retailers deploy AI to personalize customer experiences, automate inventory, and optimize pricing, accounting professionals must adapt to new challenges in data integrity, regulatory compliance, and financial reporting. Drawing on real-world case studies from retail giants and small businesses alike, this course explores how AI technologies intersect with accounting workflows and outlines strategies to maintain accuracy, trust, and control in an AI-driven marketplace. This event may be a rebroadcast of a live event and the instructor will be available to answer your questions during the event.

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This session will focus on the most common types of fraud in the procurement and contracting arena, with a focus on fraud in construction.  The session will examine fraud vulnerabilities in the four key phases of the procurement process: Presolicitation. Negotiation. Performance. Closeout and Claims.  Within each phase, “red flags” will be discussed.  These are the indicia of possible fraud that managers should be alert for.  Also, within each phase, the most common fraud schemes will be highlighted and discussed.  Finally, the session will describe the generally accepted safeguards or controls that should be established to prevent the various fraud schemes that can occur.  This part of the program will make extensive use of actual fraud case studies designed to demonstrate fraud risks and fraud detection strategies.