Professional Development and Event Catalog

In the modern corporate landscape, the challenge for lean HR departments isn't just managing administrative tasks—it's about curating a meaningful and enriching employee journey. Small HR teams are uniquely poised to offer a level of personalization and touch that larger departments might struggle to replicate. These compact teams have the potential to craft individualized experiences, ensuring that each step of an employee's journey, from onboarding to advancement, resonates deeply and positively. Yet, knowing the potential and harnessing it are two distinct tasks. This session provides attendees with a deep dive into three transformative engagement strategies tailored for lean HR environments. By placing the employee journey at the heart of these strategies, HR professionals can ensure every interaction, every milestone, and every touchpoint is optimized for engagement, satisfaction, and growth. Discover methods that don't just streamline processes, but elevate the entire employee experience, creating a lasting impact on both individual careers and the organization's culture.

Building on Part 1, this course will review the application of sampling in financial statement audits with a focus on sampling for tests of controls. We'll also review the requirements for sampling in Single Audits with a focus on tests of controls and tests of compliance. 

This program addresses the critical issues and special opportunities facing S-corporations, with a focus on reporting shareholder basis and distributions.  **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.

Stop struggling with PDFs! Adobe Acrobat and other PDF tools provide access to features that make working with PDF files a breeze. In this course, you will learn how to use tools and features such as PDF forms, redaction, converting PDFs to Word and Excel files, and electronic signatures. You will also learn how to create and apply tick marks, build indices, catalogs, and portfolios, and secure PDF documents to their fullest. The popularity and usefulness of PDFs increase daily, but most PDF users have not learned how to manipulate PDF documents effectively. Accordingly, they struggle and strain with these standard files. You do not need to let this be the case. Join us in this very timely session where you will learn the top features necessary to optimize your work with PDF documents.

To make more money in less time, all accountants need to learn to market themselves effectively to their clients or their firm. For better or worse, promotions and more money go to those who are the best marketers, rather than the most competent accountants.  In this fascinating and fun workshop, participants will learn seven key ways to get more clients and/or promotions through the art of marketing.

This program provides an update to the latest tax developments, rules and regulations impacting business taxpayers, including a review and integration any new tax legislation.  **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.

Strategic Planning for SMEs

The Not-for-Profit Advisory Committee (NAC) has been meeting with FASB to discuss the impact of various standards on the nonprofit community. In this course, we will explore the work of the NAC and the impact they've had. We then transition to the Accounting Standards Updates (ASUs) issued by the FASB that are impacting nonprofit entities, including a review of year 2 issues with respect to the leases standard including modification accounting. We will close with a look at common deficiencies found in nonprofit financials.

New features in Excel provide tremendous opportunities to improve Excel-based operational and financial reports. For example, Data Models, Power Query, Data Analysis Expressions, Power Pivot, and many others can help you create more powerful summaries and schedules in less time than ever. Bundle these tools with some of Excel’s “legacy” features, and you have significant new opportunities to improve your Excel-based reporting environments. In this fast-paced seminar, you will learn about the importance of using Power Query to link data into Excel data models and how you can manage these data models to facilitate better and more efficient reporting. Additionally, you will learn how to incorporate Key Performance Indicators, Slicers, and Timelines into your reports to enhance the analytics and understandability of the data. Further, you will learn best practices to quickly and easily format your spreadsheets to give them a polished and professional appearance. This course should be at the top of your professional development list if you use Excel for any reporting process.

This is a two-part series that discuss new trends and concepts the financial controller should begin to execute in order to truly become a valued member of the senior leadership team. The rapid pace of the evolving technological landscape has promoted changes in how accountants and financial professionals focus attention on strategy and modernize their roles to leverage digital technology. There is increased demand for enhancing flexibility into finance cycles and initiating real-time reporting and insights. These are the core attributes that will assist in transforming the work that controllership function performs. Is the financial controllership prepared to meet future business demands? The IMA® (Institute of Management Accountants) and Deloitte’s Center for Controllership aimed to better understand the current state of controllership and expectations of future demands for controllers and accounting professionals. They conducted a survey in late 2022 and identified several trends. The survey takes a look at how prepared controllership is to meet future business demands. It also highlights some insights for leaders to consider that may increase their preparedness. It also identified areas of additional insight and questions to answer on the controllership transformation journey. In this segment, we will go through numerous concepts in detail.  

Professionals often require the ability to utilize professional skepticism, due care and independence when executing their corporate role. Corporate politics can be a combating factor when attempting to comply with those requirements. Leaders must be vigilant about nipping “political” problems in the bud, before they spiral out of control and/or impede those whose job it is to see through political agendas.   Dealing with corporate politics can be one of the most frustrating and confusing experiences for any professional. Unfortunately, selfishness, greed, bickering, lust for power, etc. can creep into your company's culture and impede productivity.   Learning to understand and deal with corporate politics is a prerequisite to being able to maintain an effective career. This course discusses the basics of corporate politics and provides you with alternatives to managing and handling dilemmas that you may face.   This course focuses on the core concepts that impact corporate politics and discusses methods for better understanding when, how, and why the issues occur. This enables professionals to better execute their professional skepticism, due care and independence responsibilities.

This course examines actual fraud circumstances through the lens of potential prevention. We will examine how selected frauds were accomplished and consider what internal controls may have prevented fraudsters’ ability to accomplish their nefarious acts.

In the course of legal actions, payments may be made pursuant to a final disposition of a court case or a mutually agreed-upon settlement.  This course will cover the tax implications for payments made for personal injury, emotional distress, lost wages, punitive awards, pre- and post-judgement interest, contract claims, among other damages. **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.  

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.

Blockchain technology offers the promise of digital truth. It provides a transparent, permanent, immutable, and high-speed record-keeping system when appropriately implemented. The possibilities are endless, from managing the logistics of supply chain networks to facilitating international commerce. The adoption of this technology is growing, with millions of new users every year. Organizations adopt this technology every day to help improve their existing operations through its ledger capabilities or executing smart contracts. Cryptocurrency is one example of blockchain technology. Its growth and value have exploded to over $2 trillion in the last few years. This growth has helped to fuel widespread adoption amongst Wall Street and regular investors alike. While more popular than ever, few business professionals understand these technologies, their capabilities, risks, and potential impacts on business operations and processes, such as contract execution, recording and maintaining real estate ownership records, and supply chains. In fact, this incredible technology is a mystery for most accounting professionals. This course will provide a detailed and in-depth look at this technology, including a detailed overview of the underlying technology, the benefits, the risks, the major players, and many practical applications. By participating in this session, you will gain a deeper understanding of the inner workings of this technology and recommendations on getting started.  

One of the most significant challenges facing auditors is the prevalence of fraud that exists in today's business environment. All auditors should have a working knowledge of the requirements in professional literature regarding fraud. We will cover the issues that all auditors need to know about fraud and the people who commit fraud. This course will provide horror stories about frauds that have occurred and how they were detected. 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.

The Professional Ethics Executive Committee (PEEC) of the AICPA has been very busy issuing new and updating existing ethics rules. This course will provide an overview of recently issued and soon to be effective ethics rules that CPAs in both industry and public accounting need to know to be compliant.

This presentation highlights the latest legislative changes affecting depreciation and capitalization rules, including inflation increases and Section 179 and 168(k) deductions.  Planning and potential pitfalls will also be presented.  **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.

The presentation includes an in-depth discussion of the when the Forms 1065 and 1120S, Schedules K-2 and K-3 must be completed, as well as important developments for filing 2021 flow-through entity tax forms and other recent developments impacting both partnership and S corporation entities. This event may be a rebroadcast of a live event and the instructor will be available to answer your questions during the event.