Professional Development and Event Catalog

This course provides a high-level overview and introduction into the world of the forensic accountant. Most accountants have an understanding of the concept of fraud and how it impacts companies, but many individuals do not have a full comprehension of the variance in the work performed by a forensic accountant versus a typical management accountant.   This course is meant for those individuals interested in understanding the variances in the job tasks and responsibilities of forensic accountants versus typical financial or management accountants. Forensic accountants or auditors take a unique focus on performing their work.  Typically, when a person with forensic experience is called in to examine financial records, it is due to suspicion of fraud, evaluation of assets, or even to track down fundamentally incorrect accounting – intentional or not. As fraud continues to raise its head in business processes, forensic accountants are discovering new and unique ways to identify, examine, and support their hypotheses and investigative techniques.  The work performed by a forensic specialist can be interesting and full of potential potholes if evidence isn’t examined according to proper protocols and standards.  

Does your firm have interest in expanding its’ services beyond traditional CPA services?  Do you have staff with the expertise to compete against non-CPA firms? Welcome to a course that will lead you through the maze of creating a successful Consulting Business Practice for your CPA firm. The course will help you understand: where consulting business opportunities exist, what are the firm’s professional responsibilities and most importantly how to recognize the needs of the client.

Welcome to a course that makes the process of M&A easy to understand and easy to implement within your organization or your clients' organization. The course will provide an intensive overview of the M&A process. Focus will be on practical techniques to guide you through the M&A jungle and avoid the traps that have befallen many organizations.

In today's dynamic economic landscape, staying ahead with effective fringe benefit planning is more critical than ever for both businesses and individual clients. With evolving tax laws and shifting market dynamics, understanding the intricacies of fringe benefit planning is essential to ensure financial well-being and compliance. This course offers a comprehensive overview of essential tools and techniques tailored for financial professionals, allowing them to navigate the complexities of fringe benefit planning with confidence and precision. By attending this course, practitioners will gain invaluable insights into various planning tools and techniques essential for meeting fringe benefit planning objectives. From mastering the subtleties of employee benefit planning, including ERISA reporting and disclosure requirements, to unraveling the complexities of IRC §132 fringe benefit options, attendees will enhance their expertise to deliver superior advisory services. The curriculum also delves into the practical aspects of cafeteria plans, flexible spending accounts, group term life insurance plans, and strategies for financing retiree medical benefits, among others. With a focus on practical application and real-world scenarios, this course equips participants to tackle fringe benefit planning challenges head-on, providing them with the tools and knowledge needed to optimize benefits for both business and personal needs, now and in the future. **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.

Business professionals can automate data collection processes by using today’s electronic forms. Learn about these tools and how to deploy them in this session.

Maintaining an ethical climate (bold) Being on prime-time news might seem exciting, but not when the story is an ethics breach you committed. You may say, "that will never happen to me". And those were the words spoken by Wells Fargo, United Airlines, Senator Al Franken, and Steve Wynn. A claim of an ethical failure can stay in the news for almost five years. That's long enough to damage your reputation and lower your profitability. Upholding high ethical standards for yourself and your team requires constant care and feeding.

Internal controls are more important than ever, and their importance increases daily. However, internal controls present a challenge for many smaller organizations. This program will teach you how to evaluate, develop, and implement an effective internal control structure in a small business environment. You will identify how to assess risk in smaller organizations and implement preventive, detective, deterrent, and compensating controls to mitigate these risks, even without proper segregation of duties. Additionally, participating in this program will teach you technology-focused techniques for preventing and detecting fraud and securing information systems and sensitive data. For small organizations, maintaining an effective system of internal controls presents a significant challenge. Realistically, implementing many theoretical concepts surrounding internal controls may not be possible in some cases. Consequently, many internal control structures foster an environment where too much risk exists. This factor and uncontrolled information systems can often lead to disastrous results. Participate in this program to learn the necessary insights and tools to design, implement, and monitor effective internal controls, security, and anti-fraud measures in small organizations.

Every organization today is facing an onslaught of pressure to master Artificial Intelligence “AI” strategies across their enterprises. Never before have we witnessed such a steep expectation for how a “technology” can transform a business, and never before have we been expected to leverage a technology so quickly and so completely.  There is no denying AI presents perhaps the opportunity of a lifetime to transform and improve operations, but to date few plans or roadmaps on how to unlock the promise of AI exist. In this class, Steve Cadigan, a globally renowned future of work expert, will present a practical plan for how you can build your own AI strategy, and how you can thrive in the AI revolution. Steve will show present a roadmap of how to build your confidence with AI to address this massive change management challenge.

AI is an extremely popular topic these days, and for good reason! However, does AI present yet another threat to your privacy? Get answers to this question and more in this session.

Automation and outsourcing offer viable options for addressing today’s labor issues. In this session, you will learn about the potential benefits and risks associated with automation and outsourcing.

To move beyond the HR realm it is essential for HR professionals to understand planning at the strategic and tactical level. This session is designed to help HR professionals understand the overall strategic planning process so they can contribute at the executive level.

A common challenge for the controller role is in closing the month-end and period-end books in preparation to issue financial statements. This duty requires precision, timing and efficiency. In today’s digital world, many organizations have access to financial accounting software that will assist with the steps in the financial close. However, even with this aid it is critical the accountant understand the various steps for the close process and how they inter-relate to other accounting processes. This course gives you an insight into the inter-relationships between many processes that impact the financial close. The closing process has traditionally been a slow one with many companies taking two weeks to close its subsidiary’s books and another two to three weeks to roll up and consolidated the results. With the introduction of technology much has been done to help accelerate that process with integrated enterprise resource planning systems and general ledger and consolidate software. Within this segment we will discuss the elements of the financial close and also important concepts to assist the controller in accelerating their close timeline. This includes addressing all functional areas of the close including payroll, invoicing, payables, inventory, cash, and the general ledger. We will also discuss important concepts of ensuring your financial close is accurate by discussing bank reconciliations, overhead allocations, bad debt reserves, unpaid wages and accruals for vacation time, account reconciliations, deprecation and overall financial statement review. Note: This course does not address utilizing technology in the financial close. Its focus is to understand the varied procedures involved in the financial close whether or not technology is utilized.  

Forensic accounting, forensic accountancy or financial forensics is the specialty practice area of accounting that investigates whether firms engage in financial reporting misconduct. Forensic accountants apply a range of skills and methods to determine whether there has been financial reporting misconduct. Financial forensic engagements may fall into several categories. For example: Economic damages calculations, whether suffered through tort or breach of contract. Post-acquisition disputes such as earnouts or breaches of warranties Bankruptcy, insolvency and reorganization Securities and tax fraud Money laundering Business valuation Computer forensics/e-discovery This session is designed to delve into further investigative procedures used including digital forensics. Future sessions will focus on computer forensics, network forensics and mobile forensics.  

"Transforming Strategic & Financial Management with ChatGPT: Insights for CPAs, CFOs, and Controllers" is a comprehensive 2-hour CPE course designed by Jim Lindell of Thorsten Consulting Group, Inc. This course delves into the revolutionary impact of ChatGPT on financial and strategic management, offering a blend of theoretical insights and practical applications tailored for financial professionals. Through an exploration of ChatGPT's capabilities in research, communication enhancement, benchmarking, risk analysis, and more, participants will learn how to leverage this advanced AI technology to streamline operations, enhance decision-making, and foster innovation in their practices. The course not only highlights the current applications but also provides a glimpse into the future of AI in financial management, encouraging professionals to embrace technology for competitive advantage.

Are you ready to maximize the utility of ChatGPT? If so, participate in this session so you can learn the best ways to leverage this tool.

The term “automate” has been an industry buzzword for at least a decade. Yet, few organizations have embarked on successful automation journeys, leading to greater efficiencies, reduced errors, and happier team members. In this session, you will learn how to crank up your automation projects and see first-hand how easy and effective automation can be. More specifically, this session shows you exactly how you can work with tools from Zoho, Zapier, and Microsoft to enable powerful routines that will allow you and your team to get more done in less time.

In the world of work today, nothing is more critical than Culture.  If people are your competitive advantage, then culture is the best way to help your people realize a great destination. While many leaders and companies talk a lot about culture, few take the time to really plan, build, and invest in a great culture. Today, the world of work could not be more challenging, and the changes that we are seeing in the workforce, such as the rise of remote workers and increasing turnover, are adding to the complexity. Now more than ever, Culture must become your competitive advantage. In this course, you will learn about the key macro changes in the workforce and what some leading companies and leaders are doing to create amazing cultures and high-performing organizations. From LinkedIn to Patagonia to Eventbrite, you will learn from some top organizations ow they have successfully leveraged culture. You will learn what Culture is and can be, and you will learn what culture is not. As you set sail in 2024 and beyond as a leader, you will benefit from this class and learn how to make culture your competitive advantage. Your teacher for the class is Steve Cadigan, whom many credit for being the architect of LinkedIn's world-class and groundbreaking culture. 

Why do for profit organizations exist??? To make money!!!!! What a great concept. But if the organization does not have the proper collections and credit procedures in place, they may not be able to access that money. Hence the importance of the credit and collection process. Credit and collections are critical areas for the financial statement controllers. Customer credit is a form of payment that allows small business customers to purchase a product or service before paying for it in full. The process works similarly to the way a credit card does - you procure something and pay it back later. Collections is a term used by a business when referring to money owed to that business by a customer. When a customer does not pay within the terms specified, the amount of the bill becomes past due and is sometimes submitted to a collection agency. The sales and collection process includes business activities related to selling products and services, maintaining customer records, billing customers, and recording payments from customers. It also includes activities necessary to manage accounts receivable, such as aging accounts and authorizing credit.  This course delves into the topics that impact the sales, credit and collections process for management. We discuss strategic steps management can take to ensure their processes are efficient and that they are able to actually collect their revenue.  

This course is a complement to our series on Becoming a Forensic Accountant and the focus of the course is on steganography techniques. Steganography is the art and science of embedding secret messages in a cover message in such a way that no one, apart from the sender and intended recipient, suspects the existence of the message. The first use of steganography can be traced to 440 BC when ancient Greece, people wrote messages on wood and covered it with wax, that acted as a covering medium Romans used forms of Invisible Inks, to decipher those hidden messages light or heat were used. During World War II the Germans introduced microdots, which were complete documents, pictures, and plans reduced in size to the size of a dot and were attached to normal paperwork. Null Ciphers were also used to hide unencrypted secret messages in an innocent looking message. Given the amount of data being generated and transmitted electronically, it’s no surprise that numerous methods of protecting that data have evolved. There are various types of steganography: Text Steganography - Hiding information inside the text files. This involves changing format of existing text, changing words in a text, generating random character sequences or using context-free grammars to generate readable texts. Image Steganography - Process of hiding text in an image without distorting the picture. Video Steganography - Technique to hide any kind of files into a cover video file. Audio Steganography - The secret message is embedded into an audio signal which alters the binary sequence of the corresponding audio file. Network Steganography - The process of utilizing active network protocols as carriers to transmit a covert message, undetectable by an uninformed party, from a host to its destination. This session will review these methods and also discuss relevant software.  

Although Windows incorporates the OneDrive app, you may not have configured it correctly for your specific needs. Using the OneDrive app and the related Cloud storage service to their fullest potential means you can access your files when and where you need them. Further, sharing your files and collaborating with others is easy when using OneDrive correctly. In this session, you will learn best practices for taking full advantage of OneDrive.