CPE Catalog & Events

Accounting standards affecting not-for-profit (NPF) organizations have become increasingly complex, and, as a result, a great deal of confusing exists as to how to properly account for certain transactions unique to these organizations. This course will clarify proper accounting and reporting for these troubling areas. This event may be a rebroadcast of a live event and the instructor will be available to answer your questions during the event.

It's happened to all of us. We open our inbox in a calm frame of mind, and then, Pow! We read an email that sets our blood boiling. Whether the email is critical, insulting, or just plain upsetting, we feel shaken and tempted to bite back. In this program, you will learn strategies for dealing with upsetting emails to keep cool and retain relationships. We will review the process of responding (or not responding) to the email and tips about managing our emotions.

Form 1065 is the tax return filed by partnerships, which is one of the most common forms of business organizations in the United States. This course provides an in-depth understanding of the preparation and filing of Form 1065. The course will cover the basics of partnership taxation, including how partnerships are taxed, the different types of partnerships, and the tax obligations of partners. It will also discuss the importance of keeping accurate financial records, the role of the partnership agreement in tax reporting, and the filing deadlines for Form 1065. Participants will gain a comprehensive understanding of the various sections of Form 1065, including the Schedule K-1, which reports each partner's share of the partnership's income, deductions, and credits. The course will also cover how to report partnership income, expenses, and deductions, as well as the tax implications of buying and selling partnership interests. In addition, the course will provide an overview of common errors and omissions made when preparing Form 1065, and how to avoid them. It will also cover recent changes in tax laws that affect partnership taxation. Overall, this course is designed for tax professionals, accountants, business owners, and individuals who need to understand the intricacies of partnership taxation and the preparation and filing of Form 1065. Upon completion of the course, participants will have a solid understanding of partnership taxation and will be able to prepare and file Form 1065 with confidence. **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.

Supervisor Skills - Coaching Staff to Stay on the Right Track provides tips and techniques for critical coaching responsibilities. Being a successful coach requires tackling various responsibilities, including motivating, providing positive and constructive feedback, and otherwise getting the best performance out of engagement team members in the given situation. Note: This course is recommended as a part of a 16-hour audit skills curriculum for supervisory or managerial auditors, while it is also appropriate for anyone who has responsibilities for coaching others. This event may be a rebroadcast of a live event and the instructor will be available to answer your questions during the event.

Fourth, in a four-part series, new and experienced leaders dive deeper into the keys to becoming more effective. In this course, we'll explore three critical skills to being an effective leader: delegation, feedback and time management. You'll learn the important role delegation plays in developing staff and in elevating your career by freeing you up to take on more challenging tasks. Provide valuable, actionable feedback as a final step in the delegation process to ensure that growth and learning continue. Finally, explore new structures to help you balance your time and energy as you juggle your new leadership responsibilities. Be sure to register for each course in this series: New Manager Series: Making the Shift from Individual Contributor to Supervisor 2024 New Manager Series: Balancing Leadership & Likeability 2024 New Manager Series: Making the Shift from Individual Contributor to Supervisor 2024 New Manager Series: The How To's of Leading 2024

Part of one's duty as a CPA working in industry is to safeguard the assets of the organization. Cost cutting is one way to preserve assets and maintain a company's competitive position in the industry. However, what keeps us from ridding our organizations of unnecessary costs? In this course, we will look at the factors that prevent our companies from being as streamlined as they could be. By using statistics and survey data, we will attempt to show how to better negotiate and navigate budgeting and contracting decisions. We will also discuss financial statement analysis techniques, benchmarking, and cash flow management in an effort to better cut costs and maintain the long-run viability of an organization.

In today’s real estate market, IRC §1031 tax-deferred exchanges can be one of the most important planning tools available to the real estate investor. The use of this technique is filled with pitfalls and traps. This new course will assist the practitioner in understanding the mechanics of a tax-deferred exchange and the value of a tax-deferred exchange in both tax and financial planning. Updated August 2022

How grateful are you? In this critically important webinar, we will explore exactly what gratitude is and why it is a crucial component of your work as a CPA. Even if you believe you're already a deeply grateful person, you'll still learn some new strategies for expressing gratitude effectively. Forbes Contributor Bruce Weinstein, The Ethics Guy, will show you how to use LinkedIn in a novel way to say "thank you." You'll also find better and worse ways of letting clients, team members, family members and friends know that you care about them. You'll understand why gratitude is a matter of ethics and not merely etiquette. Finally, you'll discover how to use questions about gratitude in job interviews and performance reviews. Why not hire and promote people who are not only knowledgeable and skilled but also grateful? You will be thankful for having taken this valuable webinar! This event may be a rebroadcast of a live event and the instructor will be available to answer your questions during the event.

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.

It is easy for us to get caught up in our work, but it is better to examine the ‘big picture’ by studying the outside factors that impact our business beyond our internal processes and day to day responsibilities. We are sometimes so busy with our tasks that we miss new developments until the developments have a profound impact on us and the organization. This session is designed to review many of these current trends, while thinking and discussing how these trends can impact our organizations and us. This is a fun and lively session that is intended to be interactive with participants either live, virtual or both. Our ever-changing world is evolving more than many realize.

Demands for an excellent user experience are at an all-time high. But how do you solve for easy collaboration, compliance, and workflow? What features do you need to be effective? How do you integrate payments, eSignatures, and other technologies to make interaction convenient? This session will explain the necessary features, provide an overview of the best technologies for collaboration, and help you think through how to solve your business problems. You'll learn about the options available from client portals, workflow management, payments, eSignatures, and more. Attend this session and arm yourself with the tools you need to succeed!

Enterprise Risk Management for SMEs

SAS 145, Understanding the Entity and Its Environment and Assessing the Risks of Material Misstatement, was issued in October 2021. The audit standard amends AU-C 315, including many changes to address common audit deficiencies. This course will provide an overview of SAS 145 and its changes to AU-C 315. Attendees will have an opportunity to evaluate the impact on audit methodology and documentation.

This course provides a concise overview and non-technical explanation of the Omniverse and Metaverse - a shared virtual space that integrates various virtual, augmented, and actual realities. While futurists have been predicting and describing this concept for decades, interest and investment in this platform have recently exploded. Facebook has changed its very name to Meta - as in Metaverse - to reflect its pivot from a social media company to a virtual space company. Other tech companies, big and small, have announced ambitious plans to enable people to access digital environments and experiences through different devices. While sometimes perceived as science fiction, the metaverse is no entertainment gimmick. A growing consensus is that it will be the successor to the mobile Internet, and fundamentally transform the Internet, and perhaps even reality itself. You'll walk away with a foundational understanding of how the metaverse is transforming the modern business world, and how accountants can position themselves for success in this emerging economic digital dimension. This event may be a rebroadcast of a live event and the instructor will be available to answer your questions during the event.

Security is not optional, and yesterday’s security techniques do not minimize today’s security threats. Therefore, now is the time for you to tune up what you know about protecting sensitive data. This program will teach you the latest tools and techniques for securing your data, including encryption, virus protection, safe communications, electronic signatures, secure authentication, and more. You will also learn how to implement a practical, five-step approach to securing your PC and the questions you should ask your staff to ensure server-based information remains protected. Security failures, such as a breach of client or customer data, are costly – they can even drive your company out of business. So, what security tools do you need, and how should you use them to secure your sensitive data and systems? Can you afford to risk attempting to manage today’s threats using yesterday’s techniques? Participate in this program to learn how to identify viable and practical solutions to mitigating today’s security threats.  

Fraud is constantly in the news. Whether its employee retention credit mills, FTX, the City of Dixon, it appears like fraud is everywhere. We'll start this session with a review of the common fraud schemes as identified in the 2024 Report to the Nations. We'll also review the commonalities of fraudsters. We'll then look at methods of prevention. We'll close with a look at the auditor's responsibility for the consideration of fraud in AU-C 240.

In this webinar, accountants will discover how to double their firm's revenue through CFO and advisory services. Many accounting firm owners are stuck in what we call The Accountant's Trap. It's where the firm owner is trapped working for low fees, dealing with high-demanding clients, all the while being burnt out on compliance and transactional work. To make matters worse, these firm owners can't raise their fees because there is always another accountant or bookkeeper willing to do the work for less -- not to mention all the tech companies trying to get into our space. Does this sound familiar? If so, this webinar is for you. This course is for any practice owner looking to transform their practice - and double their revenue - by offering a productized CFO/Advisory service. We'll cover the systems you need to transform your practice and the services you should offer to double your firm's revenue. This event may be a rebroadcast of a live event and the instructor will be available to answer your questions during the event.

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.  

There is always too much to do and too little time to do it all.  Fortunately, if you know the right ways to manage people, projects and your time, you can get on top of everything by working smarter.  In this seminar you'll learn the best ways to get more done in less time, how to stay sane with all you have to do, and how to get other people to do some of "your" work by building great relationships.

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.  The same theory applies to departmental performance—the overall result is only as strong as its weakest contributor.  Leave our interactive and entertaining session with insight for developing and sustaining the best team you can possibly assemble.  The four elements in this process are (1) development, (2) leadership, (3) hiring and (4) environment.  Discuss how to effectively use these elements in your creation of an outstanding organization. Discover the power of the 10 Attributes for Leadership Success and the negative impact of Leadership’s Fatal 13. Above all, learn how to combine these four elements as a successful catalyst for sustained high-quality output and results.