Professional Development and Event Catalog

Please join us for an introductory course on the fundamentals of preparing and filing an individual federal income tax return. We will cover topics such as what the federal income tax is and how it is computed. This event may be a rebroadcast of a live event and the instructor will be available to answer your questions during the event.

Designed especially for CPAs, this class is a practical call to action that provides CPAs with the tools and inspiration they need to be better thinkers. You'll learn habits and strategies you can use every day to dramatically improve judgment and decision-making. You'll learn how to break down mental barriers and alleviate mental fatigue. You'll achieve new levels of mental clarity, flexibility, and resilience. You will also benefit from better overall mental well-being and be more resistant to stress and burnout. Attendees leave as more powerful and confident thinkers and better communicators and problem-solvers. This event may be a rebroadcast of a live event and the instructor will be available to answer your questions during the event.

Most business professionals have used Excel for years, often without the benefit of any formal training. Thus, they don't know about key features in the application and, therefore, don't use them. Of course, this leads to inefficiencies and errors. Isn't it time to stop this madness? This session is for you if you're ready to become more efficient and effective with Excel! You will learn ten critical features that can help you get more work done in less time and improve your accuracy. We encourage you to make plans to join us for this session to learn the best ways of working with Excel!

The accounting profession and financial markets have been plagued during the past several years with numerous cases of financial reporting problems. This course will go through some real life examples of financial statement fraud and/or failed audits. The course will cover how to recognize deceptive practices related to revenue recognition, detail related party and off-balance sheet schemes, and how earnings can be manipulated through inappropriate estimates.

Collaboration is a key to productivity and success. But remote work can make collaboration more challenging, including collaborating on spreadsheets. Fortunately, tools such as portals with check-in/check-out capabilities, version control, comment tracking, and co-authoring can enable online spreadsheet collaboration. Further, Excel’s Inquire tool can facilitate spreadsheet collaboration in offline environments. Don’t let remote work hamper your spreadsheet collaboration needs! Participate in this session to learn how to collaborate on spreadsheets effectively from anywhere using tools you already own or license.

If you have ever had someone just read you the rules in an ethics class, you know there is a better way. Cases in Corporate Ethics reviews 10 real life cases and puts you in the position of someone in the middle of it all. You'll learn about conflicts that corporate financial professionals often encounter, you'll gain skills for dealing with a boss who is behaving badly and find out where to go for help. Once you have studied ethics using real world cases, you'll never want to do it any other way. This event may be a rebroadcast of a live event and the instructor will be available to answer your questions during the event.

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.

In order to prepare accurate and effective not-for-profit financial statements, professionals must have a strong working knowledge of the reporting requirements. Now is the time to obtain that knowledge! This course explains the requirements, illustrates how the requirements manifest in the financial statements, and clarifies options available to not-for-profits in applying the requirements. The course covers key accounting areas that affect not-for-profits, including revenue recognition, contributions, and leases. The course materials utilize a highly illustrative and innovative format, including over 30 focused exercises to provide an enhanced working knowledge of not-for-profit accounting and reporting.

This year practitioners need to keep abreast of tax changes affecting pass-through entities used by their business clients and employers, and this enlightening course delivers that information. You will learn invaluable strategies, techniques, innovative tax-planning concepts, income-generating ideas, and other planning opportunities available to S corporations, partnerships, LLCs, and LLPs. In addition, this course will discuss current trends and emerging issues, helping practitioners stay informed about relevant and significant topics that may impact their clients. Continually updated to reflect enacted legislation.

This course provides a concise overview of the Dark Web, a part of the internet that isn't indexed by search engines, and is often associated with anonymous transactions and nefarious activities. Discover the leading threats and risks that the Dark Web poses to accounting firms. Explore how practitioners can effectively mitigate the risk of data breaches, ransomware attacks, financial fraud and other risks connected to the Dark Web. You'll walk away with a foundational understanding of leading cybersecurity strategies that can help you maintain client trust and protect your firm's sensitive data in this complex and ever-changing threat landscape. This event may be a rebroadcast of a live event and the instructor will be available to answer your questions during the event.

As part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), IRC § 199A was added.  This Internal Revenue Code section allows certain pass-through entities the ability to has made it deduct up to 20% of their qualified business. Although practitioners have had over three years of “experience” utilizing IRC § 100A, many practitioners still do not feel comfortable with this part of the Internal Revenue Code.  The purpose of this presentation is to provide the practitioner with an understanding of the rules of IRC § 199A as well as an understanding of the IRC § 199A regulations. **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 leighanne.conroy@acpen.com.

As litigation becomes more complex, attorneys are relying more on accountants to serve as consulting experts or expert witnesses at trial. Serving as an expert witness is not as difficult as you might expect. Accounting experts educate lawyers and jurors on issues such as valuation, tax liability, and forensics. Learn how accountants become expert witnesses, the role they play during pre-litigation through to trial, and the techniques experts employ to avoid challenges from opposing counsel.

Do you love PivotTables? Of course, we all do! Traditional PivotTables are incredible, but they do have limitations. If you have ever encountered one of these limitations, you'll be excited to learn that by using the Data Model as the source for PivotTables, you'll be able to bypass many of the restrictions that exist with traditional PivotTables. The data model (also referred to as Power Pivot) is included in Excel 2016+ for Windows and available as a free download for previous versions (excluding Excel for Mac). Using the data model enables you to build PivotTables that were previously not practical. If you frequently build PivotTables and would like to do more with them, you'll want to understand how to use the data model (Power Pivot) to enhance your reports. Note about Excel versions: Power Pivot is not available in all versions of Excel, including Excel for Mac. If you would like to see if Power Pivot is available in your version of Excel, visit the Microsoft site.

Data Loss Prevention (DLP) is a means of creating and enforcing security policies in an organization. For example, you can create DLP rules that programmatically block all outbound email messages containing Social Security or credit card numbers. Unfortunately, most business professionals have yet to discover DLP and how it improves security. In this session, you will learn the fundamentals of DLP and, through demonstrations, see how you can use DLP to enhance organizational security. You do not want to miss this chance to learn how to take advantage of one of the most innovative security options available to you!

Arthur Werner will provide financial professionals with the information their teams will need to successfully plan and execute mergers and acquisitions. For major topics covered, see below. This course may be customized or tailored based on the needs of your organization.

The webinar will provide an overview of the regulated, legal side of the industry which now includes 19 states with recreational/adult use access and 38 states with medical access. This session will lay a foundation focusing on the modern historical background of the cannabis plant and the evolution of laws and regulations related to marijuana and agricultural hemp. The segment is designed to be useful for CPA practitioners desiring to provide or enhance their services within the cannabis and hemp niches. This event may be a rebroadcast of a live event and the instructor will be available to answer your questions during the event.

This course covers recently issued accounting and financial statement reporting standards from the Financial Accounting Standards Board. Key implementation challenges and experiences from public company filings will be identified. This event may be a rebroadcast of a live event and the instructor will be available to answer your questions during the event.

Management Skills - Exhibiting Traits of a Balanced Leader-Manager provides tips and techniques for striking the right balance between managing individuals and engagement teams and leading the overall strategic direction of a firm. Short-term profitability and long-term viability are important objectives of any successful organization. Note: This course is recommended as a part of a 16-hour audit skills curriculum for managers, while it is also appropriate for anyone who has responsibilities for leading or managing others. This event may be a rebroadcast of a live event and the instructor will be available to answer your questions during the event.

The work for clients is not as linear as it used to be with the inclusion of more advisory services, more cross functional teams, and due dates moving. Quality client engagements are not just about a solid workflow, we need project management skills. In this session we will discuss how to apply project management techniques to designing a one firm, team approach to serving clients. This event may be a rebroadcast of a live event and the instructor will be available to answer your questions during the event.

This course provides an overview of cryptocurrency basics and use cases. Learn the latest trends in crypto applications and the current state of accounting applications of cryptocurrency. It will cover the appropriate accounting for cryptocurrency and address some of the challenges in accounting for cryptocurrency.