CPE & Event Calendar

All organizations are looking for ways to gain an advantage over the competition. This practical and interactive session will present a toolkit of ideas to help CFOs, controllers, and finance professionals better position their organizations for the future. We know change is occurring at an exponential rate, and that has proven to be the case in all areas of finance, management, and leadership over the past year. The course deals with these new issues and will continue to be updated as necessary throughout the year. This year, we will take a special interest in the opportunities and threats of AI for the finance professional. Become the "financial hero" of your organization and make a positive impact on the bottom line.

Organizations that execute a wise strategy succeed; others are executed in the market. Many organizations invest significant time in strategic planning but fall short when it comes to execution. According to McKinsey, most fail to properly execute their strategy. This session explores the critical transition from strategy to performance while challenging outdated planning models and myths. We often do not think of strategy in the same context of longer-term organizational projects like ERP transitions or risk management. Why should you consider “killing” your current plan and building a new plan centered around financial performance? We will dive into the reasons strategy fails, uncover the practical tools for bridging the planning-performance gap, and explore how strong financial integration enables strategy to succeed. We review insight into what works—and what must be stopped immediately. The author uses CocaCola as a baseline to communicate elements of strategy and incorporates funny videos to highlight key points.

Many employees with ADHD struggle with productivity. It’s heart-breaking to feel you have to let a team member go due to lack of performance. This course is for HR Professionals and Team Leaders who want more tools in their tool belt to help improve retention with ADHD team members. You will learn whole brain strategies to help your team members with ADHD improve performance, so they can not only survive but thrive. This innovative science-based approach is designed to help people with ADHD get more done in less time with a process designed with their creative brain in mind.

Leaders were once chosen for their character, but today we live in an age where loudmouthed extroverts seem to take center stage in everything, including business, politics and entertainment.  While the talkative, charismatic leader makes the front page of business magazines, recent research shows that successful business leaders tend to be more reserved, pensive and sometimes outright shy.  Learn why your desire to spend significant time inside your own head may be your greatest asset. Whether you are introverted or not, you likely work with, manage or are a related to an introvert.  We will discuss proven methods to better understand introverts, how to manage them, and how to get the most out of their amazing talents.  If you want to enhance your leadership skills, this seminar is for you. 

This course investigates actual real-world fraud schemes and discusses what controls could have prevented the fraud from occurring, and what controls could detect and curtail the fraud scheme. The instructor speaks from experience, finding multiple frauds very early in her career leading to a career-long focus on fraud prevention and detection. This event may be a rebroadcast of a live event and the instructor will be available to answer your questions during the event.

The IRS has recently increased the pressure on how to calculate and report partner and shareholder basis. Changes in the forms reflect these developments. This program provides a detailed analysis of the calculations related to determining tax basis for a partnership interest and S corporation shareholder shares and loans. How to use the Form 1065, Schedule K-1 and Form 1120S, Schedule K-1 information for basis determination. Illustrated examples with filled in forms will demonstrate how the process works and their many potential pitfalls. *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

Overview: Understanding your company's financial health requires more than just traditional metrics. This webinar is designed to reveal deeper insights through advanced, underutilized financial ratios. In this session, accounting and finance professionals will explore metrics such as operating leverage, free cash flow yield, and margin of safety-tools that go beyond standard ratios to deliver nuanced perspectives on profitability, risk exposure, and operational efficiency. This event may be a rebroadcast of a live event and the instructor will be available to answer your questions during the event.

Organizations that use primitive costing methods make predictable mistakes, allocating too much cost to easy, high-volume "gravy" products and too little cost to difficult, low-volume "dog" jobs,  putting an organization with inferior information at a significant competitive disadvantage.  The secret to being the “smart competitor” is learning how to deal with overhead.  This session will show you how to assign 16 key overhead categories.  Whether you work in a wholesale, retail, healthcare, service or manufacturing business, you will find this session invaluable.  Get your cost right, and you will be able to give the "dogs" to your competitors and keep the "gravy" for yourself.

As financial leaders, CPAs are often tasked with managing organizational risk. In this respect, the supplier relationship can be a tricky one. It is often one of the more familiar and comfortable business relationships we have, yet it may also be the one that presents the most significant risk to our company. In this course, we will explore how to manage the supplier relationship from onboarding to termination. Through case studies and best practices, we will discuss how to continue being a good partner to our suppliers while also understanding where potential risks exist. This event may be a rebroadcast of a live event and the instructor will be available to answer your questions during the event.

The role of today's financial leader, including CFO, transcends traditional financial stewardship; it demands agility, innovation, crisis management, and strategic foresight. This seminar will discuss the new, multifaceted skills and insights needed to excel in the dynamic role of modern finance. Through a blend of theory, research, and practical exercises, participants will explore the diverse roles of a CFO as innovation champions, technology evangelists, crisis managers, and change agents - leveraging practical principles to drive organizational success. Financial leaders can adapt or be left behind. Whether you are a seasoned CFO or aspiring to step into a leadership position, this seminar will discuss the essential tools and insights to navigate the newer demands of financial managers with confidence and competence.

Many courses highlight ethical failures - this course goes beyond that. This course identifies the many barriers to ethical behavior, focuses on habits and techniques that improve ethics and offer ways to practice so that the ethical "muscle" is ready for any dilemma. This course incorporates ideas from leading ethical authors and includes data from the ACFE Report to the Nations. This event may be a rebroadcast of a live event and the instructor will be available to answer your questions during the event.

To many clients, CPA firms all look the same. While services and specialties may vary significantly from one firm to another, it is hard for the average person to see this by simply looking at the sign outside our office door. Is there any way to make us stand out more to the outside world? Through surveys, statistics, and examples, this course looks at how CPA firms can develop a marketing plan beyond just relying on referrals. We look at the pluses and minuses of various marketing channels, regulatory constraints, and how to measure success in the competitive financial services space.

This course offers an in-depth look at retirement needs models, their flaws, and ways to overcome associated drawbacks. You'll explore holistic retirement planning while reviewing threats to a successful retirement. You'll also hear about recent retirement planning changes, including the elimination of the "Stretch IRA" by the SECURE Act and the new SECURE Act 2.0 changes. We'll address key questions to plan a comfortable retirement and discuss strategies to draw down retirement assets over an extended period.

The course explores the challenges of the current economic trends and analyzes their impact on you as the financial executive in areas of human resource management; credit markets and banking; risk management and pandemic style disruptions; cash flow planning strategies; debt and equity mix impacts in uncertain markets; globalization of the market in times of uncertainty; retirement planning and social security funding; and acquiring distressed companies and assets. Specific recommendations and insights will be offered to you to deal with the challenges.

Most professional accountants are at least somewhat familiar with the AICPA’s Code of Professional Conduct, available at the AICPA’s online ethics library. But the online ethics library also includes other information, such as non-authoritative case studies. This course provides an overview of – and commentary on – these instructive supplemental materials.

If you use Outlook on a daily basis to process your email, chances are pretty good that you are missing out on a lot of opportunities to improve your efficiency in composing, processing and organizing your messages. There are many different features in Outlook that often get overlooked, even though we are working in the app all day, every day. John Higgins, a strategic advisor to the profession on Microsoft 365 deployment, will review numerous tips and features to improve your productivity in Outlook. You will learn many time-saving, practical ways to improve the quality of your email message. This event may be a rebroadcast of a live event and the instructor will be available to answer your questions during the event.

Many leaders in business organizations of all sizes view the system of Internal Control almost purely as a protective security measure. A well-designed internal control system can and will drive all entity objectives which includes successful operations. This session uses information gathered from years of creating internal control systems as well as concepts from well-respected authoritative pronouncements and frameworks to illustrate the power of a strong and well supported control system as well as actions that can help establish such a system. Those that work with internal controls who are tasked with developing ways to improve operation level capabilities should strongly consider this session. This event may be a rebroadcast of a live event and the instructor will be available to answer your questions during the event.

AI (‘Artificial Intelligence’) has already reshaped the way we work, offering immense opportunities alongside serious ethical and organizational challenges. How should we use AI responsibly without slowing innovation? Is using AI ethical? Is it right? Is not using AI ethical? The goal is to make better use of the power of AI, in a sustainable and ethical way.

The objective of corrective action is to change conduct through teaching. Corrective action may be sequential, out of order, repetitive, or not appropriate to take at all. The action selected should reflect the type, frequency, and severity of the misconduct. Changing conduct through teaching requires effective employee relations skills. This course provides practical knowledge and scripts for handling a wide array of sensitive misconduct situations with good judgment, such that personal and employer liability is avoided.

The new Global Internal Audit Standards were released on January 9, 2024, and will become effective January 9, 2025. The previous version, the International Standards for the Professional Practice of Internal Auditing, released in 2017, remains approved for use during a one-year transition period. The Global Internal Audit Standards guide the worldwide professional practice of internal audit. They serve as a basis for evaluating and elevating the quality of the internal audit function. The Standards use 15 guiding principles with five separate domains that enable effective internal audit implementation and examples of evidence of conformance. The Global Standards are organized into five domains. Domain I: Purpose of Internal Auditing Domain II: Ethics and Professionalism Domain III: Governing the Internal Audit Function Domain IV: Managing the Internal Audit Function Domain V: Performing Internal Audit Service