CPE Catalog

Virtual CFO Executive Networking Roundtable

In the business world today, accounting finance controllers are increasingly being asked to consult as strategists. As a CPA, your expertise brings a dynamic voice to business decisionmaking. Business and Industry roundtables are designed to ensure that CPAs in controllership roles are on the cutting edge of business issues, through regular peer and guided discussion groups. These roundtables are collaborative in nature, and participants are encouraged to engage in selected discussion topics by sharing expertise. Topics center around key issues for managing and supporting internal finance, control, strategy, and other critical roles such as:• Strategic planning• Forecasting• Budgeting• Risk management• Information and technology• Industry-specific concerns• Economic indicator issues• And many other interest areas! Make sure that you are up to speed with current trends on these topics, network with your local peers, and help your company navigate the complex business world today. The dedicated topic for March is: TBD  These popular virtual roundtables include 2 hours of state board approved CPE (Business Management & Organization). MOCPA pricing is $35 for members, $45 for nonmembers. Zoom meeting link and recommended prereading materials will be provided to all participants in advance of event. For questions about this program or the CFO roundtable series, contact Andrew Grow at agrow@mocpa.org or 314-392-5820.

Legislative Update Series

Receive an update on potential legislation that could impact you, your business or clients.

Economic Update Series

As the status of the economy weighs heavy on most everyone's minds, MOCPA is hosting a complimentary online Economic Update Series for members, featuring Chris Kuehl, Ph.D. author of the daily Business Intelligence Brief and president of Armada Corporate Intelligence. He will provide a big picture understanding of the current environment and identify important elements to watch for that might impact your business or clients in the short- and near-term.

K2's Advanced Excel

If you are an experienced Excel user seeking to elevate your skills, join the K2 team for K2's Advanced Excel. In this laptop-friendly program, you will learn critical advanced Excel skills in six key areas: 1) collaborating with other users and securing workbooks, 2) using tables to analyze and report data, 3) integrating and manipulating data from external sources, 4) creating and auditing complex formulas, 5) advanced data analysis tools, and 6) visualization techniques to analyze and communicate information. The course draws from over twenty-five years of experience delivering Excel training to accountants and other business professionals. Throughout the program, relevant, real-world examples reinforce the topics presented. Take advantage of this opportunity to become more efficient and proficient in Microsoft Office Excel, the tool of choice for accounting and financial professionals. This course covers advanced Excel topics found in Excel 2019 and newer.

K2's Business Intelligence, Featuring Microsoft's Power BI Tools

Business Intelligence (BI) is perhaps the hottest topic in most professional circles in today's business climate. Increasingly, organizations of all sizes seek to take advantage of the data available to them to identify previously undiscovered insights and gain competitive advantages thought to be out of reach just a few short years ago. A growing array of tools - from Excel add-ins to dedicated solutions such as Power BI - now allow you to leverage your existing knowledge and skills to create powerful, interactive dashboards and analyses unthinkable until recently. This program will teach you to implement "do-it-yourself business intelligence" using various techniques and tools. First, you will learn to work with advanced Excel data query and summarization features to create Excel-based dashboards. You will then learn how to leverage that knowledge to build even more powerful BI objects using Microsoft's Power BI tools. If gaining better insights into your data to make better decisions is of interest to you, then join us for a fast-paced look at how you can take advantage of these fantastic tools.

K2's Excel PivotTables for Accountants

Many business professionals consider PivotTables the most powerful feature in Excel, yet most accounting and financial professionals do not use them in their day-to-day activities. If you are ready to learn how to take advantage of PivotTables or extend your existing knowledge of PivotTables, then make plans to participate in this course. You will learn how to build PivotTables, group data inside PivotTables - including grouping options for fiscal periods - and create user-defined calculations in your PivotTables. You will also learn advanced PivotTable techniques, including building PivotTables that consolidate data from multiple data ranges and PivotTables dynamically connected to external databases and financial accounting systems. Additionally, you will learn to take advantage of other Excel features associated with PivotTables, including Slicers, Power Query, and Power Pivot. You will be a master of Excel PivotTables at the end of the day! This course is for you if you have been leery of working with PivotTables or have struggled to realize their many benefits. With some information, guidance, and coaching from your K2 instructor, you will be ready to use PivotTables to analyze and report on extensive data sets in a fraction of the time you spend completing such tasks.

Managing Time and Celebrating Yourself

Whether you're a mother, wife, or businesswoman, time can run away from women in ways that it does not for men. Join MOCPA and the VSCPA as we celebrate Mother’s Day with a Hilary De Freitas. She uses her experience as a wife, business owner, mother and homeschooling mom, to show the tools, tips and strategies that all women can use to achieve their goals.  Use these tips to get “it all done” for yourself and your family; all the while creating time to celebrate yourself. 

Governmental Accounting Conference Ethics -A Virtual Event

K2's Biggest Security and Privacy Concerns

Technology is a business-critical business capability in today's day and age. Any interruption to an organization's ability to use its information system poses a significant risk to its viability. Data breaches, cyber-attacks, and ransomware are examples of the most significant existential risks facing businesses today. There are threat actors worldwide that entirely focus on stealing organizational data, stealing economic resources, and disrupting commerce. They use complex social engineering attacks, pervasive phishing messages, intricate malware, and other highly effective techniques. For example, publically reported data breaches now exceed 100k annually. These breaches resulted in releasing the personal information of millions of people worldwide, billions of dollars of compromised organizational assets, and putting countless people in harm's way. This course covers recent major security breaches, including Solarwinds, Ubiquity, Colonial Pipeline, Tecnimont SpA, Citrix, and LabCorp. It will discuss how these breaches occurred, why they occurred, and how organizations can prevent similar incidents from impacting them. Each case study examines a different form of security vulnerability and how to avoid it. The topics will include social engineering, auditing processes for IT Security systems, forensic accounting, password, two-factor authentication, and improvements for managerial oversight. Participants will gain real-world knowledge from the mistakes of other organizations and, from that experience, develop their own security best practices for their organizations.

K2's Advanced QuickBooks Tips and Techniques

The QuickBooks platform - including the desktop and online environments - is one of the leading accounting solutions for small and growing businesses. Further, Intuit has incorporated numerous advanced features and changes into the tools over the past few releases. This seminar will teach you how to take advantage of many new and advanced features in the desktop and online environments to help you solve critical issues. For example, you will learn advanced inventory management techniques, including changing the default costing methodology and implementing lot and serial number tracking. You will also learn how to build complete sets of financial statements in Excel that link in real-time to underlying QuickBooks data files and how to create multi-company financial statements. Additionally, you will learn how to use the Client Data Review feature to streamline identifying and correcting errors and closing accounting periods in QuickBooks. Knowing how to take advantage of the advanced tools and features available can determine your level of success when working with QuickBooks. So take advantage of this opportunity to learn about QuickBooks' "deep" features to maximize your effectiveness with QuickBooks.

K2's Best Word, Outlook, and PowerPoint Features

Most professionals routinely use Word, Outlook, and PowerPoint, but many are self-taught and, as a result, have not been exposed to the best features of these three applications. Consequently, they often use "brute force," inefficient means when working with these three components of Microsoft Office. If that describes you, ensure you carve time out of your schedule to participate in this four-hour session. In it, you will learn how to work much more efficiently when using these tools to get better results in less time.

K2's Data Analytics For Accountants And Auditors

In the world of "Big Data," virtually all business professionals have become data analysts, at least to some extent. However, that is particularly true in auditing, where internal and external auditors increasingly turn to data analytics to identify situations requiring follow-up and investigation. Those who understand how to take advantage of various tools to assist in these efforts benefit by conducting more thorough analyses and achieving superior results in less time. In this session, you will learn about various tools and techniques you can use for more thorough data analyses. The discussion includes Excel as a data analysis tool, multiple Excel add-ins, and Microsoft's Power BI application. If you're seeking to improve your skills in the field of data analytics, this session is the one for you!

Corporate Accounting & Finance Conference - A Virtual Event

Formerly known as the Business and Industry Conference, this two-day program provides you with the technical and strategic topics you need to excel as a finance executive. Attendees will learn about the top trends and topics impacting CPAs and business professionals that will help you grow every facet of your business! This event offers the flexibility of two, virtual half-days where you can get your learning in before lunch and have the afternoon to apply what you’ve learned.    

Multi State Technology Conference - A Virtual Event

The Multi-State Technology Conference offers up to sixteen hours of fast-paced presentations designed to make you more productive and efficient when using technology. K2 Enterprises’ nationally recognized speakers provide you with practical solutions to the real-world issues faced by accounting, financial, and other business professionals. You will receive helpful tips and advanced techniques, along with the tools and skills necessary to keep up with the ever-increasing pace of changes in technology. KNOWLEDGE - Do you have the knowledge you need to move forward?EFFECTIVE - Can you be more effective in your organization or for your clients?COMPETITIVE - Can you remain competitive?

School Audit Conference - A Virtual Event

School districts have highly specialized needs, and whether you serve from the inside of a district or as an external auditor, it is essential that your knowledge be on the cutting-edge.  This conference offers strategies to improve audit quality by offering practical tools and resources from state and local experts who know what’s going on in Missouri school districts. Featured topics include:• The Latest on GASB • Single Audit• And more! More details coming soon!

K2's Excel Best Practices

As spreadsheets evolve, so must your practices for creating, editing, and auditing them. In this program, you will gain an in-depth understanding of the best ways to work with Excel by learning best practices associated with Excel spreadsheets in each of the following areas: creating and editing Excel workbooks, securing Excel workbooks, collaborating with others in Excel, and reporting on data contained in Excel. Today's best practices for Excel differ significantly from those used in the past, and you will learn the best ways to work with Excel spreadsheets in this "must-see" CPE program. Course materials include relevant examples to enhance your learning experience. Join us for this program to help you utilize Excel to its fullest potential.

K2's Excel Essentials for Staff Accountants

Staff accountants have specific needs when working with Excel. Unfortunately, these needs are often not met by their existing Excel knowledge. Chief among these are summarizing data quickly and accurately, generating accurate and aesthetically pleasing reports, and creating accounting-centric calculations for elements such as depreciation, amortization, and interest. By participating in this eight-hour session, staff accountants will gain the essential skills to maximize efficiency and accuracy when working with Excel. This session begins with a quick overview of Excel best practices. It then progresses rapidly into discussions that address PivotTables, sophisticated formulas, Tables, formatting, and working with dates in Excel. Throughout the session, you will learn from accounting-centric examples to reinforce key learning points. In this session, you will learn in a "laptop-friendly" environment, and participants will have access to all the demonstration files. In sum, this seminar is a "must" for all staff accountants seeking to improve their efficiency and accuracy when working with Excel.

K2's Case Studies in Fraud and Technology Controls

Fraud continues to plague businesses at epidemic levels, and technology control failures are a significant reason fraud occurs. Using a case study approach, in this session, you will learn about the pervasiveness of fraud, the control failures contributing to fraud, and what you can do to mitigate fraud risk. A specific focus of this course is applying information technology general controls and information technology application controls. In this course, you will examine numerous reported fraud cases and identify the general and application control failures that contributed to each fraud. By learning through these real-world case studies, you will be positioned better to reduce fraud risk.