CPE Catalog
Note
AICPA On-Demand & Self-Study courses take up to 24 hours to process.
Employees Today and Tomorrow : Are Employees Assets?
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Online
2.00 Credits
As the managers' role continue to evolve, it is crucial for us to understand the strategic aspects of managing a diverse workforce, beginning with understanding the big trends in employee demographics. We begin with a rhetorical question - asking if employees are assets? GAAP tells us they are not, so discussion will revolve around whether this treatment delivers an unhealthy bias on our view of the people in our organization. What do the most successful organizations believe and why? If you have an opinion as to whether employees are an asset or not, this is a fun session intended to be interactive with participation either live, virtual or both.
Mergers & Acquisitions: Tips and Speed Bumps to Avoid
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Online
2.00 Credits
Mergers, acquisitions and alliances have been and continue to be major avenues to organizational growth and increased competitive advantage. Despite the great initial promise of many mergers and alliances, few seem to yield the anticipated results. Numerous studies indicate that between 55% and 77% of mergers fail to accomplish their intended purpose. This course helps financial professionals, and their advisors identify, execute, and consummate mergers and acquisitions that create shareholder value while avoiding the many traps that can cause post-acquisition failure.
The Controllership Series - The Future Role of the Controller Part 1
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Online
1.50 Credits
This is a two-part series that discuss new trends and concepts the financial controller should begin to execute in order to truly become a valued member of the senior leadership team. The rapid pace of the evolving technological landscape has promoted changes in how accountants and financial professionals focus attention on strategy and modernize their roles to leverage digital technology. There is increased demand for enhancing flexibility into finance cycles and initiating real-time reporting and insights. These are the core attributes that will assist in transforming the work that controllership function performs. Is the financial controllership prepared to meet future business demands? The IMA® (Institute of Management Accountants) and Deloitte’s Center for Controllership aimed to better understand the current state of controllership and expectations of future demands for controllers and accounting professionals. They conducted a survey in late 2022 and identified several trends. The survey takes a look at how prepared controllership is to meet future business demands. It also highlights some insights for leaders to consider that may increase their preparedness. It also identified areas of additional insight and questions to answer on the controllership transformation journey. In this segment one, we go through numerous concepts in detail and the remaining concepts will be covered in segment two.
Inventory, Expense and Payroll Fraud
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Online
2.00 Credits
Inventory is a wonderful place to both hide fraud and commit fraud. The reasons that inventory is subject to so much fraud is the it is often very large, spread out over a large area, and many people have access to it. When there are little or no internal controls related to inventory control, you are begging employees to steal it. No with so many ways to dispose of stolen inventory via the internet, i.e., EBAY, inventory fraud is much more appealing to a lot of individuals. The more common ways to commit expense fraud and how to cover it up will also be discussed. Travel and entertainment are some of the favorite areas of committing expense fraud. In addition, payroll fraud will be discussed. Although there are many ways to commit payroll fraud, it is very easy to prevent. This presentation is designed to familiarize the participants with the many ways to commit inventory, expense and payroll fraud, how to detect it, and more importantly, how to prevent it.
The Role of Internal Audit in Enterprise-Wide Risk Management
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Online
8.00 Credits
Those charged with governance, with the assistance of internal audit, are responsible for overseeing the strategic direction of the organization, and ensuring value is delivered to the entity's stakeholders. This course will provide guidance on fulfilling the responsibility for challenging how much risk and uncertainty to accept through the application of COSO's Enterprise Risk Management Framework.
Combatting Sexual Harassment in the Workplace
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Online
1.00 Credits
This presentation will review what sex harassment is under the law, company compliance obligations, and describe how promoting a positive company culture can prevent sexual harassment in the workplace.
Was It Fraud or Just Poor Audit Quality?
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Online
1.60 Credits
This session describes a state agency's quality review of a not-for-profit organization's A-133 Single Audit. The case study describes the organization audited, its federally- and state-funded programs, and the CPA firm retained to do the audit. Various anomalies in the financial statements alerted state officials to potential problems, and a detailed quality review followed. Find out how the entity turned hundreds of thousands of dollars in bank overdrafts into hundreds of thousands of dollars of cash on its balance sheet. Explore other “creative” ways to deal with fixed assets, accounts receivable, and related-party transactions. Were the auditors just sloppy, ignorant, negligent? Or were they active participants in producing fraudulent financial statements? You be the judge.
Common Sense CFO: Balance Sheet Issues Walk through to Understand and Build Value
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Online
2.00 Credits
We mostly focus on the income statement, but what about other financial statements and countless other accounting concerns? This seminar is dedicated to breaking down common balance sheet issues, both on-the-books and off, that have an impact on our stakeholders and the value of the organization. Using practical analysis, we highlight several key tools in understanding and communicating the importance of the forgotten cornerstone of accounting: the balance sheet. Most notably, we dedicate time to the pressing issue of “unrecorded assets”. This session is designed to also be fun and entertaining. This seminar stands on its own but is also part of the Common Sense CFO series.
Critical "Soft" Skills for CFOs and Controllers
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Online
4.00 Credits
Accounting and finance managers and executives must demonstrate sound soft skills necessary for personal growth and organizational success. This course will provide insights into the most crtical personal skills critical for CFOs and Controllers - or those that want to be!
The Ethics Hour: Ethics is the Engine to Better Leadership: Taking Action, featuring Bob Mims and Don Minges
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Online
1.00 Credits
Ethics is grounded in leadership and the finest leaders are always ethical. Every effective leader is ethical, in words and actions. The best leaders communicate effectively. Being trustworthy is more than being honest and fair. In today’s turbulent environment, leadership matters more than ever as the talented staff will readily move to ethical leaders. We must enhance our leadership skills to remain valuable. Simple stated - we all want to work for, and with, an ethical leader.
Ethics Aren't for the Byrdes in Ozark
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Online
1.00 Credits
Professional codes of ethics provide guidance to professionals who are frequently required to choose between doing the right thing and the wrong thing. Sometimes, professionals violate their ethical code and do the wrong thing for what they rationalize is the right reason. This session uses the popular television show "Ozark" and its multiple examples of seemingly good people doing bad things for the right reason to define ethics as well as explore why people make unethical choices and how they justify those choices.
The Controllership Series - The Future Role of the Controller Part 2
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Online
1.50 Credits
This is a two-part series that discuss new trends and concepts the financial controller should begin to execute in order to truly become a valued member of the senior leadership team. The rapid pace of the evolving technological landscape has promoted changes in how accountants and financial professionals focus attention on strategy and modernize their roles to leverage digital technology. There is increased demand for enhancing flexibility into finance cycles and initiating real-time reporting and insights. These are the core attributes that will assist in transforming the work that controllership function performs. Is the financial controllership prepared to meet future business demands? The IMA® (Institute of Management Accountants) and Deloitte’s Center for Controllership aimed to better understand the current state of controllership and expectations of future demands for controllers and accounting professionals. They conducted a survey in late 2022 and identified several trends. The survey takes a look at how prepared controllership is to meet future business demands. It also highlights some insights for leaders to consider that may increase their preparedness. It also identified areas of additional insight and questions to answer on the controllership transformation journey. In this segment, we will go through numerous concepts in detail.
Tax Power Ethics for Tax Professionals
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Online
2.00 Credits
Award winning discussion leader, former state accountancy board chair, and lifelong tax practitioner Mark Hugh will review ethics for tax professionals: the AICPA Code of Professional Conduct and interpretations; the Statements on Standards for Tax Services; tax preparer standards in the Internal Revenue Code; the rules for practice with and before the IRS, including IRS Circular 230; new developments; and discuss examples of best practices and case studies.
The Three Million Dollar Ribbon
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Online
2.00 Credits
Two conmen used lies and falsified documents to convince the State of Tennessee to give them a $3,000,000 economic development grant to create 1,000 jobs by purchasing and rehabilitating a vacant factory in rural Tennessee. Instead, they spent most of the money on an extravagant lifestyle and invested over $1M in a scheme to defraud the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) out of over $30,000,000 pursuant to a contract to provide the tarps for areas such as Puerto Rico, affected by hurricanes. This session provides a detailed case study of how the investigators accumulated, organized, and analyzed hundreds of documents, identified the falsifications and misrepresentations, conducted multiple interviews, and ultimately convicted the conmen. This case study provides multiple takeaways for detecting and investigating grant fraud, which is especially relevant in light of the numerous federal stimulus programs in recent years.
SAS No. 122, AU 240, Consideration of Fraud in a Financial Statement Audit
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Online
3.00 Credits
When performing a financial statement audit, auditors have always been responsible for the detection of anything that would cause a material misstatement of the financial statements whether caused by error of fraud. However, in the past the audit profession focused on material misstatements due to errors and more or less ignored the possibility of misstatements due to fraud. Now, SAS No. 122, AU 240 requires significant documentation as to what the auditor did in order to determine if there any material risk of a misstatement of the financial statements. This presentation is an overview of what the auditor is to document in there working papers on every financial audit as to the procedures they performed in order to determine the risk of a material misstatement. If a material risk is discovered, they are then required to document what they did in order to determine if the financial statements were misstated.
Optimize Your Staff's Performance
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Online
4.00 Credits
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.
KPI Bootcamp for Small Businesses
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Online
5.00 Credits
Running or advising a small business? The KPI Bootcamp can help you rapidly identify and implement the right KPIs to achieve your or your client's goals. Delivered by Bernie Smith, KPI specialist and seasoned entrepreneur, this course will guide you through selecting a powerful set of measures tailored to your business. The structured approach helps you refine your objectives and choose KPIs that drive growth and profitability. The program includes access to over 400 pre-defined KPIs, each with a clear, jargon-free definition, business benefits, real-world examples, and practical implementation tips.
Top Employment Tools to Protect Your Business and Recommend to Business Clients
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Online
1.00 Credits
Overview of the most important labor and employment policies and practices that every business should have. The review will go over confidentiality agreements, arbitration agreements, restrictive covenants, training, and severance agreements, as well as compliance issues related to each of them.
Bears Will Be Bears - Fraudsters Too
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Online
2.00 Credits
Bears are intelligent and motivated to find food. When I left some fried chicken in my Jeep while in Gatlinburg, a bear tore a hole in the top and ate the chicken and part of my Jeep. He was just a bear being a bear. I'm responsible because I left the chicken in the Jeep and gave him the opportunity. Similarly, people are intelligent and motivated to survive. If we give them opportunity by not implementing good internal controls, they will take our assets. This session reviews the investigation and prosecution of the former director of a conference center who took advantage of lax internal controls of a joint-venture and stole thousands. She was just a fraudster being a fraudster.
Common Sense CFO: Decoding and Mitigating Internal and External Risks
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Online
2.00 Credits
Do you get bored with similar rubrics’ cube COSO risk model courses? They are important and great, but this course is intended to offer a fresh approach on the view of risk using the dynamic landscape of modern business; CFOs are charged with navigating an array of external and internal risks that can impact organizational performance and sustainability. This seminar will empower finance professionals with the foresight and practical tools needed to understand, anticipate, and mitigate both external and internal risks. We must be aware and anticipate. If we do not adequately prepare, we will be exposed to avoidable and onerous risk. Essential for leaders and organizations that want to survive and thrive. This seminar stands on its own but is also part of the Common Sense CFO series.