CPE Catalog
Note
AICPA On-Demand & Self-Study courses take up to 24 hours to process.
Surgent's 2024 Tax Update for Client Advisory Services
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Online
4.00 Credits
Client advisory services (CAS) professionals are becoming a more integral part of the operations of any CPA firm. As such, they must stay on top of changing tax law. In this course, we will explore tax changes in areas CAS professionals are involved with - information reporting, payroll tax issues, and tax credit and deduction documentation. We will also discuss relevant changes to individual and business tax returns so that CAS professionals can better assist clients with tax needs in the upcoming year.This course qualifies for IRS credit.
Surgent's Contract Law for Accounting and Finance Professionals
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Online
2.00 Credits
Accounting and finance professionals routinely encounter a broad range of legal issues while advising clients or performing routine job functions. Contract law tops the list as the most frequent issue that intersects with the accounting and finance professions. As trusted advisors, it is wise to understand the fundamentals of contract law for both personal and professional benefit. This course provides a broad overview of contract law basics geared specifically toward the accounting and finance professions. From contract formation to enforceability, this course offers an interesting look at how contract law intersects with accounting and finance. Participants should walk away with a better understanding of common issues that arise when reviewing contracts.
Surgent's Controllership Skills Update - Budgeting, Forecasting, and Big Data
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Online
2.00 Credits
Budgets are the vehicle for allocating resources, measuring activities, and identifying needed changes and improvements. An organization's strategy is the primary driver of costs. To be effective, the budget must be linked to strategy and long-term plans. Numerous organizations have achieved a series of short-term targets (budgets) but failed longer term, demonstrating the lack of this necessary linkage. Forecasting, a critical part of any successful budgeting process, can be flawed by technical errors, organizational structure, or emotional forces. The establishment of a system to collect, process, and analyze big data can provide significant insights into the budgeting and forecasting process. An efficient system of incorporating big data and analytics into normal activities will improve management's decision-making. This brief program offers specific actions to improve your forecasting and budgeting activities. In addition, more advanced techniques are identified for the participant's further review, which can be applied throughout an organization. Good budgets effectively allocate resources, provide information for decision-making and serve as an early warning system for unforeseen events. A poor budgeting process fosters a false sense of security, provides inappropriate or inaccurate data, and reinforces the status quo. Budgets are about the organization's story, not just the raw numbers!
Surgent's Excel: Mastering PivotTables
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Online
2.00 Credits
PivotTable is a fancy term for an Excel report that summarizes data. If you have not yet had the good fortune of exploring PivotTables, it is about time. In this session, we'll dig into PivotTables, understand the report layout options, and examine PivotTable formulas.
Surgent's Implementing Subscription Pricing to Your Practice
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Online
2.00 Credits
This course is designed to provide accountants with a comprehensive understanding of the subscription pricing model. As the business world increasingly shifts toward subscription-based models, it's crucial for accountants to understand the financial implications and strategies associated with this pricing approach. This course will cover the basics of subscription pricing, how to set prices, and how to analyze the financial impacts of these decisions, as well as the specific impacts to your business. By the end of this course, participants will be equipped with the knowledge and skills to effectively manage the implementation of subscription pricing to their practice.
Surgent's Use the Data Model to Build More Powerful PivotTables
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Online
2.00 Credits
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.
Surgent's Management Fundamentals
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Online
4.00 Credits
In a recent Gallup study, 50% of respondents quit because of their manager, which makes your managers and supervisors your company's first line of defense against costly turnover. This program looks at management from a broad perspective and then drills down into key skills needed to manage effectively.
Surgent's The Accountant as the Expert Witness
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Online
2.00 Credits
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.
Surgent's Successfully Completing an Estate Tax Return -- Form 706
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Online
2.00 Credits
Since the early 2000s, the estate tax burden on taxpayers has gradually decreased along with the number of practitioners specializing in the field. Nevertheless, some of your most wealthy clients will owe estate tax and this issue will eventually be thrust upon you. Finding an affordable, competent specialist who you trust to work with you and your client may be difficult. Learning the basics of the tax and how to complete the form will give you confidence to help your clients navigate that difficult time.This course qualifies for IRS credit.
Surgent's Tax Research
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Online
2.00 Credits
Answering clients' tax questions accurately and on time is a key challenge for tax practitioners. Through simple, plain language explanations and examples, this course will help practitioners perform tax research more efficiently by describing the structure of the primary sources, highlighting the differences between primary and secondary sources, and detailing the steps in the tax research process.This course qualifies for IRS credit.
Surgent's Tax Loss Limitations Imposed on Individuals and Pass-through Entities
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Online
3.00 Credits
Tax practitioners advising their business clients must be fully informed regarding the multiple loss limitation provisions that apply to individuals conducting businesses and pass-through entities. This program covers the loss limitation rules that tax practitioners must know in order to advise their individual and pass-through entity clients fully and adequately as to when and if a loss limitation applies. The loss limitations discussed in this program start with an introductory discussion of hobby loss rules and graduate to a more substantive discussion of the remaining loss limitations: basis limits, at-risk rules, passive loss limits, excess business loss limits, net operating losses, and the Section 163(j) interest limitation. Knowing when loss limits apply is essential for any tax practitioner. This program will put you in a position to advise clients fully and intelligently regarding each of the loss limits.This course qualifies for IRS credit.
Surgent's Accountability: Stop the Blame Game
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Online
4.00 Credits
Good managers know how to delegate, but it can be a challenge to manage employees who are more interested in passing the buck than being responsible. Lack of ownership and responsibility can bog down processes and shut down projects. This workshop will help you create a game plan for building a culture of accountability with your team.
Surgent's Excel for Accountants: Using Excel to Cleanse and Prepare Data
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Online
2.00 Credits
Do you ever import data into Excel, and then spend a bunch of time manually preparing it for use? Perhaps you delete extra columns or rows. Maybe you need to split a single column into multiple columns, or, combine multiple columns into a single column. The good news is that many of these transformations can be fully automated with Excel! The Get & Transform tools built-in to Excel 2016 for Windows, formerly available as the Power Query add-in, are incredibly powerful. At a high level, they enable us to retrieve data from a variety of sources and prepare it for use as needed. In this session, we'll use Get & Transform queries to help with several common tasks, including flattening data, splitting and combining columns, formatting data, unpivoting summarized data, and combining several csv exports. If you frequently export/import data from one system to another, you will want to understand how to use a Get & Transform query to streamline your work.
Surgent's Purchase and Sale of a Residence: Critical Tax Issues
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Online
2.00 Credits
Many clients end up selling one or more residences during their lifetimes. Tax practitioners must be aware of the tax rules that relate to such sales in order to assist their clients regarding these sales. This program provides general tax practitioners with the tax rules they need to know to help their clients when they sell a personal residence. This program is a comprehensive survey of the various tax issues associated with the sale of a residence.This course qualifies for IRS credit.
Surgent's Ethical Considerations for the CPA
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Online
4.00 Credits
CPAs today face greater challenges than ever to maintain the high ethical standards of their profession. It is vitally important that all CPAs understand their professional responsibilities related to all aspects of their job. This course, which focuses on key components of the AICPA Code of Professional Conduct, reviews a history of the CPA profession and focuses on ethical requirements that CPAs must adhere to in their everyday practice, including practical examples of potential ethical dilemmas that practitioners may encounter, particularly those related to objectivity and independence. PLEASE NOTE: THIS COURSE COVERS GENERAL ETHICS AND IS APPLICABLE IN STATES IN WHICH STATE-SPECIFIC ETHICS IS NOT REQUIRED. This course does not qualify for IRS credit.
Surgent's Managing People Through Motivation
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Online
4.00 Credits
Whether your employees report in every day to the floor or from an off-site network, the success of your organization depends a great deal on the motivation they bring to the job. This program helps identify specific methods you can use to improve employee motivation. You'll learn how to use observation tools to find out what motivates your employees and you'll study classic motivational theories. The results will help you influence the behaviors of others and tweak your own behavior to improve your bottom line.
Surgent's More Money at the End of the Month: Strategic Ways to Improve Cash Flow
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Online
2.00 Credits
Cash flow management is often the most important task of any CFO or financial leader. Regardless of whether one works in start-ups or established companies, non-profit or for-profit entities, cash flow makes our organizations run. Have you ever wondered whether you are optimizing your company's cash flow? In this course, we will explore how to improve your company's cash flow using analysis and financial theories in the context of real-world situations.
Surgent's Tax Reporting for Executive Compensation
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Online
2.00 Credits
This comprehensive course delves into the intricate world of executive compensation, focusing on the taxation and reporting procedures for various types of compensation arrangements. Participants will gain a deep understanding of the key differences between incentive stock options (ISOs) and nonqualified stock options (NQSOs), as well as the tax treatment and reporting requirements for restricted stock awards, stock appreciation rights (SARs), phantom stock plans, and employee stock purchase plans (ESPPs). The course will also cover the accurate analysis of tax forms and schedules used for reporting executive compensation, common tax reporting errors to avoid, and strategies for handling extensions, estimated taxes, and increased IRS scrutiny.This course qualifies for IRS credit.
Surgent's Going Concern Accounting and Reporting Considerations
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Online
2.00 Credits
This course will review the relevant considerations related to going concern, including assessing when substantial doubt concerning an entity's ability to continue as a going concern exists, management mitigation efforts, and required disclosures both when management, and the accountant, feel such efforts will be effective in mitigating the risk, as well as when they do not. Lastly, we'll consider the accountant's reporting responsibilities under various scopes of services in various scenarios and how to audit this often-contentious topic.
Surgent's Employer's Handbook: Legal, Tax, and Health Care Issues
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Online
8.00 Credits
The employer-employee relationship strains both sides in uncertain times, and businesses need CPAs, controllers, and other advisors to provide understanding of the complex legal, tax, and health care issues associated with all aspects of employment. This course provides in-depth coverage of this critical area. It will be updated and supplemented throughout the year to cover breaking developments.