CPE & Event Catalog

The role of professional judgment. Examples of conflicts of interest. How to identify a conflict of interest. Severity of conflicts of interest. When to obtain guidance. Conflict of interest safeguards. Disclosing a conflict of interest. IRS conflicts of interest. Specific conflict of interest situations. Obligations to an employer's external accountant. Services involving advocacy. Conflicts of interest for CPAs in business. Comparing conflicts of interest for CPAs in public practice and in business. Documentation of conflicts of interest.

Deductible interest and debt. Allocation of deductible interest. Home mortgage interest. Taxable interest. Installment sales. Repossession. Debt cancellation and foreclosure. Equity participation debt. Foreign interest withholding. Bad debts.

Expense report abuses. Dealing with missing or illegible receipts. Dealing with the laggards. Dealing with approved reimbursement requests for items outside the policy or inappropriate items. Steps to reduce the number of questionable requests for reimbursement. Dealing with employees using cards deceitfully for personal gain. Dealing with employee misuse of company card. Dealing with personal items on expense reports. Strategies to combat inappropriate expense reimbursement requests. How employees cheat on their expense reports. Dealing with expense reimbursement conflicts.

Goals. Sources of performance deviations. Successful interventions.

Deductible interest and debt. Allocation of deductible interest. Taxable interest. Installment sales. Debt cancellation and foreclosure. Bad debts.

Critical issues affecting the decedent of the deceased.

U.S. GAAP susceptible to deceptive accounting. Asset manipulation techniques. Liability manipulation techniques. Hiding pension obligations. Reclassifying liabilities. Misclassifying debt as equity.

U.S. GAAP susceptible to deceptive accounting. Enron and WorldCom. Revenue recognition manipulation techniques. Channel stuffing. Capitalizing expenses. Misclassifying expenses.

Decision trees. Sensitivity analysis.

IF Statements. IFs FUNCTION. AND, OR, and NOT. SUMIF. COUNTIF. SWITCH.

Basic marital tax matters. Transfers incident to divorce. Alimony and child support. Selected marital tax issues outside of divorce.

Control design basics. Areas or segments of an enterprise to control. Controls to reduce risk. Controls to drive operations.

Contract costs. Disclosures. Construction contractors.

Types of derivatives. Hedging vs. speculation. Derivative markets. Risk management.

Introduction to derivatives and hedging. Forwards futures. Swaps. Options.

Cash flow management and budgeting. Planning for insurance, investments, education, income tax, employee benefits, retirement and estate planning. Implications for various specialty groups, such as closely-held business owners, highly compensated employees, Baby Boomers, newly retired individuals and those who are suddenly single due to divorce or being widowed.

Maintaining productivity during unassigned time. Typical constructive feedback comments for staff auditors. Setting professional development goals to become a star performer. Case studies related to difficult scenarios typically encountered by staff accountants. Managing time and assigned tasks. Tips for audit professionals for both short- and long-term success.

Held for sale criteria. Management commitment to a sale. FASB implementation guidance. Impacts from held for sale classification. Measuring held for sale assets. Fair value and costs to sell. Depreciation impacts. Changes to the plan of sale.

Asset and equity mismanagement. Manipulating depreciation or amortization schedules. Related party transaction fraud. Creating shell companies for fraudulent transactions. Manipulating stock option accounting. Failure to consolidate related entities. Failure to disclose contingent liabilities. Misreporting foreign currency gains or losses. Misleading disclosures. Best practices for ethical financial reporting.

Revenue and earnings manipulation. Non-recurring items. Detecting improper use of non-recurring items. Overstating deferred revenue. Common mistakes in deferred revenue. Intentional mistakes in deferred revenue. Detecting intentional misstatements in deferred revenue. Backdating transactions. Detecting backdating. Fraudulent journal entries. Detecting fraudulent journal entries. Misclassifying financial statement items. Improper use of reserves. Misrepresenting lease classifications. Structuring transactions to avoid regulatory or accounting thresholds.