Who knew how easy it is to steal? This course uses five recent employee theft cases to demonstrate the importance of internal controls and management oversight in the prevention of employee theft. A recurring theme in each of these cases is a lack of appropriate internal controls and a lack of management oversight. Program Level: Basic No prerequisites or advanced preparation required. CPE Credits: 1 Hour Field of Study: Auditing Delivery Method: QAS Self Study

Small business enterprises sometimes take the position that effective internal controls cannot be achieved. There aren’t enough employees for adequate segregation of duties. Many, if not most, have no internal audit function. However, even within the confines of these and other challenges, small businesses can achieve an effective internal control structure. To overcome an inability to segregate duties as well as other issues, small businesses must look for mitigating controls. The most pervasive mitigating control is the direct oversight of management. This oversight may take the form of financial statement review, approving disbursements, signing checks as well as other review processes. While there are other considerations as to whether the oversight of management may mitigate a lack of segregation of duties and other internal control challenges, if done correctly, this is one of the best ways to overcome these inherent issues. There are internal control fundamentals that are appropriate for small businesses. This course discusses fundamental operational and accounting controls and also reviews the optimal company culture for an effective internal control environment. Program Level: Basic No prerequisites or advanced preparation required. CPE Credits: 2 Hours Field of Study: Auditing Delivery Method: QAS Self Study

This course is based on two recent financial statement fraud cases; Dewey & LeBouef and ContinuityX. Dewey & LeBouef was a high-profile law firm that, at its peak, had over 3,000 employees and over 1,400 lawyers. It is alleged that personnel at Dewey & LeBouef made inappropriate financial adjustments starting in 2008 to meet its bank lending covenants and planned to conceal these adjustments from its “clueless auditor”. Dewey & LeBouef declared bankruptcy in 2012. ContinuityX was an internet services reseller that, according to an SEC complaint, fabricated 99% of its revenue. It was audited by a firm that was fined and disciplined by the SEC and the partner responsible for the audit was also fined and permanently suspended from practicing before the SEC. ContinuityX declared bankruptcy in 2013. Both cases involve financial statement fraud, auditor deception and some lessons to be learned. Program Level: Basic No prerequisites or advanced preparation required. CPE Credits: 1 Hour Field of Study: Auditing Delivery Method: QAS Self Study

The Beneficial Ownership Information Reporting Rule requires reporting companies to disclose certain information. Generally, reporting companies must disclose their legal name, any DBA names, the address of their principal place of business in the U.S., jurisdiction of formation, IRS TIN or EIN as well as information concerning beneficial owners. There are rules and exceptions as to what constitutes a reporting company. A beneficial owners is any individual who exercises substantial control over a reporting company or one who owns or controls at least 25% of the ownership interests. Information disclosed about beneficial owners includes full legal name, date of birth, current address, and the number and image of either a U.S. passport, state driver’s license or other identification document issued by a state, local government or tribe. Once again, there are rules that help define who constitutes a beneficial owner. This course uses published guidance from FinCEN to provide an overview of the rules and reporting requirements. Program Level: Basic No prerequisites or advanced preparation required. CPE Credits: 1 Hour Field of Study: Specialized Knowledge Delivery Method: QAS Self Study

Simple fraud schemes that use social engineering techniques are gaining popularity in the United States. These schemes rely on trickery to persuade an unsuspecting employee to divert cash or sensitive information to the fraudster. This course examines techniques being employed such as email spoofing, phishing and vishing using actual recent cases and discusses techniques to minimize the possibility of this type of fraud in your organization. Program Level: Basic No prerequisites or advanced preparation required. CPE Credits: 1 Hour Field of Study: Auditing Delivery Method: QAS Self Study

The comparison of actual revenue or margin amounts to either budget or prior year results will generally result in a variance. This course demonstrates mathematical formulas to compute the amount of that variance that is attributable to pricing decisions, unit volume and product mix. In the case of margin variances, the calculation for product cost is an additional component. This method is an important tool to clearly and concisely explain revenue and margin variances to marketing, operations and executive personnel. Specific topics covered are the calculation of the price, volume, mix and cost components as well as an explanation of the concept of product mix. Applicable to CPA’s working in the manufacturing or distribution industry as well as CPA’s in public accounting who serve these industries. Program Level: Basic No prerequisites or advanced preparation required. CPE Credits: 2 Hours Field of Study: Accounting Delivery Method: QAS Self Study

This course discusses eight employee theft cases to demonstrate the importance of internal controls and management oversight in the prevention of employee theft. Some of the companies are large and some are small. Some are examined in detail while others are overviewed. Companies discussed: Sandhog Union, United Probation Officers Association, Ayer Family Trust, Craig Brothers Plumbing and Heating, Pet First Healthcare, Standford Financial Group, Woodruff Arts Center and Fry’s Electronics. Understanding the motivations and conditions that foster fraudulent behavior is essential for developing effective prevention strategies. A recurring theme in each of these cases is a lack of appropriate internal controls and a lack of management oversight Program Level: Basic No prerequisites or advanced preparation required. CPE Credits: 2 Hours Field of Study: Audit

The Journal of Accountancy stated that audiences understand and remember numerical information more easily when a CPA presents it visually as well as verbally. This course covers the basics of creating, editing and formatting a chart and more. It also shows you how to create a default chart as well as a custom chart. It discusses different chart types such as a combination chart, 2 y axis chart, stock charts, funnel charts and waterfall charts. The course also discusses how to efficiently link your Excel charts into PowerPoint and Word so that your presentations are always up-to-date. PREREQUISITIES: This course is written for Excel 2019 and Microsoft Office 365 users. However, users with Excel 2016 should have little difficulty. A basic understanding of file management (how to open and save files) is assumed. You should be comfortable using Excel at a basic level. CPE Credits: 5 Hours Field of Study: Computer Software & Applications Delivery Method: QAS Self Study

This course explores functions in Excel that CPAs need to use to enhance productivity and ensure accurate answers when working with data. Functions are built-in, preset formulas in the Excel program that calculate certain values or accomplish a certain calculation goal. Functions are essential to CPAs as they provide a simplified user interface to work with complex formulas. This course covers basic functions and then goes into logic functions, text functions, lookup functions and financial functions. This course provides step by step instruction and Excel practice exercises. Functions discussed include: Database functions such as DSUM and DCOUNT; Lookup functions such as XLOOKUP and INDEX MATCH, Logic functions such as IF OR, IFERROR; Text functions such as CONCAT, LEN,TEXTSPLIT and TEXTBEFORE. A lot of time is given to financial functions with multiple little case studies as it delves into PV,PMT,NPER FV and RATE. Basically, every important function you need to know! Program Level: Basic No prerequisites or advanced preparation required. CPE Credits: 6 Hours Field of Study: Specialized Knowledge Delivery Method: QAS Self Study

Power Query is an Excel feature available within the newest versions of Excel. It used to be an add-in feature called Power Query. Microsoft calls it Power Query as well as Get and Transform and it is a business intelligence tool that allows you to retrieve data from a variety of sources, clean it and then transform or refine the data as needed. For example, you can import a database file, parse data, split or combine columns, change data types, group data and more. You can then take that transformed data back into Excel and analyze it using your preferred methods. What makes this feature exciting is that Excel records all your steps so the data in the file can automatically be refreshed with Excel retrieving the source data, applying the same steps and updating the file for you. This is a huge time saver and will also reduce errors. Version: This feature is only available in Excel versions starting with Excel 2016 To, see if you have this feature, simply click on the Data tab in Excel. You should see a section of the ribbon called Get & Transform. If you do not see this section, then you do not have the Get & Transform Data feature and will not be able to do any of the exercises in this eBook. If you have the older add-in feature called Power Query you should be able to follow along just fine. You can also download an add-in version if you have an earlier Excel version. Update: This course is based upon Microsoft 365 and updates through November 5, 2024. Depending upon your version, some of the screenshots and commands may differ. Prerequisites: Intermediate to Advanced Knowledge in Excel. An understanding of how databases work would be very helpful but not necessary. Delivery: QAS Self Study

This is an introductory course covering the basics of Excel tools and techniques dealing with downloaded data in a text format. It covers converting numbers formatted as text to numbers usable by Excel functions, concatenation, text to Columns and specific Excel text functions to manipulate and analyze data. This course provides step by step instruction. It does provide an exercise file although most examples are simple and easy to type in on your own. In some cases, an answer sheet is also provided in the file. Images of Excel menus, ribbons and dialog boxes use Microsoft Excel 365 so yours may look slightly different depending upon your version of Excel. In some cases, a few functions may not be available in earlier Excel versions and are so noted. Program Level: Basic No prerequisites or advanced preparation required. CPE Credits: 1 Hour Field of Study: Computer Science Delivery Method: QAS Self Study