There are a multitude of personal financial planning business models you can implement. The one you choose is what works best for you, your practice and your clients. A panel of successful practitioners in the most common business models in the CPA profession will share how they built their practice to provide the highest value for clients while also running a successful business. This session will cover the following topics:

• Getting started with learning more about you (polling questions)
• The PFP opportunity
• Introduction of the panelists
• The benefits, challenges, and best practices of the various business models — helping you identify the best structure for your practice and clients
• The economics behind getting this service off the ground and what to expect in terms of revenue along the way
• How they charge for these services and compensate partners and staff
• How they converted tax clients into PFP clients
• The psychological side of providing these services
• How and why they chose their investment business model and how they successfully implemented their strategy
• How to seamlessly integrate the CPA and RIA sides of the business
• How they manage resource needs, including staffing and outside experts
• Options for gaining help from 3^rd
  parties (RIA firms, and other advisors) to assist in your efforts
• Increasing the value of your practice by adding financial planning - succession plan/future sale/buyer’s view
• Growing your business through marketing
• Holding effective virtual client meetings
• Reflection time for participants

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the benefits, challenges, and best practices of the various business models.
• Recognize the benefits of adding PFP services to your practice and how you can do this.
• Choose which business models and ways of doing business resonate most for you.

Continuation of session one... 

There are a multitude of personal financial planning business models you can implement. The one you choose is what works best for you, your practice and your clients. A panel of successful practitioners in the most common business models in the CPA profession will share how they built their practice to provide the highest value for clients while also running a successful business. This session will cover the following topics:

• Getting started with learning more about you (polling questions)
• The PFP opportunity
• Introduction of the panelists
• The benefits, challenges, and best practices of the various business models — helping you identify the best structure for your practice and clients
• The economics behind getting this service off the ground and what to expect in terms of revenue along the way
• How they charge for these services and compensate partners and staff
• How they converted tax clients into PFP clients
• The psychological side of providing these services
• How and why they chose their investment business model and how they successfully implemented their strategy
• How to seamlessly integrate the CPA and RIA sides of the business
• How they manage resource needs, including staffing and outside experts
• Options for gaining help from 3^rd
  parties (RIA firms, and other advisors) to assist in your efforts
• Increasing the value of your practice by adding financial planning - succession plan/future sale/buyer’s view
• Growing your business through marketing
• Holding effective virtual client meetings
• Reflection time for participants

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the benefits, challenges, and best practices of the various business models.
• Recognize the benefits of adding PFP services to your practice and how you can do this.
• Choose which business models and ways of doing business resonate most for you.

In preparation for the PFS Experienced CPA Assessment, this overview of the PFP Body of Knowledge identifies all the topics on which a CPA financial planner and PFS Credential holder should have a basic working knowledge. They need to understand the topic fundamentals, how tax impacts the area, and how decisions on the topic can impact other topics. This session will cover the following topics in an overview format: * Introduction of the workshop and speakers * Retirement planning * Estate planning * Investment planning * Risk management and insurance planning * Elder planning * Charitable planning * Education planning * Business owner and employee benefit planning * Tax implications of PFP topics * Inter-dependence of PFP topics. Come ready to focus on applying your experience as a CPA working with individuals and families in preparation attaining the PFS credential.

Learning Objectives:

• Recognize the benefits of Practice Standards
• Identify the 12 Major Topics, and 75 sub-topics, of the Personal Financial Planning Body of Knowledge

• Determine whether you have or will cross the line when providing investment advice, so you know when or if to register as an investment adviser
• Investment advisory business model options and pros and cons of each
• Registration process
• Regulatory oversight
• Compliance programs
• Determine whether you will cover your compliance needs or outsource
  • Hot topics (social media rules, custody, etc.)
  • Protecting your practice with insurance
  • Hear how panelists chose their model
  • Q&A
  • Reflection time for participants

Learning Objectives:

• Determine when you cross the line and are providing investment advice.
• Recall the pros and cons of the various investment advisory business models.
• Distinguish how other CPAs have chosen their investment advisory path.
• Recognize whether you want to provide investment advice and how you want to proceed.

This session works through a case study of a typical younger family client’s situation. It will discuss how information gathered from the client informs the CPA financial planner on discussion points of specific aspects of topics from the body of knowledge. Background on these points will be discussed to ensure the attendee has a broad working knowledge of why this is important for this client, how it relates the PFP Standards, potential tax impacts, and impacts on the overall financial plan.

Learning Objectives:

• Select the type of personal financial planning engagement that is most appropriate based on the case study’s facts and circumstances
• Calculate the personal financial planning client’s gross income based on their cash flow statement
• Calculate the number of months the personal financial planning client has funded in their emergency reserves based on their statement of financial position
• Determine the personal financial planning client’s PITI ratio
• Recall which of the four key areas of personal financial planning should be accomplished first in a particular personal financial plan

• Review engagement activities as defined by the Statement on Standards in Personal Financial Planning Services, No. 1
• Discuss methods to identify your ideal client and secure the PFP engagement
• Determine how to price the PFP engagement
• Walk through how to structure typical client meetings included in the PFP engagement:
  • Initial complementary consultation and data gathering
  • Creation of Statement(s) of Financial Position and Cash Flow
  • Estate planning
  • Risk management planning
  • Investment planning
  • Retirement/Financial independence planning
  • Planning for ancillary services like education and elder planning
• Reflection time for participants

Learning Objectives:

• Determine how to structure a PFP engagement in alignment with the AICPA PFP standards.
• Identify how to structure the typical client meetings from estate planning to retirement planning and more.
• Recognize methods to secure and price a PFP engagement.
• Determine how to identify your ideal client.

The LAB is a full-day working session exclusive to AICPA Leadership Academy graduates. This robust, collaborative session is designed to enhance the skills and knowledge learned from previous Leadership Academies and facilitated by Rebecca Tillemans and Ranieka Weston, both from pLink Leadership. Join fellow graduates to further the connections made with your specific graduating class and forge new, lifelong connections with members other class years. This is what you have been waiting for regardless of how recent or long ago you attended Leadership Academy.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand 3 advantages of a focused business strategy
• Express the importance of perspective-taking when strategizing.
• Employ the thought-bridging technique to shift awareness.
• Generate prioritized task lists through the use of a mindsweep exercise.

• Core technology offerings to consider (financial planning software, client relationship management software, document management software, etc.)
• Major industry trends
• Emerging technologies
• Hear how panelists chose their technology stack
• Q&A
• Reflection time for participants

Learning Objectives:

• Recognize the technology landscape in personal financial planning services.
• Determine the key software you need to provide these services.
• Distinguish how other CPAs have chosen their technology stack.
• Identify the software that resonates most for how you want to proceed.

This session works through a case study of a typical pre-retirement family client’s situation as they contemplate moving into retirement. It will discuss how information gathered from the client informs the CPA financial planner on discussion points of specific aspects of topics from the body of knowledge. Background on these points will be discussed to ensure the attendee has a broad working knowledge of why this is important for this client, how it relates the PFP Standards, potential tax impacts, and impacts on the overall financial plan.

Learning Objectives:

• Select the type of personal financial planning engagement that is most appropriate based on the case study’s facts and circumstances
• Determine the number of months the personal financial planning client has funded in their emergency reserves based on their statement of financial position
• Calculate the future value of the personal financial planning client’s retirement income needs.
• Determine the annual payment amount needed to fund the personal financial planning client’s retirement goal

This session works through a case study of a typical older retired family client’s situation as they address common issues at that stage of their lives. It will discuss how information gathered from the client informs the CPA financial planner on discussion points of specific aspects of topics from the body of knowledge. Background on these points will be discussed to ensure the attendee has a broad working knowledge of why this is important for this client, how it relates the PFP Standards, potential tax impacts, and impacts on the overall financial plan.

Learning Objectives:

• Select the type of personal financial planning engagement that is most appropriate based on the case study’s facts and circumstances
• Calculate the cash inflow for the survivor at the death of his or her spouse
• Recognize missing items of income from a personal financial planning client’s spending plan
• Recall the type of care that provides services in a nonresidential community-based group program

Group 1

Dirk Edwards, CPA/PFS, JD, Edwards Bradley PC, Lake Oswego, OR

• Clients include entrepreneurs, executives, and high-net-worth individuals and their families; offers integrated personal financial planning and tax compliance services

Susan M. Tillery, CPA/PFS, President & CEO, Paraklete Financial Inc., Kennesaw, GA

• Fee-for-service integrated financial planning without asset management or product sales who builds a team of advisers and offers a multi-family office approach

Brooke Salvini, CPA/PFS, Principal, Salvini Financial Planning, San Luis, Obispo, CA

• Registered investment adviser firm that offers fee-only, hourly and retainer, objective advice with a focus on estate, retirement, tax, investment, and risk management planning

Group 2

Scott Sprinkle, CPA/PFS, CGMA, CFP, Sprinkle Financial Consultants LLC, Littleton, CO

• Family office/high-net-worth client model providing tax, financial planning and investment advisory services with fee-only compensation

David Stolz, CPA/PFS, CFP, Stolz and Associates P.S., Tacoma, WA

• Registered investment adviser firm that offers fee-only, hourly and retainer financial planning and asset management with a focus on high-net-worth couples and divorcees

Group 3

Jean-Luc Bourdon, CPA/PFS, Principal, Lucent Wealth Planning LLC, Santa Barbara, CA

• Fee-only independent firm affiliated with a Turnkey Asset Management Provider (TAMP) offering financial planning and investment management services

Theodore Sarenski, CPA/PFS, CFP, AEP, President/CEO, Wealth Manager, SageView Advisory Group, LLC, Syracuse, NY

• Experience selling a business and providing PFP services in multiple firms with a fee-only focus on investment management and financial planning
• Mark Astrinos, CPA/PFS, CFP®, RLP®
  • Experience buying a business; provides personal CFO services that include life planning, financial planning, and investment planning for a fixed fee

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the benefits and challenges of the business models that resonate most for you.
• Determine what you need to know to take your next steps.

Continuation of previous session... This session works through a case study of a typical older retired family client’s situation as they address common issues at that stage of their lives. It will discuss how information gathered from the client informs the CPA financial planner on discussion points of specific aspects of topics from the body of knowledge. Background on these points will be discussed to ensure the attendee has a broad working knowledge of why this is important for this client, how it relates the PFP Standards, potential tax impacts, and impacts on the overall financial plan.

Learning Objectives:

• Select the type of personal financial planning engagement that is most appropriate based on the case study’s facts and circumstances
• Calculate the cash inflow for the survivor at the death of his or her spouse
• Recognize missing items of income from a personal financial planning client’s spending plan
• Recall the type of care that provides services in a nonresidential community-based group program

IN PERSON ONLY INTERACTIVE WORKSHOP - INCLUDED IN YOUR ALL-ACCESS PASS (Additional Fee for 3 Day Pass Holders). More information coming shortly...

Learning Objectives:

• Learn the basics of the income taxation of estates and trusts including planning opportunities available during the administration of the estate or trust
• Learn what distributable net income (DNI) is, how to calculate it and how it is allocated between the estate or trust and its beneficiaries.
• Learn how trust accounting income, distributable net income and taxable income differ and how to calculate the taxable income of an estate or trust
• Discover the tax consequences of the termination of an estate or trust

IN PERSON ONLY INTERACTIVE WORKSHOP - INCLUDED IN YOUR ALL-ACCESS PASS (Additional Fee for 3 Day Pass Holders). In this workshop we will dig deep into the AICPA requirement to assesses internal controls and identify control weaknesses. The revised AU-C 315 (Environment) provides further emphasis on this requirement and increases the emphasis on the Information Technology General Controls Principle, a frequent source of quality comments. Through exercises and discussion topics we will clarify the real purpose and value of this audit requirement and how to achieve compliance efficiently and effectively. The session will share best practices from others and amongst participants. Enhanced knowledge will increase your confidence in understanding of internal controls, enhance your mentoring effectiveness, improve audit quality and your enjoyment of the subject matter. The workshop developer, Lynford Graham, CPA, PhD, CFE, CIDA is an AICPA trainer for the COSO Certification Course, and Chair of the AICPA Risk Assessment… Guide (2006 to date), Chair of the audit chapter of the Revenue Recognition A&A Guide (2019) and Chair of the AICPA Audit Sampling Guide (2008 to date). He was an ASB member and implementation Task Force chair for the Suite of Risk Assessment Standards first introduced in 2005-2006. Participants may wish to formulate questions based on their existing approaches and forms and may wish to bring Firm materials or forms to the workshop for further group or one-on-one discussion.

Learning Objectives:

• Analyze the COSO Framework and linkages to the AICPA audit requirements under AU-C 315 to develop an enhanced understanding
• Identify common inefficiencies observed in audit practice and easy solutions.
• Calculate the risks to your Firm of ineffective controls assessment practices.
• Use new ways to think about internal controls through exercises and cases.
• Identify common quality deficiencies and simple solutions.
• Determine effective and efficient documentation practices.

You will learn how panelists communicate with clients, structure their meetings, and deliver & present planning ideas to clients in the areas of retirement, estate/charitable, investment, risk management/insurance planning.

Learning Objectives:

• Recognize how other CPAs present and deliver financial planning recommendations to clients.
• Determine methods for communicating effectively with your clients.

IN PERSON ONLY INTERACTIVE WORKSHOP - INCLUDED IN YOUR ALL-ACCESS PASS (Additional Fee for 3 Day Pass Holders). This dynamic and interactive session shows you the flaws in traditional approaches to engaging employees that is actually fueling entitlement in your workplace. From this new understanding, you’ll then learn 4 simple and practical leadership tools that increase accountability, invite engagement and innovation from your staff all while reducing the entitlement thinking that is plaguing so many firms. You’ll leave with these tools set up to be implemented in your firm to find the sweet spot of highly-accountable mindsets (the biggest predictor of happiness), with high levels of engagement (what every firm is hoping to have from their teams), all driving towards high productivity (whether in hybrid, work-from-home, or in the office setting).

Learning Objectives:

• Recognize the 3 flaws in logic to current engagement efforts in most firms
• Identify the true driver of employee engagement, individual well-being and firm productivity
• Recall 4 simple tools to build an accountable culture, increase engagement and fuel productivity

Session will cover: Restructuring a Business to Accomplish Tax and Economic Objectives, including planning concepts involving: * dealing with defective S elections and the “double fault” rule * corporate inversion transactions to facilitate the granting of profits interest in an original S corporation environment * facilitating tax effective redemptions * planning to maximize the benefits of §199A in a business involving an SSTB and a non-SSTB * planning to minimize the exposure to “excess” FICA, Medicare, and self-employment taxes All the above presented in the context of the setting of an actual transaction. Partnership Basis adjustments and their impact on tax allocations – a deeper dive into: * Discussing optional basis adjustments under Sec. 754 * Following the life cycle of an optional basis adjustment * Understanding the impact of optional basis adjustments on UBIA for Sec. 199A * Exploring opportunities for book-up under Sec. 704(b) * Discussing the implications of the contribution of appreciated property * Exploring the impact of book-ups and contributions on tax allocation under Sec. 704(c)

Learning Objectives:

• After attending this session, the attendee will better understand S corporation/LLC structuring alternatives, how to deal with defective S eletions and how to effectually plan to maximize Sec. 199A benefits and minimize employment taxes.
• Recognize when optional basis adjustments can be made and how to make them
• Analyze opportunities to adjust basis in partnership assets upon occurrence of certain transactions
• Demonstrate a baseline knowledge of the partnership concepts addressed such as Sec. 754 and Sec. 704(b) & (c)

IN PERSON ONLY INTERACTIVE WORKSHOP - INCLUDED IN YOUR ALL-ACCESS PASS (Additional Fee for 3 Day Pass Holders). Dive into the latest updates from the AICPA 2022 SOC 1 and SOC 2 Guides. This interactive workshop will enable you to interface with practicing SOC providers and ask YOUR questions. SOC engagements are one of the fastest growing engagement segments. Updates to the recent guides clarify everyday issues encountered by practitioners. This session includes practical insights and examples that you can use in your practice. This workshop will also provide valuable strategies for implementing your SOC practice.

Learning Objectives:

• Evaluate and clarify changes in SOC 1 and SOC 2 in the 2022 SOC guides for criteria for use in performing a SOC 1 or SOC 2 engagement
• Formulate workprograms applying SOC 1 and SOC 2 guidance from the 2022 SOC guides.

This session works through a case study of a typical business client’s situation as they address some of the unique issues that arise as they maximize the value of their business in their own personal financial planning. It will discuss how information gathered from the client informs the CPA financial planner on discussion points of specific aspects of topics from the body of knowledge. Background on these points will be discussed to ensure the attendee has a broad working knowledge of why this is important for this client, how it relates the PFP Standards, potential tax impacts, and impacts on the overall financial plan.

Learning Objectives:

• Recall the number of months of living expenses an emergency reserve should be funded, based on the facts and circumstances
• Select the type of personal financial planning engagement that is most appropriate based on the facts and circumstances
• Identify the type of business or commercial insurance contract that provides liability, property damage, and medical payment coverage
• Distinguish between different types of retirement plans

This final session will give you a chance to create your game plan forward, get your questions answered, and gain practical advice from the panel, including:

• Bring everything you have learned together with the “Building Your Tax and Financial Planning Business Checklist”
• Panelists share what their best piece of advice would be if they were starting again now
• Hear about resources to support you going forward
• Create “Your Vision & Quarterly Rocks” document to capture your plan forward
• Share your plans and top takeaways with each other
• Q&A
• Wrap up the workshop

Learning Objectives:

• Determine your vision for your financial planning practice.
• Identify your next steps forward.

The online PFS assessment will be administered with an on-site proctor. Attendees will log in to the exam administration web site and take the 100-minute timed exam. The pass/fail results will be available as soon as the exam is submitted by the attendee. Any non-programable calculator will be allowed. No CPE is provided for taking this PFS exam.

Learning Objectives:

• N/A

Keeping up on all things Automation and AI can seem like an unsurmountable task. With the rapidly evolving landscape continuing to change and Artificial intelligence now becoming a dominant way you can transform your business, getting a grasp on what is available today in practicality is a must have. Please join Thomson Reuters to discuss how to use Automation tools, APIs, and AI technologies to continue to move the profession forward and learn more about third party applications are playing a large role in creating more efficiencies and benefits to your staff and end clients.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify new Automation solutions already created and available to help take what you have discussed in theory to practical use
• Recognize new ways to automate new key areas of your firms practice as you grow both Onshore and Offshore
• Determine insights into the future vision of how accounting technology is helping to generate Tax agnostic solutions to meet the needs of your team no matter what solutions are in your Tech Stack

Today’s accounting client wants more than just their expected service from their firm– they also want an exceptional client experience to partner with that service too. Big and boutique firms alike find themselves asking, “How do I transition to a more elevated and modern client experience as clientele and competitors are becoming more digital-first?” Join us to learn how to elevate your client experience that will differentiate you from competitors and drive long-term engagements. Hear from our panelists as they share their experiences transforming the client experience, important lessons learned, and best practices.

Learning Objectives:

• Determine the needs and expectations of today's clientele
• Identify breakdowns in your client lifecycle
• Recognize new processes to improve and amplify your clients' experiences
• Assess how to select the best tools to increase client satisfaction

Join us daily as our hosts talk about what you can expect at the ENGAGE 2023 conference onsite and what you don’t want to miss virtually! These segments will include interviews/q&a with speakers, behind-the-scenes look at the Studio, and what’s happening onsite this year!! Make sure to check the ENGAGE Live Studio out to enhance your experience as a virtual attendee!

Official welcome to AICPA & CIMA ENGAGE 2023 - by ENGAGE Chairs: Greg Bedard Jim Boomer Michael Brand Martin Finn Lindsay Stevenson with Barry Melancon.

Today’s most innovative organizations recognize that game-changing ideas can come from anywhere and anyone. Bush explains how to build an Innovation By All culture— one that maximizes your company’s human potential by tapping into the intelligence, skills, and passion of everyone in the organization. Companies that build an Innovation By All culture generate more high-quality ideas, realize greater speed in implementation, and achieve greater agility—resulting in 5.5 times the revenue growth of peers with a less inclusive approach to innovation.

As human beings, we naturally want to be around people who understand us - our dreams, our needs, our desires, our fears. When we find people who truly get us at work, we bring more of our full selves to what we do, unleash our potential, and truly thrive. This is where the magic happens! During this session, we'll explore what it means to lead your team in this powerful way. Plus, you'll walk away with some practical ideas for how to make the magic happen.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify three benefits to creating an environment of belonging and connection in the workplace.
• Differentiate between the three types of empathy necessary for effective leadership.
• Select three ways to practice empathy as a leader in the workplace.

Being an active inclusive leader is not always easy, but it is an important trait of leaders. We will explore the topic of leading with inclusivity and provide practical tips and steps that can be incorporated into your leadership style immediately. You will go on a journey that will deepen your knowledge on the topic and learn how embracing inclusivity can increase connection and employee engagement in the workplace.

Learning Objectives:

• Recognize the traits of inclusive leaders.
• Interpret the difference between mentorship/sponsorship and how it is incorporated into inclusive leadership.
• Identify how you can connect your values to inclusive leadership.
• Discover what gets in the way of being an inclusive leader.
• Discover your WHY and formulate a commitment to practice active inclusivity.

This session will review recent cases, rulings and legislation in the area of estate, gift and generation-skipping tax. How those new rules impact estate planning approaches will also be discussed.

Learning Objectives:

• Analyze how changes to the law impact how clients should think about their estate plans.
• Assess estate planning techniques that they can use to reduce estate, gift and generation-skipping taxes.

In this session, attendees will gain valuable insights into the latest developments in the global economy and financial markets. Our expert speaker will provide an up-to-date overview of key trends and factors impacting markets and economies around the world. Attendees can expect to come away with a clear understanding of the current state of the economy and financial markets, as well as insights into potential future developments. This session is perfect for anyone looking to stay up-to-date on the latest economic and financial market trends, from seasoned investors to business leaders and professionals across all industries. Don't miss this opportunity to gain valuable insights and stay ahead of the curve!

Learning Objectives:

• Recall a comprehensive understanding of current economic and financial market trends
• Identify strategies for navigating the current market environment

This comprehensive CPA Firm technology update will focus on leading accounting production best a practices backed by the latest CPAFMA IT and Digitally Driven benchmarks, as well as innovative new applications challenging the status quo. Roman will provide specific production optimization recommendations gleaned from his experience as an outsourced lean six sigma consultant and technology partner. Roman will also highlight trends in cloud, collaboration, and cybersecurity, along with a glimpse into future disrupters that are already changing the accounting profession.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify latest CPA Firm trends, technologies, and potential disrupters that firms should be implementing.
• Identify practical applications and production processes that are optimizing CPA firm production today.

The business environment is complex and evolving more rapidly than ever. With changing demographics, revised client and talent expectations, and new technologies, we have to work differently, accelerate our adoption of technology by years and address the new risks presented. In order to position ourselves for success, we must understand prevailing environmental trends, how they impact what we do as assurance providers and advisors, and the opportunities they present.

Learning Objectives:

• Assess the trends in the environment that are impacting practice.
• Identify impact on quality.
• Analyze insights into developments that will affect practice in the near future.
• Identify new assurance opportunities.

In early 2023, markets remain focused on the macro environment, finding comfort in lower inflation but concerned about increased recession risks from tighter monetary and fiscal policy. The Fed has mostly maintained its hawkish messaging, but appears set to pause rate hikes in the first half of the year. For investors, it is also important to look beyond the cycle, as this year’s global reset in valuations presents a much broader menu of investment opportunities than existed a year ago. Using slides from the Guide to the Markets, Dr. David Kelly will shine some light on these issues and their investment implications.

Learning Objectives:

• Be able to communicate current economic and market trends using Guide to the Market slides.
• Be able to identify potential opportunities and risks with the domestic and global markets. Session will provide attendees with relevant facts that will assist them with their investment and asset allocation decisions.
• Have gained an increased knowledge on global markets and the outlook for stock and bond market performance.

Every firm right now is trying all they can to find more resources, more staff, better retention and recruiting strategies while unlocking more efficiency to serve the growing demands of their clients. This keynote will show you an enormous opportunity nearly every person is missing to impact all of those challenges that is sitting right in front of you - recapturing energy lost to drama in the workplace. In this ground-breaking session you will learn about the main sources of workplace drama that add up to nearly 2.5 hours per day PER PERSON of wasted time and energy leaking out of your organization. You’ll walk away with insightful case studies, as well as practical and actionable tools to coach beyond venting, improve those “hey, do you have a minute?” conversations that often get off track, increase buy-in and personal accountability in your team, overcome resistance to change and consistently turn excuses into results.

Learning Objectives:

• Recognize the main sources of workplace drama that hinder team success
• Indicate why venting is never helpful and how to coach the person in front of you
• Identify 2 coaching tools to focus team energy on ‘how we could’ given the challenge circumstances being faced
• Recall energy management techniques to better lead your team through change

Learning Objectives:

• Learn about new tax legislation affecting individual clients in 2023.
• Update planning ideas for our individual clients and their 2023 tax returns.
• Review Tax Court decisions and IRS rulings to illustrate IRS exam targets.

What are my best technology choices, and how do I keep up? Even informed accounting professionals will find multiple ideas they can apply daily. This visionary session provides insights, options, and recommendations to help you decide which technologies will affect your business and which will give you a competitive edge. Included in Tech Update are emerging and evolving technologies important to accounting professionals. We will cover the benefits and risks of adopting recent technologies, ranging from software applications to hardware devices. You will also learn how to develop a balanced technology strategy that includes current, emerging, and future technology choices for your firm or business.

Learning Objectives:

• Formulate strategic and tactical benefit lists of hardware and software options
• Evaluate current communications choices to improve your efficiency
• Identify key technologies to implement in your business and personal life
• Analyze examples of emerging technologies that will affect the accounting profession

When you're a high performing person and have been identified as a "rising star" in your organization, it's often hard to get meaningful feedback from supervisors to help you advance. Join this session to learn how to "compete against yourself" and identify your own development needs and direction, so that you can obtain the sponsors and mentors you need to maximize your career progression.

Learning Objectives:

• Recognize a high performer and describe how they must be led differently
• Identify tactics high performer can use to “compete against yourself”
• Recall the various roles that support career development

Have you ever been on a team where they have that “IT” factor? You can sense it. Communication and understanding seems effortless, almost telepathic. Did you know that there is a science not an art to a teaming having the “IT” factor? Once we understand the patterns of communication in productive teams we can understand that that are three key components that make “IT”. These are three critical aspects of communication known as the 3 “E” Elements: Energy, Engagement, and Exploration. We can actually measure and calculate the level of each Element and understand where the team communication weakness resides. Than apply steps in order to strengthen those weaknesses and give your team that true “IT” factor.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the 3 “E” Elements of great team communication: Energy, Engagement, Exploration.
• Identify the key ways in order to create an environment where not only do the 3 “E” Elements coexist but that they flourish.

This course provides a concise overview and non-technical explanation of the Metaverse. At first mention, you may think the Metaverse sounds like a fantasy world in the latest futuristic Hollywood movie. Actually, this fantasy is now reality! It's already here! The metaverse is an ecosystem of immerse digital environments and creative reality simulations where people do everything they do in real life -- only in digital space. Countless companies -- from big tech to the Big Four -- have already announced ambitious plans to contribute to this virtual world. Ultimately, the metaverse represents the natural evolution of the Internet, and the next phase of the mobile web. You’ll walk away with a foundational understanding of key Metaverse concepts and how to prepare for this new technology frontier as an accounting practitioner. You’ll also discover how this emerging virtual dimension is on course to fundamentally transform society, the global economy, the accounting profession, and even reality itself.

Learning Objectives:

• Compare the Metaverse from previous generations of the Internet
• Identify at least 10 social and technology forces that are driving the development of the Metaverse
• Analyze at least 20 Metaverse case studies and success stories
• Contrast the enterprise Metaverse from the consumer Metaverse
• Predict at least 12 ways the Metaverse is likely impact the accounting profession
• Formulate a Metaverse starter strategy for your accounting operations

AICPA advocates for good tax policy, including on trust, estate, and gift tax issues. This session will cover the many developments and projects the TRP is advocating for in the estate and trust area. Contacts with Treasury, IRS, and Congress are emphasized.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify planning areas and recommendations.
• Recognize estate and gift tax issues that affect your clients.

The generation-skipping transfer tax (GST) is a wonderfully complex tax that can cause problems and create opportunities for clients, planners, and return preparers. We will bust GST myths and solve GST mysteries while discussing a range of misconceptions about the GST. Myths busted will include that (i) only rich clients have to worry about the GST, (ii) gifts that qualify for the annual exclusion never trigger GST, and (iii) the automatic allocation rules will always save you. Mysteries explored will include (i) the different treatment of the various types of split-interest charitable trusts, (ii) when an inclusion ratio becomes final, and (iii) the various GST elections that can be made on a gift tax return.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify common misconceptions about the generation-skipping transfer tax.
• Distinguish between gift tax rules and GST rules and analyze the importance of those differences.
• Apply this information to common circumstances that arise in tax planning and return preparation regarding generation-skipping transfers.

This session will address various valuation issues practitioners should be aware of when advising clients on estate planning matters. The discussion will include a review of basic valuation principles as well as recent developments.

Learning Objectives:

• Recognize likely focus areas during an IRS exam
• Calculate taxpayer penalties for overstated asset valuation
• Identify necessary components for a qualified appraisal
• Explain the more comment types of valuation discounts
• Understand defined value clause transfers

This session will provide attendees with an update on recent hot topics from the SEC and FASB, provide an update on themes and trends across accounting and financial reporting, and offer an opportunity to ask questions on the above.

Learning Objectives:

• Recall key developments from the SEC
• Identify trends and focus areas from the SEC and others

Join Bill Pirolli, CPA, CFF, PFS, CGMA as he discusses how to create transparency in your Firm by educating current and future leaders about the business of running a public accounting firm. Where do staff learn about realization, utilization and time and billing practices? Probably from all the wrong people. Educating staff about CPA Firm business matters and the drivers of profitability is no different than other technical training. Having a team well educated in broad business and Firm specific business practices will enhance overall firm profitability and create understanding of decision related to revenue, expenses and Firm growth, putting everyone on the same team. Come join the discussion! Bill has over 40 years experience in public accounting in both small and mid sized firms as an active client service partner. He was managing partner of his own firm and became Director of Firm Administration when he merged with DiSanto Priest & Co. As past Chair of the AICPA PCPS Executive Committee, Bill has had the opportunity to work with firms across the country on matters of firm practice management and helped develop many resources to assist firms to be the best they can be.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the drivers of a profitable firm
• Recognize the business side of accounting to create transparency into Firm Economics

Many of us hire for the traditional roles we have open in our organizations. Tax Managers, Audit Seniors, Staff Accountants, and the like have become regular routine job descriptions that we regularly fill. Still, when leaders are asked to define what they are looking for, terms like leadership, relationship manager, customer service, salesperson, delegator and communicator are often part of the conversations. Which is easier to make, a technical accountant or great listener? and, which is your firm better at training?

Learning Objectives:

• Identify how to evaluate your hiring practices to emphasize the hire of different types of behaviors.
• Identify alternative to traditional hires (like accounting, finance and economics) that would make fabulous future CPAs.
• Identify how to tailor acquisition techniques to fill open behaviors or job skills that are necessary and needed for succession.

During this session, we will discuss how the FASB is addressing stakeholder priorities through current agenda projects identified during its 2021 agenda consultation. We will also provide an update on the ways in which the FASB is supporting implementation of its standards through its post-implementation review activities.

Learning Objectives:

• Analyze the projects that the FASB is currently working on, including those identified during its 2021 agenda consultation project
• Distinguish how the FASB is supporting implementation of accounting standards through post-implementation review activities
• Identify standards recently issued by the FASB

Financial professionals (CFPs, PFPs, CPAs and others) run into behavioral finance issues - biases and heuristics based on human cognitive ability, all the time. These behavioral finance issues can make work with clients difficult, and frustrating for both parties. In this presentation we will discuss five common behavioral finance issues and talk about what to do about them. It can be helpful for financial professionals to be able to recognize these issues in clients, it is even more helpful to understand how to work through them.

Learning Objectives:

• Define behavioral finance among other similar terms like behavioral economics or financial psychology.
• Identify the unique purpose and understanding that behavioral finance brings in work with clients.
• Review and define common behavioral finance issues that financial professionals face.
• Identify how to respond to common behavioral finance issues financial professionals and clients face.
• Highlight research on behavioral finance and glean information from research and apply it to practice.

Efficiently managing an independent wealth management firm involves focusing on key areas to ensure smooth operations, client satisfaction, and growth. In this presentation, we'll discuss essential strategies, including:     * ORGANIZATIONAL SYSTEMS: Implement effective client management and documentation processes.     * TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION: Utilize CRM software, financial planning tools, and automation.     * CLIENT ONBOARDING AND RETENTION: Create a comprehensive onboarding process and prioritize relationship building.     * STAFF TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT: Foster a culture of collaboration, growth, and continuous improvement.     * COMPLIANCE AND RISK MANAGEMENT: Stay up-to-date with regulatory requirements and best practices.     * BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT AND MARKETING: Develop a robust marketing plan, leveraging online and offline channels.     * TIME MANAGEMENT AND WORK-LIFE BALANCE: Establish efficient practices, delegate tasks, and prioritize self-care. Join us as we explore actionable insights to optimize your wealth management practice.

Learning Objectives:

• Participants will learn to identify and implement efficient organizational systems and technology solutions, streamlining daily operations and enhancing overall productivity within their wealth management practice.
• Attendees will gain insights into effective client onboarding and retention strategies, as well as techniques for staff training and development, fostering strong relationships and a collaborative work environment.
• Participants will understand the importance of compliance, risk management, business development, and marketing in maintaining a successful practice, while also learning how to balance time management and work-life equilibrium for sustained performance and growth.

The decisions that clients make in the five years before and after retirement can make a difference in their retirement success. It's also the time the clients are most likely to be willing to listen to advice and to make the necessary adjustments to their retirement plan that are needed to retire well.

Learning Objectives:

• Learn about the typical conversations with clients in the five years prior to retirement
• Learn how to monitor and adjust a clients plan as they begin retirement

Social Security provides a unique form of inflation-adjusted income that protects against purchasing power and longevity risk. A retiree can buy more Social Security income by choosing to delay claiming until age 70. This requires spending down financial assets to bridge the delay period. This presentation discusses the value of delayed claiming by introducing the rules used to estimate lifetime income increases, evaluating bridging strategies, and comparing delayed claiming to the cost of private annuities. Some retirees will benefit more than others, and advisors should recognize when it is optimal to delay claiming and the unequal impact claiming at different ages has on retirement wealth.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand how insurers price annuities to estimate the value of delayed Social Security claiming
• Compare common deferred and immediate annuity pricing to the increased income from delayed Social Security
• Evaluate tax efficient strategies for building a spending bridge to delay claiming after retirement

Around the world, individuals are being asked to take on greater responsibility for their own retirement. In the US, for example, a combination of limited Social Security funding and a reduction in the number of defined benefit (DB) employer plans—historically, the primary retirement savings vehicle for many—is causing investors to make decisions they have never had to face about how to save for retirement. This 50 minute presentation with audience Q&A will explore various ways to improve the probability of a good retirement, including some traditional approaches and some recent financial innovations designed to improve retirement security.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify what represents a “good” retirement outcome
• Determine what elements an individual can influence to improve the probability of a good retirement
• Analyze trends in new financial product design to assist people in both the accumulation and decumulation phases, including customized indexed annuities, volatility stabilization, and Retirement Security Bonds.

Driving partner unity is an essential element of successful leadership. The cascading effect of unity is a optimism and clarity about the future of your firm. Additionally, unity is best supported by peer accountability. Rather than viewing accountability as a source of friction, we can see it as a source of cohesion. In this session we'll connect these two themes to visualize the overwhelmingly positive impact on your firm

Learning Objectives:

• Analyze the foundational elements of partner unity. What do we use as our “north star” to unify our leaders?
• Identify how vital clarity is to unity. Are we clear on performance expectations, culture, and our strategy?
• Determine how accountability promotes unity. What keeps us from being accountable?
• Use connectivity to show how these foundational elements impact our practice management imperatives.

Finding the right team members at the right time is key to your practice success and the market has never been tougher. That’s why it’s more important than ever to execute a recruiting strategy that applies true marketing concepts to differentiate your firm from the rest. Together we’ll explore the specific marketing strategies and processes you can implement to attract the best and brightest of the profession.

Learning Objectives:

• Recognize how to develop a differentiating recruiting strategy and story
• Identify your competitors messaging in the hiring process so you can position your organization appropriately
• Indicate steps you can take to ensure your recruiting process compels candidates to join
• Recognize clear deliverables that enable candidates to picture their future with your firm

This session will cover the application of passthrough entity taxes and associated federal tax treatment resulting from Notice 2020-75.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the federal income tax consequences of the a PTET payment
• Determine situations where electing into a PTE regime may not be advantageous

Have you ever wondered what it takes to start and run a tax podcast? Join April Walker, host of the AICPA Tax Section Odyssey podcast, and Damien Martin, former host of the Simply Tax podcast, for a behind the scenes look into their journey from original idea to launching of a podcast. Bring your questions and explore what surprised the hosts during the podcasting process.

Learning Objectives:

• Discuss the processes and skills needed to create a podcast that is focused on tax
• Delve into the benefits of expanding your traditional ways of learning about tax and practice management issues

This session will discuss the intersection of tax and sustainability, or "ESG". During the conversation, we will discuss the relevance of tax in ESG and Sustainability strategies. For example: How does tax participate in ESG risk assessment, planning and strategy? Why is it important that tax have a seat at the ESG table? There's tremendous value in the tax organization's contribution to the organization's overall sustainability strategy - how can you get involved?

Learning Objectives:

• Explain the intersection of Tax and ESG
• Understand the value that up-front tax participation can bring to ESG risk management and decision-making
• Identify tax risks and incentives that impact a company's ESG journey

This session will provide a review of selected like-kind exchange topics and problem areas along with a review of recent developments.

Learning Objectives:

• The participant will gain a better understanding of potential problem areas in a like-kind exchange.
• The participant will have a better understanding of like-kind exchange transactions, including related party issues, reverse exchanges and construction exchanges, along with other exchange topics.

Technology is changing the way your clients expect to work and manage their financials. To stay relevant to your clients, accounting professionals are retooling to launch into new services and will need to acquire new skill sets, one being that of a technologist. This session will discuss why it’s important to not just implement technology to do things the same way you have always done them, but instead, rethink the business processes in your practice. By doing this, you can become more efficient, productive, collaborative and create an environment of purpose that your team and clients can rally around. Learn to define your “why” and how to select a vertical niche, assess the right technology to align to your mission as a practice, and explore other ways to re-engineer your business processes. You will come away with an understanding of how technology’s gift of more time gives you the opportunity to become “Cherished Advisors” -- highly valued, strategic partners who are an integral part of their client’s businesses and whom their clients can’t imagine living without.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify your purpose as a firm
• Recognize the “Cherished Advisor” journey and the different stages of innovation for your practice
• Indicate how to create your firm’s path to specializing in vertical industries
• Recall a technology strategy and how to assess the right technology fit for your practice
• Identify how to re-engineer your business processes to take full advantage of the technology implemented in your firm and create new ways of collaboration with your team and clients

One of our most popular experiences from previous years is back! Do you need a new fun drawing of yourself and want to hear good music while you get animated? Look no further!

Get prepared for the rest of the conference by releasing tension in your neck, shoulders, hips and back so you can sit tall and breathe deep.  Live on Zoom!

Join our host as they interview a speaker in the ENGAGE Live Studio.

Wondering when the “audit of the future” that we’ve all heard so much about over the years will become a reality? According to firm leaders across the country, it’s already happening. While many of these firms used to approach an audit by using the previous year’s audit files as a template, they’re now coming at it from a completely different perspective. They’re fully re-engineering the audit to meet higher client and regulatory standards while achieving new levels of efficiency and delivering a lot more value along the way. Join this discussion to learn about the four key drivers of audit transformation – technology, methodology, standards and skills – and how firms are managing this change within their organizations.

Learning Objectives:

• Recognize the four key drivers of audit transformation.
• Identify different methods to start to transform your audit.

Join an engaging panel to discuss out-of-the-box methodologies to help mitigate pipeline pressures firms face. Topics include outsourcing work, the benefits of firm alliances, workflow automation, lifestyle firms, and mergers & acquisitions. Come back on June 6th for EDG2308 for an interactive session to work with fellow colleagues on practically implementing these ideas in your firm.

Learning Objectives:

• Indicate which roles in a firm can be outsourced and what are some important considerations for doing so?
• Distinguish the benefits a firm alliance can offer to a firm.
• Recall the major benefits and drawbacks of a lifestyle firm.
• Identify workflow automation to increase the productivity of your firm.
• Recognize what are the opportunities and things to consider during a merger and acquisition.

This course will review creative practical planning strategies for use with a wide range of clients from very wealthy to more moderate wealth. How to structure a note sale transaction to better withstand an audit? How to use a Wandry clause without risking an estate inclusion challenge to all entity interests under Powell argument. How to plan ownership of FLP and LLC interests to avoid estate inclusion using a special voting membership interest. Prioritizing allocation of GST exemption on gift tax returns for multiple trusts. For smaller clients evaluate options for existing credit shelter trusts. Creative use of a multipurpose ILIT to accomplish a range of goals in a cost effective manner for smaller clients. A host of other planning tips will cover a wide range of planning considerations for all types of clients with a focus on a value add role the CPA can play.

Learning Objectives:

• Learn practical planning tips for enhancing note sales, retained interest, Powell challenges and other issues for complex plans.
• Learn practical tips to use to enhance estate planning for more moderate wealth clients including basis step up, income tax planning and more.

Over the last three years, there have been considerable changes regarding post-mortem distributions from IRAs and other qualified retirement plans. Between the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement Act of 2019 ("SECURE Act"), Enhancing American Retirement Now (EARN) Act of 2022 ("SECURE 2.0") and the proposed 1.409(a)(9) Treasury Regulations, one needs to know the impact of the new post-mortem distribution rules and how payout options need to be reassessed. 

During this session, we will discuss the following topics: 

* Pre-SECURE Act distribution rules 

* SECURE Act distribution rules 

* EARN Act (“SECURE 2.0”) distribution rules 

* Proposed 1.409(a)(9) Treasury Regulations 

* Determination of the “type” of beneficiary 

* Missed Required Minimum Distributions (RMD) and how to handle them.

Learning Objectives:

• • Understand the new post-mortem distribution rules for IRAs and other qualified retirement plans
• • Identify actions that need to be taken during the post-mortem “shake out” period
• • Fixing missed RMDs

Women have fought long and hard for a seat at the table in finance – are we there? If not, how can we get there? What can you do in your career to get your seat at the table? Join us to hear the stories of three accomplished women in finance, and their thoughts on where we are with women in our profession. Men, please join as well, as male advocates and perspective are very important!

Learning Objectives:

• To learn the obstacles facing women in finance and how to overcome those obstacles
• To some tips from women who have a seat at the table
• To develop an understanding of the unique experience and benefits women bring to their companies

The presentation is about recent developments regarding federal estate and gift taxes. We will review general procedural and substantive updates regarding estate and gift taxation, including changes in the law that impact the filing of estate and gift tax returns.

Learning Objectives:

• Analyze in the law that impact the filing of estate and gift tax returns
• Recognize developments regarding federal estate and gift taxes
• Interpret transcripts and historical Forms 709 to properly prepare returns
• Determine when and how to request issuance of IRS Letter 627, also referred to as an estate tax closing letter

When an owner of a passthrough entity dies, certain tax implications may arise on both the individual and entity level. This presentation examines the various federal income tax issues to be mindful of in these circumstances. The discussion first focuses on the effect of a partner's death on a Subchapter K partnership, then examines the consequences of a shareholder's death on a Subchapter S corporation, and finally looks at the tax effects of death for the individual owner and the owner's estate and/or trust.

Learning Objectives:

• Recognize required actions before and after the death of an owner​
• Identify planning opportunities for owners of S Corporations & Partnerships
• Understand the factors that determine material participation for a trust or estate

Fraud is the one risk every organization faces in every industry everywhere and every day Yet so few organizations actually take the six simple steps of Effective Fraud Risk Management. And that's exactly what we'll cover. Not theory - practical 'how-to' steps to take right now without delay.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the six critical actions of business fraud prevention
• Analyze your current 'readiness level' in the fight against fraud
• Choose exactly what you need to do immediately to shore up your defenses

One-third of the partner group thinks it's perfectly fine to continue into 2023 and beyond with a virtual environment. They are poised and love working from home. Another group thinks the hybrid model is best; they get to interact with staff and balance in-person and off-site meetings. And still, there is a wave of partners that have a heavy influence in encouraging staff to return to the workplace. You are charged with making sense of it all and being the leader to get them all to co-exist. How are you managing it?

Learning Objectives:

• Evaluate change-management theories and how to overcome fear in transition.
• Assess organizational development and aligning business goals with staffing trends.
• Evaluate your own ability to influence and manage up to a better firm for all.

Your people don’t really care much about your expectations and assessment of their performance. If you are too demanding, they will “quietly quit” or go elsewhere. The employee market is so fluid and fragile that their options are expansive. This presentation explores the new employee dynamics that explain why performance discussions fall flat and how to engage employees so that they want to perform. By focusing on their Career Path development, managers will learn how to ignite their employees’ motivation and commitment to excel and grow their careers. And in doing so, their performance increases because they want to, not because you want them to.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the impact of the new employee dynamics
• Identify hot to use Career Development discussions to motivate performance
• Recall the skills presented with live demonstrations

The Private Company Council (PCC) helps improve the financial accounting and reporting standards for private companies and determines whether private company alternatives to existing GAAP are necessary. The PCC takes a proactive approach to its mission and conducts robust outreach with private company stakeholders through a variety of channels, including events like this one. Participants will learn about the current activities of the PCC and how its input helps the FASB develop standards that provide more relevant information to users of private company financial statements. This interactive, town hall-style forum will provide participants the opportunity to directly engage with PCC members, FASB members, and FASB staff by asking questions and providing feedback about how financial reporting for private companies might be improved.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the mission of the Private Company Council
• Analyze the current agenda of the Private Company Council
• Determine how the FASB considers and incorporates input provided by the Private Company Council on FASB projects

Join us for an illuminating journey as we navigate the intricate landscape of digital assets - a domain clouded with distractions and deception, yet shimmering with opportunity that warrants attention. Dive into the evolving regulatory environment and uncover the potential implications for Bitcoin, which stands in contrast to other digital assets. Delve into the essence of money and discover the transformative potential of Bitcoin, a technology that's reshaping our perception of value. Understand why individuals and institutions are turning their gaze to Bitcoin's escalating use cases. Wrestle with the multifaceted issue of environmental sustainability and unearth Bitcoin's surprising potential in this realm. Whether you're crypto-curious, a skeptical observer, or a seasoned investor, this session offers a comprehensive exploration of Bitcoin's current reality and future possibilities, promising insights that transcend your existing understanding.

Learning Objectives:

• Delve into the fascinating history of money, and explore the compelling reasons why Bitcoin could represent the next evolution.
• Discern the pivotal differences between Bitcoin and the plethora of other digital assets, understanding why Bitcoin holds a unique place in the digital asset landscape.
• Stay abreast of the latest regulatory changes impacting digital assets, gaining insight into how these updates are shaping future trajectories.
• Unearth the diverse use cases of Bitcoin, moving beyond the realm of speculative investing to grasp the multifaceted applications of this revolutionary technology.

Join our panel discussion featuring CPA financial planning practitioners and FinTech providers as they explore the benefits, risks and possibilities of AI-powered financial planning. Discover how AI is transforming the industry and learn how to leverage this technology to offer more personalized, efficient, and effective financial planning services to your clients.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the current landscape of AI-powered financial planning and its impact on the industry.
• Learn about the benefits and risks associated with using AI in financial planning, and how to manage these risks.
• Explore how AI-powered tools can help you build more personalized client relationships.
• Discover how AI can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your financial planning processes.

Followers of FIRE (financial independence, retire early) principals are often assumed by the financial industry to be financially naive. As such, they are often dismissed and even ridiculed by financial professionals who "know better." Understand the powerful principles practiced by this community, the pain points they face that lead them to seek financial advice, and how by embracing this community and understanding their needs you can grow your practice.

Learning Objectives:

• Differentiate FIRE myths from reality.
• Understand how you can help those early on the path to FIRE.
• Understand how you can help those approaching financial independence and considering retirement.
• Understand the tax planning implications of FIRE and how they differ from traditional financial planning considerations.

Our session will concentrate on breakup of professional partnerships, LLCs and PLLCs. A recent Tax Court decision provides guidance and highlights tax traps to avoid. We will analyze practice goodwill and client based intangible assets and how they are treated under various methods. The special partnership provisions applicable to sales and redemptions will be contrasted.

Learning Objectives:

• Compare methods including sales and redemptions
• Identify tax traps and benefits
• Apply capital account rules and valuation
• Analyze and distinguish partnership agreement provisions

CPA.com has helped hundreds of firms develop and expand their Client Advisory Services (CAS) practices, and has identified key elements that practices need to address on the CAS journey. Learn what CAS is – and what CAS isn’t – and how to identify the key steps to build and evolve your CAS practice. This session will discuss the milestones along a typical CAS practice journey, and help you prioritize your efforts along the way.

Learning Objectives:

• Recall the services that fall under the CAS practice.
• Recognize the key practice decisions that CAS leaders make
• Identify how to connect the typical CAS journey milestones to your practice strategy

We're in the midst of a leadership change in small firms, with many owners expected to retire within the next 10 years. The sooner firm owners start planning, the more successful an ownership transition can be. Let's discuss practical strategies and key areas of focus.

Learning Objectives:

• Distinguish what firms should do to prepare for succession
• Recognize what acquiring firm values when merging in a smaller firm
• Identify Top 10 M&A issues - how to identify before they become issues
• Indicate what firms are doing to become an attractive merger candidate

Accountants played a critical role in helping businesses survive the Pandemic and secure a variety of aid packages, all while working long hours during a series of never ending tax seasons. It’s time that you were compensated as a trusted business advisor, but in order for that to happen, you will have to first define, price and package your advisory services. In this session, we will cover how to translate your hard-earned expertise into paid advisory services.

Learning Objectives:

• Idenfity and quantify the value and expertise you bring to your business clients in the area of budgeting and forecasting
• Determine the technology, people and skills you will need to introduce a paid advisory service
• Calculate how to package and price different levels of advisory services to ensure you are being well compensated for the scope of work you take on
• Use marketing and sell your advisory services to current clients and potential leads

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022, enacted on August 16, 2022 provided for $80 billion toward boosting IRS staffing, in line with the administrations long-term goal of strengthening tax collection and enforcement on large corporations and high-income earners. Join this session to gain insights and earn more about how the IRS plans to develop and implement the hiring and enforcement initiatives provided for in the IRA.

Learning Objectives:

• Explain the objectives of the IRS Strategic Operating Plan and how the IRS plans to spend the $80 Billion provided for in the Inflation Reduction Act.
• Evaluate how the funding components could impact clients and practitioners

How does the expanding global art market affect the value of fine art, collector cars, memorabilia, wine, silver, jewelry, and other collectibles owned by clients? What factors influence the value of objects? During the past several years, the fine art, jewelry and collectible markets have been in a continuous state of evolution expanding into new countries and to new purchasers across the globe. Due to the increased number of international buyers, tastes and desires have broadened. As a result, the value of fine art, jewelry, vintage cars, and collectibles has fluctuated tremendously over the past decade due to changes in consumer demand. This presentation will educate the attendees on the state of the art, jewelry and collectible markets. Attendees will also develop and understand the issues related to managing a client's collection.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the difference between price and value as well as the various types of appraisals for art, jewelry and collectibles
• How are collectors using their art, jewelry and collectibles as a strategic asset to help them realize their philanthropic objectives?
• What are the current trends in the art, jewelry and collectible markets that can result in capital gains issues?

Hey, do you like saving time and money, but hate doing actual work? Then you’re going to _love_ this presentation. We're sharing 10 super-detailed automations that will make your accounting practice run smoother than a slip 'n slide on a Slip 'n Slide. And the best part? You get to steal all of them! That's right, just take 'em and run, like a thief in the night. We won't tell anyone, we promise. Have something you want automated? Tell us during the Q&A and we'll discuss on-the-spot. We've got everything from data entry bots to AI that can handle your tax prep (just kidding). You can sit back, relax, and let the machines do the heavy lifting. So if you're ready to say goodbye to the drudgery of accounting and hello to a life of leisure, come on down and steal some automations. We promise this’ll be more fun than a clown car full of puppies*. _*Not true. That would be way cooler. _ _ _

Learning Objectives:

• Recall the anatomy of an automation
• Identify how APIs work
• Indicate how webhooks work

What are the cyber attackers targeting today and what does their playbook look like? This session will explore what bad actors are up to and what is and isn't working to stop them. Specific areas to be covered include: * Highlights of popular cybersecurity and breach trend reports such as: * Verizon's Data Breach Investigations Report * The NSA Cybersecurity Year in Review * IBM's Cost of Data Breach * The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency Cybersecurity and Financial System Resilience Report * Why Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks continue to be a top revenue generator for the attackers. * How user activity monitoring is an essential element of network defense. * Tabletop exercises: * Developing a roadmap for exercise improvement from year to year (even if you haven't done one yet...) * Adding realism to tabletop exercises and bring them to life! * What does the current threat landscape look like, and what is evolving as a result? * Leveraging the MITRE ATT&CK Matrices

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the cybersecurity threats that currently affect you and your organization.
• Recognize potential indicators of compromise related to current popular attack methods.
• Select and implement the right control procedures to help protect against today's cybersecurity threats.
• Recall how your information security program needs to evolve to keep pace with the current threat landscape.

To deliver the proactive business insights your clients need and want, you must leverage the right technologies to automate processes, allowing your staff the opportunity to deliver real-time analytics and insights of your clients’ overall financial health. During this session you’ll hear from profession experts on the three approaches to an advisory practice, including how they’re leveraging bill pay and spend management technology to gain efficiencies, achieve higher margins, and deliver deeper business insights to clients. Our panelists will share best practices, lessons learned and what’s next for firms looking to take their CAS practice to the next level.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the basics of spend management and how the panel of firms define the service
• Distinguish the drivers behind spend management and how it’s impacting firms and clients
• Analyze how to deepen client engagements and what insights spend management can deliver

Trust in business has always been important. As how, when and why we work evolves, the intentionality with which we build trust must develop accordingly. This interactive session will focus on defining different aspects within the concept of trust. Gaining this nuanced familiarity will help you to build trust intentionally, identify fissures quickly and remedy breaches so that your team can function optimally.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the three elements of trust.
• Recognize one action that can be taken in each element to build trust.

This session will take a deeper dive into the many facets involved in the education planning process and will focus on the tax consequences that arise at almost every stage. From identifying the tax benefits available to individuals and families who are currently saving for college to implementing a distribution strategy for those who are currently paying for qualifying education expenses. This session will also address how tax planning can impact student loan repayment strategies under the various income-driven repayment plans and will discuss the financial and tax implications associated with student loan forgiveness from both federal and state income tax perspectives.

Learning Objectives:

• Review the income qualifications and calculations of the current five different Income Driven Repayment (IDR) plans, including the newest revision of the widely used Revised Pay As You Earn plan, known as REPAYE under the Biden administration
• Understand the financial and tax implications of Public service loan forgiveness (PSLF) and current Income Driven Repayment (IDR) programs available to federal student loan borrowers.
• Compare and contrast the tax benefits associated with different education savings vehicles and understand how distributions can be strategically managed to preserve tax-efficiency
• Identify planning strategies that can help individuals and families across all income, wealth, and generational spectrums achieve their education planning goals in the most tax-efficient manner.

This session will discuss why it is important for the modest estate owner to have a comprehensive estate plan. We will cover basic documents, beneficiary designations, conventional credit shelter planning, the mechanics of filing Form 709 to make the portability election; along with the benefits and downside of making the election. We will also review Roth conversion and insurance planning for smaller estate owners; post-mortem estate, administrative and fiduciary elections, filing the decedent's final return along with the estate's fiduciary return and issues that arise when the decedent is a partner or shareholder in a passthrough entity.

Learning Objectives:

• The participant will gain an understanding of the importance of the need for estate planning for smaller estate owners' especially when they hold interests in passthrough business entities.
• The participant will gain an understanding of the various post-mortem elections available to smaller estate owners, including the benefits and mechanics of making the portability election.
• The participant will gain an understanding of the importance of income tax and basis planning when the estate is less than the federal exclusion amount, including state tax implications.

Microsoft Office 365 is one of the most underutilized technology investments in CPA firms and business organizations in general. In this session, John will share his knowledge and experience of helping numerous organizations to effectively deploy Office 365 and maximize the benefits of an investment you are likely already making. You will experience how the integration of Teams, SharePoint, Power BI, Planner, OneNote and other apps in the Office 365 ecosystem can be harnessed to truly optimize your firm's ability to communicate, collaborate and share knowledge with staff and clients in a virtual work environment.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify specific opportunities to optimize the utilization of the entire Office 365 ecosystem of apps in your firm.
• Identify the unique capabilities of various Office 365 apps to increase the productivity of your staff.

Firm administrators and young partners alike often feel powerless when persuading other firm leaders. They are frustrated because their leaders won’t accept their perspective or appreciate their point of view. They don’t seem to listen. This presentation will focus on how to influence others, especially those who hold positional power. Using the science of human motivation and behavioral economics, you will learn and see demonstrated the various skills and techniques you can use to interact more effectively with those in positional power.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the dynamics of personal and interpersonal power
• Identify how people are influenced
• Apply various techniques to specific situations

Once called “soft skills,” power skills are vital for success for an individual and business alike. Hear from a panel of women leaders from throughout the profession share their insights around the importance of power skills and how they leveraged them for their career development and leadership growth.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify your own power skills.
• Discover the linkages between power skills and employee productivity and retention.
• Determine how to use power skills to advance your career and lead others.
• Learn how to mentor women in the development of their own power skills.

This session will discuss selected common gift tax problems and how to address them. Topics will include GRAT reporting, issues arising from gifts of joint or community property, unreported gifts to irrevocable life insurance trusts (ILITs), annual exclusions and withdrawal rights, and formula valuation adjustment clauses (e.g., _Wandry_-type clauses).

Learning Objectives:

• Identify common mistakes in reporting gifts such as GRATs, gifts of joint or community property, and gifts subject to annual exclusions and/or withdrawal rights.
• Understand the gift and GST implications of unreported gifts to ILITs.
• List leading practices for properly reporting selected types of gifts, including transfers subject to formula valuation adjustment clauses and certain gifts between spouses.

The 2019 Secure Act made major changes that affect how retirement benefits are paid out after the death of the account owner. Owners who want control over the timing of benefits after death have traditionally used trusts to exercise that control. The Secure Act changed the timing of many post-death distributions and complicated matters for trustees. In this session, we'll discuss how the major types of trusts will operate after Secure and Secure 2.0.

Learning Objectives:

• Recognize the reasons trusts are named as beneficiaries.
• Identify the types of trusts used and their characteristics.
• Determine planning strategies to work with trust beneficiaries

Many clients and many CPAs themselves should be using asset protection trusts in their planning. We live in an incredibly litigious society so this type of planning is appropriate for a wide swath of clients not only surgeons. This course will help practitioners understand and identify how, when and why to recommend asset protection trusts for client planning, how to work with the attorney who will prepare the document to assure the client’s needs are addressed, and what types of trust and techniques might be appropriate. There are key steps that CPAs should be involved in that are critical to the success of asset protection trusts (balance sheet for the client, financial forecasts, assistance on a solvency affidavit). One segment of the program will review a list of the most common trusts and explain the role they can play in asset protection planning, even trusts that are not viewed as asset protection trusts: revocable trusts (really!), ILITs, SLATs, DAPTs, hybrid-DAPTs, GRATs, SPATs, and more will all be analyzed from an asset protection lens. The focus will be on practical planning ideas CPAs can identify and help plan.

Learning Objectives:

• Learn specific steps CPAs can take to enhance the viability of client asset protection plans.
• Understand how vital the CPAs role is to the success of a trust asset protection plan including financial analysis, compliance and more.
• Learn how a wide variety of different trusts can, or cannot, be used in asset protection planning: GRATs, SLATs, SPATs, DAPTs and more.

AICPA & CIMA recently formed a Future of Finance Group. This group, made up of CFO’s and leaders from a range of companies from Fortune 100 to mid-market, is charged with transforming the profession in its broadest context and re-imagining the finance function of the future. This group created a vision for the CFO of the future that includes a shift from a rearview mirror view to a windshield view and a mandate to become a valued partner to the business with strategic foresight, and coined the term, Chief Future Officer. In this interactive session, Barry Payne and Tom Hood, will be presenting the key insights from the Future of Finance Group. They will discuss and offer suggestions on areas of focus to enable you to grow the value of your accounting and finance organization.

Learning Objectives:

• Recall a deeper understanding of the key insights from the research and Future of Finance group ranging from cost effectiveness and digital acceleration to thinking differently about talent and upskilling.
• Identify areas where they can improve their skills and competencies to become value partners to the business and move toward the role of ‘Chief Future Officer’
• Recognize how to create new approaches and solutions for talent management in finance, positioning themselves and their organizations for success in the current and future business environment. They will also be able to develop a talent game plan to align with changing business need

The shrinking accounting pipeline and workforce shortage calls for real innovation in staffing models so we can continue to deliver an excellent client experience and support our often-overwhelmed client-facing staff. Leading-edge firms are expanding their service lines to include new operational and client service personnel who break the traditional “admin” mold, participating directly in the client service and service delivery processes. Picture new team members who are planning ahead, projecting capacity, balancing resources, onboarding clients, gathering important client deliverables and signed agreements, loading client components onto portals, responding to client emails and inquiries, and generally removing all work from your advanced-degree audit, tax, accounting, and advisory team members. In this interactive session, we’ll explore strategies for establishing a difference-making, non-CPA client team, including: * Recognizing the impact leverage and new staffing models will have on your firm’s profitability and capacity to serve clients * Analyzing the negative impacts of assumptions, titles, and phrases commonly used to describe administrative team member and how you small changes can change your firm’s mindset around the role * Identifying roles and responsibilities operational and administrative team members can own * Determining how to establish clear career pathways and opportunities for growth for these new team members Come to this highly interactive session to move from the reactive foxhole you’re in to a proactive, smoothed work stream!

Learning Objectives:

• Recognizing the impact leverage and new staffing models will have on your firm’s profitability and capacity to serve clients
• Analyzing the negative impacts of assumptions, titles, and phrases commonly used to describe administrative team member and how you small changes can change your firm’s mindset around the role
• Identifying roles and responsibilities operational and administrative team members can own
• Determining how to establish clear career pathways and opportunities for growth for these new team members

The Private Company Council (PCC) helps improve the financial accounting and reporting standards for private companies and determines whether private company alternatives to existing GAAP are necessary. The PCC takes a proactive approach to its mission and conducts robust outreach with private company stakeholders through a variety of channels, including events like this one. Participants will learn about the current activities of the PCC and how its input helps the FASB develop standards that provide more relevant information to users of private company financial statements. This interactive, town hall-style forum will provide participants the opportunity to directly engage with PCC members, FASB members, and FASB staff by asking questions and providing feedback about how financial reporting for private companies might be improved.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the mission of the Private Company Council
• Analyze the current agenda of the Private Company Council
• Determine how the FASB considers and incorporates input provided by the Private Company Council on FASB projects

A presentation on asset classes, asset allocation, and asset location to meet investors' financial objectives.

Learning Objectives:

• Understanding asset classes
• Understanding asset allocation strategies

Ransomware Attacks have become the biggest single cyber risk for enterprises of any size and industry. Research indicates a steep rise not only in the number of attacks, but as well in the average damage per incident. This session follows the footsteps of a cyber-criminal and uncovering their digital footprint. This is a journey inside the mind of an ethical hacker’s response to a ransomware incident that brought a business to a full stop, and discovering the evidence left behind to uncover their attack path and the techniques used. In this session I will cover a real-world incident response to the CryLock ransomware showing the techniques used by the attackers. Joe Carson, Chief Security Scientist & Advisory CISO at Delinea, who will take you through the mind of a hacker and follow the footsteps that led to a damaging Crylock ransomware attack. Joe will look at tools and techniques cyber criminals use to hack endpoints, such as the WannaCry vulnerability, RDP Brute Force, Mimikatz, and Responder, and the paths they can take toward your enterprise infrastructure and data.

Learning Objectives:

• How attackers gained access to the system
• Lessons Learned from the cyber attacks
• Best Practices to reduce the risks

Retirement poses unique challenges, from navigating financial risks to addressing changes in spending habits and planning for potential care needs. In this session, participants will learn effective strategies for managing retirement risks, creating a sustainable retirement income, and developing a comprehensive aging plan.

Learning Objectives:

• Be able to identify the key components of an aging plan.
• Be able to identify the different types of risks that can impact retirement security, such as inflation, market volatility, and longevity risk.
• Understand how spending patterns typically change in retirement.

Elizabeth Forspan, Esq., a Trusts and Estates and Elder Care attorney based out of New York, will discuss the various options available for paying for long term care. The session will include a discussion about long term care insurance, private pay options and the Medicaid program.

Learning Objectives:

• To understand the tax considerations associated with Medicaid and Long Term Care planning.
• To understand the various options available for paying for Long Term Care.

Have you noticed? Everyone is busy. What used to be a sit-down coffee is now a flurry of emails. Instead of driving strategy we're combatting the latest TikTok trend. Its all become very... impersonal. So how do you ensure you're able to get in front of current and prospective clients, build trust, and communicate your message clearly and authentically? In this session we're unpacking video. From humble internal uses that'll enable you to communicate with your team in a more personal way, to burning down social media with hot takes. You'll come away with practical tips you can implement to make video a little less intimidating, and leverage your expertise in an authentic way. No dancing required.* *Unless you want to dance

Learning Objectives:

• Recognize the mental hurdles involved in getting started with video
• Identify internal opportunities to leverage video with your team
• Recall building an external strategy to attract new clients, and develop trust with existing clients over video

This presentation will explore why there is an M&A frenzy taking place in the profession. Specifically, it will look at how to analyze the cultural, strategic, and economic fit for both the buyer and seller. The session will also discuss the best practices of setting up a structured process and will address the most often made mistakes and pitfalls that can take place in a merger or acquisition.

Learning Objectives:

• Analyze and assess the cultural, strategic and economic fit for both sides of a merger/acquisition.
• Identify and avoid the mistakes and pitfalls that can occur during a merger/acquisition.

The only constant in partnership taxation seems to be change. This session will highlight certain recent federal tax developments affecting partnerships and their partners. This session is designed to cover considerations that arise in reporting and transactions involving partnerships and may include the following: amended returns and the centralized partnership audit regime (BBA), potential international considerations and related reporting requirements and the impact of partnership liabilities on partner basis.

Learning Objectives:

• Compare current developments occurring in the field of federal partnership taxation
• Apply insight into practical considerations, opportunities, and concerns regarding federal partnership taxation
• Analyze updates on international reporting and other important issues

Passive activities are often the subject of IRS audit and it is crucial for CPAs to focus on engagement, management and communication to limit liability. Loss utilization first requires sufficient basis and thereafter requires adherence to the at risk and passive activity rules. Our session will include both an overview and specific examples for real estate and other trades and businesses. You will gain a comprehensive understanding of how these rules will work with helpful examples and cases.

Learning Objectives:

• Distinguish At-Risk and Passive Activity requirements
• Identify proper grouping and aggregation elections
• Analyze real estate professional standards and qualifications
• Differentiate methods for material participation
• Best practices for substantiation
• Identify significant participation
• Calculations under §461(ℓ) – the final hurdle

Data is ubiquitous, and cyber, data, technology, financial, and operational risks need to be well managed and addressed. Organizations are striving to become data-driving companies to achieve better performance through data analytics and automation. We will walk through some practical examples and analytical approaches, tactics used to combat risks, and what we have implemented to transform existing routines into habits. The presentation will demonstrate how analytics tools and technologies help to achieve process improvement, gain efficiency, and improve risk management practices.

Learning Objectives:

• Apply analytics tools and technologies to improve risk management practices and develop data-driven habits, while assessing the benefits and limitations of different approaches.
• Identify tactics for managing cyber, data, technology, financial, and operational risks in a data-driven organization, and incorporate risk management into data analytics and automation initiatives.
• Analyze how data analytics and automation can improve organizational performance and risk management, using practical examples and analytical approaches.

Are you tired of busy season frustrations? Top 500 firms have found success with the SafeSend Suite in getting 8879s e-signed in less than a day, seeing up to 40% completion of client organizers, and alleviating the strain of staffing issues. In this session, we will share why using the SafeSend Suite eliminates these frustrations all while providing a 5-Star client experience. The SafeSend Suite offers one, intuitive platform for clients and staff. No matter the document you’re sending throughout the year, clients access it the same way – increasing both client satisfaction and adoption. Join SafeSend as we share ways to increase your firm’s success by easily gathering source documents, collecting digital/fillable organizers, assembling and delivering completed tax returns, collecting e-signatures, automating signature and payment reminders, distributing K-1s, and requesting firm tax prep fees. The SafeSend Suite makes an impact across all your tax workflow processes.

Learning Objectives:

• List the common points of frustration for firms and clients throughout the tax engagement
• Identify automation solutions that were built specifically for the tax and accounting profession

In today's rapidly changing business landscape, organizations are facing a significant talent gap, which has become a key impediment to achieving their growth objectives. To address this challenge, organizations need to adopt a robust workforce planning strategy that leverages the latest solutions and techniques. This session will explore the various aspects of workforce planning and strategies that organizations can implement to address the talent gap. We will start by discussing the current state of the talent gap and the factors that have led to its emergence and then delve into the concept of workforce planning and how it can help organizations in identifying and filling their talent gaps. We'll discuss the benefits and drawbacks of each concept, using real-life examples to illustrate how they can be integrated into a comprehensive workforce planning strategy. By the end of the session, attendees will have a better understanding of the talent gap and the role that workforce planning can play in overcoming it.

Learning Objectives:

• Workforce planning and strategies
• the talent gap
• talent augmentation, talent outsourcing

Join us as we show you how to help automate your clients’ back office with seamless accounts payable and the next generation of spend management.

This session is dedicated to the possibility that professionals can greatly increase the value they provide to their customers if they hone their skills at asking better, more effective questions. Developing an enhancing this skill is not easy because it requires us to rethink the paradigms and prejudices of the past.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand what makes and effective question
• Sample questions

Are you ready to take your accounting practice to the next level? Join us for a session where we will explore the advantages of digitizing and automating areas of your practice. We’ll discuss how expanding your advisory capabilities can help you build a more successful and profitable firm.

Learning Objectives:

• Determine how to leverage technology to streamline processes, reduce costs, and increase
• Identify best practices for utilizing data insights to gain an edge over the competition
• Recognize valuable insights into the latest trends and strategies for improving your firm’s performance

Understand your legal and regulatory obligations, develop adequate policies to secure client data and protect your practice. John Sapp, CPA will lead this session pulling from his 25+ years of professional experience in tax software development that includes serving as one of the founding leaders of the IRS Security Summit, and the Chair of the Electronic Tax Administration Advisory Committee when its charter was expanded to advise congress on prevention of identity theft and tax refund fraud. John is also a popular speaker for security topics that impact today’s tax professionals. This presentation will provide an overview of the cyber threats that taxpayers and tax professionals face daily. Attendees will learn why cybercriminals target taxpayer data, their methods, and how to protect clients.

Learning Objectives:

• The methods cybercriminals use to steal taxpayer data
• How to combat cyber threats on behalf of your clients
• Your data-security responsibilities as a tax professional

Data-driven approaches to audit and assurance are a hot topic, but what does that mean for everyday work and technology usage? In this session, we will discuss the importance of an efficient audit and how a data-driven approach, including data ingestion, data analytics, and data visualization, can lead to success. We will also explore why firms need to remain in control and not rely solely on technology, and why a pragmatic and flexible approach to methodology and tool usage is critical in demonstrating the distinct value that your firm can provide to clients.

Learning Objectives:

• Learn how to define a data-driven audit and how technology assists in achieving efficiencies.
• Understand why firm flexibility is key to creating distinctive value to your clients.
• Explore considerations when adopting tools to assist in creating efficiencies in the execution of work.

With the number of accounting graduates declining every year and more and more CPAs leaving the profession, it does not look like the CPA talent shortage will get better any time soon. That’s why the Big 4 are increasingly relying on international talent solutions and small and medium firms need to start following suit. Join us for a presentation with Jim Brady, CEO of alliantTalent and former CEO for Deloitte’s India Talent Center on how you can start to fill vacancies today.

Learning Objectives:

• Recognize the major reasons for the shortage of available talent in the CPA profession.
• Identify strategies to adapt to droughts in the accounting workforce over the next few years so your firm can continue to grow.

In today’s hi-tech AI world there is still a great need for business services including bookkeeping, accounting, payroll, technology consulting, forecasting, and analytic work. This session will discuss the market and share perspectives from a seasoned veteran of Client Advisory Services (CAS). Val Steed, CPA, MA, CITP has been working in the accounting technology industry for over thirty years. He ran his own firm and CAS practice for over twelve years and has spent numerous hours consulting with accounting technology companies on how to build a partner program and market to accountants. This session is a guaranteed good time and with useful information.

Learning Objectives:

• List five service areas for CAS
• Learn how to build a CAS practice from an accounting practice
• Identify how a simple policy change or two can significantly help your practice
• Create a more positive culture in your CAS practice

Are your talent shortage conversations becoming more frequent and not just for the traditional busy season? If so, you may be trying to solve this issue very tactically. In this session, you will hear from CPO Lindsay Gaal about the resourcing challenges she overcame by starting to take a more prescriptive and strategic approach to her workforce planning strategies. Here is what you can expect to take away from the session:

Learning Objectives:

• How to build a pipeline of talent amid the talent shortage crisis
• Why a year-round workforce planning strategy is necessary
• What a strategic workforce planning strategy looks like

Join us daily as our hosts talk about what you can expect at the ENGAGE 2023 conference onsite and what you don’t want to miss virtually! These segments will include interviews/q&a with speakers, behind-the-scenes look at the Studio, and what’s happening onsite this year!! Make sure to check the ENGAGE Live Studio out to enhance your experience as a virtual attendee!

The Dynamic Audit Solution (DAS) is a transformational audit methodology that modernizes and enhances the quality, efficiency and value of audits. The development of DAS is a partnership between the AICPA, CPA.com, and their technology partner, Caseware International. In this session, learn about the latest updates on its development, the roadmap for future versions, and what your firm can do to start thinking about how to implement and migrate to this dynamic tool.

Learning Objectives:

• Recall the current and upcoming features of DAS.
• Identify steps to prepare to implement DAS.

Have you heard ‘Say yes - it’ll lead to more opportunities!?’ While that may be true, I believe that every time you say yes to something, you are saying no to something else. It’s time to ditch the overwhelm and get clarity on what you really want. This session is designed to help you align your career and life so that you can be intentional about where you spend your time (which may mean saying No to things) to increase your success and confidence as a leader.

Learning Objectives:

• Recognize ways to get a clear vision for your future,
• Identify what is most important,
• Recall strategies to use No as a complete sentence without sabotaging your career.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify how to best use the services of the National Taxpayer Advocate to protect your clients' rights as a taxpayer and help you with tax problems you can't resolve on your own
• Recognize the major challenges faced by the IRS in administering the tax system, TAS's role in addressing them, and how participants can assist in this process

Finding and retaining talent is one of, if not the, most common challenge facing firms today. In this session, we will explore the demographic and societal trends impacting the profession along with the plan being developed by the AICPA and other stakeholders to impact the talent pipeline quickly and significantly. You’ll hear about the solutions being developed to address core challenges and identify ways you can play a role in increasing interest in the profession. Let’s discuss the components of the plan identified to-date and look for other ideas as well in a collaborative session designed to tackle this important issue.

Learning Objectives:

• Analyze current CPA exam and hiring trends
• Discuss the components of the AICPA’s Human Capital Acceleration Plan
• Identify ways that you can play a role in increasing interest in the profession

While some of today’s workforce is made up of deep-rooted, dependable staff, a larger number of positions are now a revolving door of employee turnover. Workforce thought leader, Megan Odell, will share insight on why culture initiatives are so important today and ways to create a place where people want to work. Learn how to slow the revolving door, more effectively manage the impending shorter-term workforce, and maximize the time you have with each employee in order to create a healthy, sustainable culture.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify current employee turnover trends and future staffing projections
• Recognize the real reasons employees leave most organizations and ways to encourage them to stay
• Evaluate culture initiatives that other companies are doing right
• Determine ways to become a M.A.G.N.E.T. employer who attracts better applicants and keeps staff longer

Are you ready to take your CPA firm to the next level? Would you like to attract new clients and retain existing clients? Then it’s time to add Outsourced CFO services to your revenue stream. Led by a former CFO, this session will discuss the benefits of adding (or expanding) outsourced CFO services to your client accounting services, the various types of services you can offer, and how to market to clients. The presentation will include case studies of firms that have successfully implemented outsourced CFO services, providing practical guidance and valuable insights into the challenges of implementation. presentation is perfect for CPA firms looking to grow and expand their business, improve efficiency, and increase profitability. Don't miss out on this opportunity to gain a competitive advantage in the market!

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the benefits of CFO services
• Distinguish between the various levels of CFO services that you can offer

The Chairs of the ASB and the Accounting and Review Services Committee (ARSC), along with the AICPA Chief Auditor, will discuss current issues facing the two boards, as well as recently issued standards for audits and attestation engagements and recent activities of the ARSC for reviews, compilations and financial statement preparation engagements performed in accordance with Statements on Standards for Accounting and Review Services (SSARSs). The discussion will also include the Auditing Standards Board and ARSC's active agendas including ongoing efforts to modernize auditing and attestation standards, enhance outreach to stakeholders regarding proposed standards and post-implementation reviews of issued standards.

Learning Objectives:

• Apply new auditing, attestation, SSARSs and quality management standards in their engagements.
• Identify current projects to keep attendees apprised of their status and facilitate their participation in the stakeholder feedback process.

Adapting quickly to forces outside of your control—like being pinned on the mountain when a storm hits—requires team building, leadership, and crisis management. In this presentation, extreme adventurer Jamie Clarke shares how businesses can adapt to unexpected change while upholding the mission. With an entire workforce suddenly working from home, with companies forced to innovate entirely new ways of doing business, leaders are facing never-imagined workplace challenges. The insights and strategies Clarke learned while surviving extreme environments will help your organization emerge from this chapter in your history stronger than ever before and ready to conquer the future.

Learning Objectives:

• Learn strategies on how to adapt to unexpected change.
• Learn how you can lead your teams and organizations through these changes while sticking to your mission.

In this age of technology disruption, everything is changing around us. We sometimes can feel like we don’t know where our anchor is - what will stay the same, what will change, and what we can depend on. We can find that when implementing change in our organization, individual patterns of behavior can show up in ways that prevent the business from making progress and embracing the opportunities ahead. While we are focusing on change management in our organizations and what the future of our work will look like, we should also be spending an equal amount of time creating stronger human connections. With time and dedication, you can learn to become a connected leader who contributes to cultivating an engaging and fulfilling work-life culture for yourself, your team and colleagues. During this talk, Amy will take you on an emotional journey of self reflection. You will discover more compassion for yourself and others, be more mindful as a leader, and improve how you communicate to achieve the desired outcomes together as a team.

Learning Objectives:

• Recognize how habits and patterns are created in our lives from the time we are young that affect us into our adulthood and the steps to break the ones that don’t serve us;
• Identify how the ego develops, influences our work lives, and impacts how well we interact with others;
• Indicate ways to change your mindset to overcome negativity and replace it with gratitude; and,
• Recall how to create more compassion for the people you work with by creating communities of support to break down barriers and achieve the best results for the organization.

Have you ever received a text from your boss with exclamation points and questions marks and didn’t know if they were excited, confused, or mad? Or got caught up on what channel to communicate through? Or have you wondered if sending an emoji to the project lead through chat was too informal? Well, if you have, you are not alone. Many people struggle with how best to communicate especially in this more digital and remote world. Based on Erica Dhawan’s book, “Digital Body Language,” we will explore the digital elements of style, the four laws of digital body language, and digital body language across difference. Join me to dive into this critical interpersonal area to eliminate confusion and communicate better with others.

Learning Objectives:

• Indicate what digital body language is
• Recognize why digital body language causes stress for many
• Identify how to read between the lines
• Distinguish between the four laws of digital body language: value visibly, communicate carefully, collaborate confidently, and trust totally
• Recall tips on how to communicate more effectively in the digital world

Utilize the panel discussion from EDGE2304 to implement ideas for your firm. Small groups will discuss the considerations and practical implementation of outsourcing work, the benefits of firm alliances, workflow automation, lifestyle firms, and merger & acquisition opportunities.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify your firm's needs and how each of these methodologies could be useful in coping with pipeline pressures.
• Recall an action plan for your firm.

Older people, even people into their 90s, get divorced. But when older people divorce, one catalyst for the divorce is often estate planning considerations or capacity issues, and the movers behind and players in the divorce are often the children or caregivers. Also, grey divorces may be settled or litigated in the shadow of death. These facts present unique challenges for CPAs and estate planners and sometimes, unique opportunities. The presenters, one a divorce attorney and one an estate planner, will introduce you to the distinctive realm of estate planning for greying divorce.

Learning Objectives:

• This presentation will uncover the unique aspects, financial and otherwise, of the grey divorce, including disability planning, Medicaid, long-term care considerations and non-traditional options in divorce. Once these are identified, estate planners, CPAs and their allied professionals can more fully provide valuable services to their clients and their families.
• The presentation will introduce you to the special planning considerations and drafting suggestions involved when a person’s death is not only likely to occur during or soon after the divorce, but will be a major consideration during the entire divorce process and the resulting settlement terms.

The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act sunsets at the end of 2025. For the transfer tax exemption, this means a reduction to $5 million indexed for inflation after 2017 instead of the current exemption of $12,920,000. This will affect the income tax, gift tax, estate tax and generation-skipping tax. This Program will address what should be done anticipating these changes.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the planning challenges of the coming 2 1/2 years.
• Determine which planning techniques should be focused on looking ahead.
• Address the needs of multiple clients to plan

There are numerous ways to leverage tax data. Innovative tax practices are aware of current trends in the tax landscape and combined with data, process, and tax technology, they can drive business insights that improve client decision making and reduce tax risk and exposure. In this session, you will hear from tax advisors from leading firms and experts in technology at CPA.com and Vertex, as they dive into the various ways that advisors and companies are using tax data and technology to deliver insights that drive an informed strategy and better results.

Learning Objectives:

• Determine the purpose, benefits, and challenges to leveraging tax analytics
• Identify practical examples of applying data analytics to direct and indirect tax services
• Compare the variety of ways tax technology is being deployed to harness data and provide business insights
• Receive guidance on developing your firm’s strategy for integrating data analytics into your tax practice

Are you interesting in learning about the latest HR workplace trends and how they can impact your firm? You will learn about the latest developments in HR including how remote work is reshaping the industry, how employee engagement is vital to your firm, and the benefits of wellness program that support the well-being of your team members.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify how to better understand the key HR Trends in the industry.
• Identify tools to use to help solve the talent shortage.
• Identify how to retain your people.

Are you tired of managing disparate data sources in your organization workflows? Do you want to learn how to create a harmonious ecosystem of data flowing from one application to another? Join us for a fascinating session on Information Ecosystems! In this presentation, we will explore the relationships between various applications that hold critical business data. We will showcase a demo of how the separate applications for project tracking, accounts receivable, client management and email can work together to create an automated and efficient Information Ecosystem for accounting. We will demonstrate how these applications can be utilized by staff members to streamline their workflows and improve productivity. Whether you're a are in public accounting or a CFO looking to optimize your workflows, this session will provide valuable insights on how to create the Information Ecosystem that can take your organization to the next level of efficiency.

Learning Objectives:

• Improve process productivity with automation leading to better service for clients and more efficient accounting.
• Recognize sources of data and their relation to each other in your Information Ecosystem.
• Template to explore and identify workflow inefficiencies for opportunities in automation and data integrations when you are back at the office.

In this session, we will be discussing the tax issues related to foreign trusts including income tax, gift tax and estate tax ramifications. These taxes can often intersect in unexpected ways.

Learning Objectives:

• Tax characteristics of a foreign trust
• Understanding the intersection of income/estate/gift with foreign trust planning

This presentation drills down on the specific issue when capital gains may be included in Distributable Net Income (DNI) with the corresponding tax burden passed out to the beneficiary. It is a challenging issue to practitioners and trustees as the rules are complicated and requires an analysis and understanding of fiduciary accounting, tax law and the provisions in the governing instrument.

Learning Objectives:

• To recognIze how this issue interacts with fiduciary accounting and taxation.
• To analyze the guidance currently available in the tax law, state law and accounting law.
• To analyze the competing forces at play requiring attention to this issue
• To determine the trustee's exposure in this area

Finance function maturity and agility are essential for modern CFOs to ensure that their finance function creates and delivers value to the business. This session will cover the various dimensions of finance maturity and the key factors that CFOs should consider. The assessment provides an action plan to improve the effectiveness of their finance function and achieve world-class performance.

Learning Objectives:

• Analyze the dimensions of finance transformational maturity
• Identify the various stages of finance maturity
• Determine how to deploy the finance maturity model and formulate a transformation plan

The Great Resignation and impending exit of Baby Boomers from the workforce has focused the conversation on finding new talent, but what about nurturing the next generation of leaders? To remain competitive and ensure the health of your organization, you're going to need to cultivate the leadership of tomorrow. In this session, we're going to unpack the principles of coaching and training for the next generation and give you ideas on how to develop your most motivated employees.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify growth-potential employees
• Identify coaching techniques
• Identify training approaches that work for the next generation

As the business environment continues to move forward rapidly, employing technology at nearly every turn, clients expect their auditors to keep pace using technology and data analytics to deliver audit quality. The Auditing Standards Board (ASB) in the fall of 2022 conducted a survey to understand potential impediments to auditors’ use of information technology, including emerging technology. In Part 1, participants will dive into the results of the survey, including the benefits auditors are achieving when using technology as well as why some auditors shy away. Further, participants will receive a high-level understanding of some prominent areas in the audit where technology can provide efficiencies and stronger evidence during the audit process.

Learning Objectives:

• Recall how technology is shifting the perspectives on the value of an audit.
• Identify where and why auditors use, or avoid, technology in the audit process
• Recognize how to overcome barriers to adopting and applying technology during your audits

An open discussion about some of the pitfalls encountered with the client adoption of ASC No. 842, Leases.

Learning Objectives:

• Assess the common challenges and issues that companies face in implementing ASC 842, such as determining the lease term, the accounting owner of a leasehold improvement and its impact on lease commencement, etc…
• Evaluate challenges participants faced while implementing ASC 842, and gain insights from peers and experts.

A explanation of the costs and benefit of different portfolio delivery vehicles like mutual funds and ETFs. The importance of trading costs and taxes for different vehicles.

Learning Objectives:

• Understanding the costs and benefits of using ETFs versus mutual funds.

Advisors can add reliable value to investors through the strategic selection of investment accounts and financial products that provide tax-advantaged growth. This presentation provides a framework for estimating the benefit of sheltering through a net return methodology. Net returns provide insight into the quantitive benefit of strategic sheltering and allow advisors to gain intuition about when to use various account types for clients to maximize value. Taxable assets with deferred growth, or basis assets, such as stocks and insurance products provide unique value that changes with time horizon and product type. This framework can also be used to understand optimal ordering of asset sales to fund spending in retirement, which can increase retirement spending by as much as 20%.

Learning Objectives:

• Recognize the four fundamental account types and how they influence net investment returns
• Evaluate the quantitative benefit of using tax sheltered accounts for growth
• Recognize when to use Roth and traditional tax deferred accounts for clients, including the value of Roth conversions
• Understand how the benefit of basis assets such as stocks and insurnance increases over time and affects optimal withdrawal ordering in retirement

If you are financial planner working with families and executives with net worth from $2MM - $10MM, this is the session for you. Participants will gain a better understanding of the types and frequency of communication, actionable deliverables to keep the process moving forward and how to effectively monitor the progress with your client. Software utilized in this process and strategies created by the presenter will give you immediate solutions to help your business grow and your clients gain more benefit from the financial planning process.

Learning Objectives:

• To gain understanding in the process of consistent communication and a collaborative planning process that helps clients achieve their desired results.
• Participants will benefit from a unique process developed by the presenter and his team that effectively uses the planner's time more efficiently.

Retiring overseas is a strategy that can help your clients achieve their retirement dreams including retiring early and retiring well even on a limited income. In this session, we'll detail the factors your clients will need to consider and plan for to make a successful move overseas in retirement: residency, health care, taxes, banking, administration, and financial considerations, both for the capital costs of the move and the ongoing cost of enjoying a rich, fulfilling retirement in another country.

Learning Objectives:

• Understanding the benefits, financial and personal, of retiring overseas
• Identifying for which clients retiring overseas makes sense
• Understanding how to approach the strategy with your client
• Understanding the steps required for a successful retirement move to another country

For CPAs, permanent life insurance often seems like a bewilderingly complex and jargon-heavy product with questionable value for clients. Nonetheless, CPAs are increasingly faced with the challenge of providing advice on in-force insurance contracts and proposed transactions even though life insurance isn't their area of expertise. As it turns out, permanent life insurance isn't nearly as complex as some agents would like for it to appear, the jargon is easily translated and there is almost always real value for clients in owning permanent life insurance - although sometimes in unexpected ways. This session is designed to equip CPAs with what they need to know about how the product actually works so that they can ask informed questions, provide actionable advice and deliver value to their clients when it comes to permanent life insurance.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the common mechanics of permanent life insurance
• Understand the history and current variations of permanent life insurance
• Differentiate between accurate and inaccurate representations about permanent life insurance
• Differentiate between appropriate and inappropriate uses for permanent life insurance

Progressive firms well on their way to becoming a destination workplace are positioning as having somethings special -- a single wow factor they can offer to talent and/or clients. These firms are positioning on WOW strategies like “we don't keep time at our firm,” or “no one here works over 40 hours,” or “we are a truly flexible anytime, anywhere workplace,” or “we are a deep learning organization,” or “we are SO FUN.” Attend this session to learn more about firms on the leading edge of talent attraction and understand how you can be there, too.

Learning Objectives:

• Analyze the competitive recruiting and retention landscape
• Identify different employee-centered differentiators
• Apply the concepts from the session to identify your firm’s most compelling wow factor

Promoters like to boast that they can wash away gains associated with the sale of a business by using a deferred sales trust. Does it really work? This session will focus on different advance planning techniques to defer or reduce gain on the sale of a business - including a discussion about sales to a deferred sales trust, sales to a charitable trust, sales of qualified small business stock and state tax considerations. The discussion will involve an analysis of the extent to which these techniques work or are traps for the unwary.

Learning Objectives:

• Understanding applicable tax laws related to planning technique.
• Understanding structure of planning technique.

This session will go through the recent revisions to the SSTS.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the upcoming changes to the AICPA’s Statements on Standards for Tax Services (SSTSs) and discuss the effective date of the new standards
• Provide an overview of the ethical requirements that CPA tax practitioners must adhere to, including Circular 230, the AICPA’s Code of Professional Conduct and the SSTSs

Many clients sell their business only once and need assistance in understanding the process, preparing for it and maneuvering through it. This program will provide a fast-paced overview of how these transactions work and how the accountant can assist the client in its many facets including valuing the business, the income and estate tax aspects, due diligence, understanding the contract terms, net working capital, liquidity and quality of earnings calculations, GAAP requirements and how these deals are sometimes structured in layers and with deferred or noncash payments. Key letter of intent and contract clauses and issues will also be covered. Included will be templates for valuing the business, the quality of earnings and net proceeds from the sale and a 48-step task list for the sale.

Learning Objectives:

• How buyers value businesses
• The contracts and documents that clients will have to sign
• Understanding the Quality of Earnings calculations
• Recognize the income and estate tax differences in the types of deal structures
• The due diligence process and post-closing adjustments
• The roles of the many professionals in the process and their fees
• How to anticipate problems so you could warn your client before they become evident

This session will explore both the quantitative and qualitative issues involved in keeping a family vacation home in the family. We will explore techniques for transferring the home, income tax issues as well as important issues the family needs to continuously navigate to maximize harmony.

Learning Objectives:

• 1. Learn pros and cons of various gifting strategies including generation skipping transfer opportunities.
• 2. Learn strategies to proactively address issues that tend to cause family conflict around both ownership and use of the family vacation home.
• 3. Identify income tax issues associated with different ownership strategies

In a time where finding incoming talent and preserving the pipeline of professionals that we have is more important than ever, it is critical that we take a look at why young people say they are leaving our workplaces. In this presentation we’ll dive into how the culture of your workplace is impacting your employee engagement from a young professionals point of view. This interactive session will help you better understand employee perceptions to help shape our workforce into one that is valued for years to come.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify main drivers of staff turnover and deploy tactics to help mitigate flight risk
• Recognize correct and incorrect practices in employee engagement and take steps to instill those practices in everyday culture

As firms transition to delivering more advisory and consultative services, the focus on client experience is more important than ever. As firms struggle to recruit and retain enough quality staff, the focus on employee experience is more important than ever. While at face value client experience and employee experience could be viewed as two competing priorities, the reality is there is a strong relationship between the two.

Learning Objectives:

• Define the interconnection between client experience and employee experience
• Develop the vision for both client experience & employee experience within the profession and how they relate
• Create a roadmap for improving both the client experience and employee experience within your firm
• Explore how cross-functional leaders can work together to focus on client experience and employee experience

Join Bill Pirolli, CPA, CFF, PFS, CGMA as he takes a "spin" around the Profit Wheel and discusses the 7 key drivers of Firm profitability. Learn some of the best practices in client selection and termination, avoiding scope creep, billing and collections, the power of leverage and much more. Profitability is not an accident. It requires knowledge, education and discipline to create an environment to work smarter, not harder. In these complex times of staff compression, mergers and acquisitions and ever shifting client needs, it is critical to develop a path to creating profitable and sustainable firms. Come join the discussion!! Bill has over 40 years experience in public accounting in both small and mid sized firms as an active client service partner. He was managing partner of his own firm and became Director of Firm Administration when he merged with DiSanto Priest & Co. As past Chair of the AICPA PCPS Executive Committee, Bill has had the opportunity to work with firms across the country on matters of firm practice management and helped develop many resources to assist firms to be the best they can be.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the key drivers of Firm profitability
• Recognize how to work smarter....not harder

If you’re like most people in the CPA and finance profession, you tend to put work above everything else. You want to be your best, but your long list of responsibilities can be all consuming. Because of this, you may find that other important areas of your life like your health and relationships are taking a back seat. You’re getting to a point where you’re thinking, I don’t want to do it this way anymore but you're not sure how to get out of your current cycle.

Learning Objectives:

• Recognize what increases stress that may not be obvious so that you can intentionally manage it
• Identify a framework you can use to redesign your days, one step at a time
• Identify strategies to make you feel energized versus depleted

This session will summarize what constitutes adequate disclosure for federal gift tax purposes, the importance of the adequate disclosure rules for starting the statute of limitations on transfers, and practical considerations for reporting common gift and non-gift transfers.

Learning Objectives:

• Describe key attributes of the adequate disclosure rules under Treas. Reg. § 301.6501(c)-1 and their importance to the taxpayer and Form 709 preparer.
• Identify relevant practices to consider in your own gift tax preparation protocol.

The estate tax exemption is scheduled to be cut by half in 2026. For married couples spousal lifetime access trusts (“SLATs”) are the go-to tool. But should they be? This session will explain the shortcomings of the typical SLAT plan and how advisers can enhance planning by improving access the clients can have to trust assets using a variety of different techniques that are often overlooked. Enhancing access to trust assets is essential for clients with net worths under $40-$50 million who want to use all their exemption. Creative ways to both enhance access and substantively differentiate the SLATs for purposes of the reciprocal trust doctrine. This session will also include practical and comprehensive discussion of what really may help trusts deflect a reciprocal trust challenge. Step transaction considerations and other tax traps in typical SLAT plans will be examined. What role insurance and financial analysis plays in supporting a SLAT plan.

Learning Objectives:

• Learn creative and often overlooked ways to enhance client access to assets transferred to SLATs
• Specific steps as to how to help clients avoid step transaction and reciprocal trust doctrine issues in a SLAT plan.

Hear from Matthew Bagley, from Verizon, on how he created a Finance Digital Acceleration Hub to eliminate manual activities, to build capacity whilst minimizing burden with teams, to accelerate deployment of digital solutions and to enable ‘ownership’ of future ready digital skills and capabilities. By showing practical examples, this session is relevant to every finance professional working for every size of organization. Many of Verizon’s examples are scalable upwards and downwards and have led to significant business savings and revenue gains. Matthew will share some practical frameworks and approaches so you can start small to resolve immediate challenges to then understanding the art of the possible.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify how Verizon strengthened the leadership vision through a concept called “middle out stakeholdering”.
• Analyze how Verizon created a safe space environment approach which was ROI focused but through a lens of capacity creation over headcount reduction
• Analyze a framework of how Verizon’s digital acceleration hub to identify pain points and work towards rapid solutions
• Identify how Verizon’s business partners are taught ‘how to fish’ and maintain and scale their digital assets
• Determine how to create ownership of digital solutions and obtain grass roots support

Stuck checking boxes on an ENDLESS TO-DO LIST? Never have enough time to do what excites you? Getting more tasks done is never the answer when you're overwhelmed and burned out. Life can be about MORE THAN CHECKING BOXES if you know how to GET THE RIGHT TASKS DONE AT THE RIGHT TIME. The secret to making that happen? Knowing that it's never just the system - but also the behavior - that can FREE YOUR TIME. End the busyness and power up your productivity! THIS PROGRAM IS PERFECT FOR PEOPLE WHO: * Feel overwhelmed, unorganized, or burned out * Have multiple professional or personal projects or roles * Need a simple system for prioritization Each attendee receives a digital RaderCo Go-To Guide with helpful apps, tools, and extra training. Leave with clear, actionable steps on what to do with that never-ending task list and how to be productive and effective. Commit to one behavior change in the next thirty days following the workshop to ensure their success.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify how to create time and tech boundaries to prioritize what matters
• Identify how to incorporate the Powered Path™ method to organize your year, quarter, month, week, and day

This session will provide attendees with an overview of the Professional Ethics Executive Committee as well as an update on recent changes to the Code of Professional Conduct. In addition, attendees will be informed of current and planned initiatives of the PEEC.

Learning Objectives:

• Analyze the PEEC’s functions and its composition
• Identify recently adopted changes to the Code of Professional Conduct
• Identify member enrichment resources available

Digital assets and the associated underlying blockchain technology have been expanding rapidly ever since the very first blockchain transaction occurred. This session will discuss the basics of blockchain technology and the risks that practitioners and others should be aware of.

Learning Objectives:

• Recognize risks facing the auditor (more client acceptance discussion)
• Identify risks facing the entity
• Recall an overview of blockchain technology

It’s common for clients to ask their CPA to “certify” information, whether it’s for a bank loan application or a form that will be submitted to a regulator. These situations can be complex and very urgent, and it’s not always clear which AICPA standards are applicable to the situation. This session will explain the appropriate AICPA standards and certain requirements that may be overlooked as well as show how those standards are applied to real life situations from the AICPA Technical Hotline.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify which AICPA Professional Standards are applicable to third-party verification letters and similar requests.
• Determine which assurance services may be performed when the client requests information to be “certified.”
• Analyze the requirements in AICPA Professional Standards for regulator-prescribed forms and reports.

Analytical procedures are often based on prior year experience (SALY). In a period of considerable economic disruption (e.g., inflation, supply chain issues, shortages in materials, recession, regulation) it becomes harder to effectively relate current to prior data. This session will explore approaches to analytical procedures as risk assessment and as substantive procedures that can mitigate the effects of economic disruptions.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the factors that challenge the effectiveness of analytical procedures as a source of evidence
• Analyze the one most important element in the design of analytical procedures
• Differentiate the types of analytical procedures and identify the analytical procedures that can be effective despite these disruptive factors
• Choose effective ways to integrate analytics with other procedures to achieve low audit risk
• Distinguish documentation that supports the risk-reduction you desire

Providing a broad overview of alternative investments and how they fit into client portfolios. Understanding when alternative investments are appropriate for investors and when not. Understanding performance of such vehicles.

Learning Objectives:

• Understanding the role of alternative investments in investor portfolios.

Retirement planning is more than just building a nest egg. This presentation introduces the three pillars of life satisfaction in retirement – relationships, health and money. I discuss the research on building a more satisfying retirement including the importance of social spending, which relationships matter the most, the impact of health, trends in longevity, and the psychological and economic challenges we face managing our savings to fund a lifestyle. By understanding research on spending, improvements in lifespans, cognitive and physical changes, predictors of well-being, and retirement income, advisor can help clients build a more satisfying and fulfilling retirement.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand predictors of life satisfaction in retirement.
• Evaluate scientific understanding of physical and cognitive changes through retirement.
• Recognize how health, money, and relationships interact when creating a more effective plan for retirement.

Business owners wear many hats, but we work hard to help them slow down, focus on goals, and make sure they are strategically working toward their goals. Let's focus on the highest value risk management conversations we can lead our business owner clients through key person coverage, buy sell strategies, group insurance, and tax favorable utilization of Long-Term Care coverage through an entity. Additionally, we will cover the unique differences in risk management for family-owned businesses and long-term estate equalization.

Learning Objectives:

• Business owner strategies
• Key person/ Buy sell
• Group Insurance Solutions

This presentation will explore why PE has entered the profession; how deals are structured; what the CPA firm look for in a PE firm; what PE firms look for in CPA firms; qualifications to be a "sponsor" firm vs. a "tuck in" firm.

Learning Objectives:

• Determine why PE is interested in CPA firms and what each needs to look for in a prospective partner.
• Differentiate between a "sponsor" firm and a "tuck in" firm and what is required to be a "sponsor" firm.

It’s common to focus on “what else” firms should do to maintain their relevancy and thrive as the profession rapidly evolves. But sometimes moving forward isn’t about what we add, but what we subtract. What processes and mindsets does your firm potentially need to unlearn to thrive? This session will explore five common areas of unlearning firms should examine right now in order to foster a sustainable and healthy organization in the future including random acts of marketing, “dabbling” in services, putting clients first and others.

Learning Objectives:

• Determine what it means to “unlearn” and why it more important than ever
• Identify how to be a leader who understands that change doesn’t have to look the same for everyone
• Analyze why looking outside of the accounting profession is key to innovating and growing
• Use the changing face of our profession and our clients as an opportunity to reimage the accounting firm business model
• Distinguish what “less is more” can mean to the success of your firm

When it comes to trusts and estates, it is vital to understand how fiduciary accounting income is different from taxable income and distributable net income, which are both tax-generated concepts. Using real-world examples, this program will navigate the complexities of defining and calculating fiduciary accounting income. In order to appropriately allocate receipts and disbursements to income or principal, this presentation also will identify key planning tips to consider and potential traps to avoid.

Learning Objectives:

• Learn how to define and calculate fiduciary accounting income.
• Understand how receipts and disbursements are allocated to income or principal.
• Recognize common mistakes and potential traps to avoid when distributing income.

CPA.com’s biannual CAS Benchmark Survey was released in December, 2022. Go beyond the report and learn more about the strategies and practices from CAS leaders of top performing firms use to increase efficiency and improve profitability. Leave this session knowing how to use the CAS Benchmark Survey report to benchmark your own practice and make plans to address key areas of your approach to client advisory services.

Learning Objectives:

• Recognize the elements and methodology of a benchmark survey and understand it’s use
• Identify how to align the survey results to your point on the CAS journey
• Recall the key areas of the survey to share with your firm leaders

This session is designed for finance professionals who want to learn how to spend less time waiting for the mountains of data at their disposal to be compiled, thus freeing more time to make and implement decisions. We have all heard the “buzz words” around BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE tools (BI), now its time to implement. Where do you start? During the session you will get an overview of BI solutions that are available. We will discuss an approach on how to start this journey, key steps to consider as you do so, and pitfalls to avoid. * Find out how to connect BI with existing accounting systems to create KPI dashboards and to analyze data. * Discover how to combine workforce data with financial and operational data to drive more accurate forecasts, budgets, and informed hiring decisions while unlocking more report automation. * We will address general business use and managed services such as Client Accounting Services (CAS).

Learning Objectives:

• Identify and differentiate Business Intelligence Solutions that are available in the marketplace.
• Identify key criteria to consider in the selection of a BI tool that will suit your needs.
• Analyze the financial and non-financial impacts of implementing a BI solution in your organization.

Technology is evolving at an unprecedented rate, transforming our profession and continuously expanding opportunities for accounting and finance professionals to deliver value to clients and employers. Uniquely positioned at the forefront of change is the AICPA Certified Information Technology Professional (CITP®) credential, which exemplifies a professional who understands how information technology and financial reporting interrelate. Join us for an engaging session on the CITP credential, where you will learn about the following: * The Global CITP® credential body of knowledge * CITP® Credential eligibility requirements and the NEW pathway for experienced candidates * Resources for current and prospective CITP credential holders

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the areas that comprise the global CITP credential body of knowledge
• Determine your pathway to the CITP credential

Are you current on the latest tax developments? Test your tax chops at the interactive trivia game event. See if you're up to date on recent tax legislation, guidance and issues. Even if you're not a wizard yet, the Tax Section will show you how to excel in your tax know-how. All skill levels welcomed. Prizes will be awarded!

Learning Objectives:

• Analyze recent tax law changes and developments.
• Recall the fundamentals of various tax provisions and guidance.
• Identify key issues facing the tax profession.
• Recognize available resources and tools to support tax knowledge and professional growth.

How do tax practitioners add more value to their tax return services? Implementing small steps now can help your practice evolve and grow. Join our collaborative work group session and share best ideas on how to reinforce and deepen the client and tax adviser relationship.

Learning Objectives:

• Differentiate ways to strategically position a tax practice for growth and success.
• Recognize opportunities to add more value to client relationships.
• Identify available resources to support growing and evolving your practice.

Your clients need help with human resources, from the increasing challenge of recruiting and keeping employees — in the office, virtual, and across state lines — to staying up to date with fast-changing employment regulations. As their most trusted advisor, you’re well positioned to add value and provide important insights into the top HR challenges your clients face. Don’t miss this lunch and learn, where you’ll find valuable opportunities to increase your advisory role, so you can enhance your client relationships, strengthen their businesses, and grow your firm.

Learning Objectives:

• Discover the top HR challenges businesses are facing — and how to overcome them
• • Get examples of HR advisory support — and how it helps you and your clients succeed
• • Leave knowing how to successfully advise and recommend HR service partners to your clients

The award winning AICPA Town Hall is celebrating its 100th episode live from ENGAGE. The Series is the profession’s resource for timely and critical information which includes real-time interpretation and analysis, along with a broader discussion on strategies and capabilities to drive long-term success. In this high-impact news broadcast, AICPA and CPA.com leaders with special guest presenters deliver accounting and finance professionals with the latest news, analysis, insights, and practical guidance to help them understand and respond to the most pressing issues facing the profession. Town Hall contributors include practitioners, thought leaders, regulators and lawmakers, as well as a range of experts from across the profession, government, and business. This special edition Town Hall will provide an ecosystem scan and discussion around innovation driving the future of accounting & finance.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify key issues and technical analysis
• Recognize the AICPA resources and tools
• Learn Firm and Business Strategies
• Learn Practitioner Capabilities
• Recognize the most pressing issues and latest news facing the profession
• Recall the fundamentals of various programs/tax provisions and recent AICPA recommendations

In today’s economy, what unique challenges and opportunities do your small business clients face, and how can you help prepare them? In this session, experts will outline the economic outlook for small businesses and inform you on how to guide them effectively. We’ll also take a look at Financing Advisory Services and the difference it can make for small businesses. Your clients will never forget your help!

Learning Objectives:

• Recall the current economic climate and its impact on your small business clients
• Recognize economic conditions that will impact clients in the future
• Identify advisory strategies and tactics your firm can leverage to protect clients from rising costs
• Indicate examples of innovative firms applying financing advisory strategies to drive firm and client value

Your content strategy can transition you from individual contributor to thought leader in the profession. But you need to know what to share and how to share it. The more people who see you your content, the more people you have a chance to impact in the professional and beyond. In this session, you will receive tips to help you create compelling content that makes you stand out and helps you become a thought leader. We'll go through exercises to help you explore your strengths, connect with your audience, and display your subject matter expertise. If you want to build confidence, credibility, and competence in the next 90 days, this session will get you started. Learn how to always be relevant and relatable in an ever-evolving economy.

Learning Objectives:

• Recognize a proven method to identify what your audience really wants and needs right now
• Recall how to boost your credibility through consistent content production strategies
• Identify different ways you can share your expertise and build your credibility online.

The SECURE Act substantially changed post-mortem RMD rules. This changes prudent lifetime planning and post-mortem calculations. Regulation and guidance published since provides both clarification and complication. Bob will provide a timely update regarding the current law and best practices. Shortly after the SECURE Act was signed into law, Congress began working on follow-up legislation to further stimulate retirement saving. This legislation is generally referred to as ‘SECURE 2.0. Bob will provide an overview of the legislation from a personal finance perspective.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the latest on post-mortem IRA distributions.
• Have a basic understanding of changes in SECURE 2.0.

In this session, attendees will get a 30,000 overview of the various flavors of SOC Offerings available in the marketplace today. The presenters will take participants through the background on each offering and explain the unique differences between each of them. They will also discuss the opportunities in the marketplace that exist to grow a successful SOC practice today.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the differences in the various SOC engagements
• Understand the history and reasoning behind why each level of service has been created
• Understand ways to start offering SOC services in your practice

Today, we must embrace the ugly reality that what we call “Good Culture” may not be enough to keep us relevant in the future. With uncertainty swirling around every corner in the world today, team members are reevaluating their workplaces and walking out as they look past hollow promises and perks that are a mere temporary bandage. People are searching for teams with purpose, a compelling vision, and a sense of belonging where they can pursue their full potential and live their lives to the fullest. In Leading with Significance, Joey Havens breaks through the limiting barriers of common culture theory and shows, with great transparency, the real human emotions that elevate a culture to one that is genuine, enduring, and magnetic. Participate in a reflection exercise that helps identify and strip the common blinders and excuses to gaze deeper into your firm's culture.

Learning Objectives:

• Assess Why "Good Culture" is not good enough
• Formulate Transparency to build trust and promote a stronger sense of belonging
• Evaluate and contrast the power of reflection and feedback to elevate culture.
• Assess why People First trumps Client First for consistent excellence in client experience

Profits are a dream and cash is a reality for all finance professionals. In the economic challenge and continued uncertainty that CFOs are facing. Profit growth, cashflow sustainability and cash optimization have are the top 3 priorities for all CFO's regardless of industry, company size or business stage. In this session, we will explore strategies and tactics you can completement today, to improve your cash burn, runway and ensure you are taking a modern approach to driving performance. Additionally, this session will provide real life use cases of organization utilizing modern financial strategies, tactics, milestones and metrics to level up their finance organization. Lastly, proving an overview of technologies finance organization can utilize to scale their impact.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify Actionable Strategies to Optimize Cash burn and runway
• Recall Real life Uses Cases of Modern Strategy Application
• Recognize Key Technologies Finance Teams Can Utilize

Small Business Controllers wear many hats. Apart from Accounting and Finance, they have to oversee benefit plans, perform HR responsibilities, implement and manage software, among a whole lot of other admin related functions. This is a discussion to identify such challenges and find ways to overcome them.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify challenges faced by Small Business Controllers.
• Analyze strategies to overcome such challenges.
• Compare some of the best options available

Pulled away by your phone? Thinking of your inbox during dinner? Feeling behind, even though you worked a full day? Ring, ping, buzz, knock! DISTRACTIONS ARE EVERYWHERE, demanding your attention. How do you keep them at bay, keep up at work, and still have time for what matters to you? The secret isn't retreating to a cave but enacting the right tech guardrails and habits to help you be more present and gain the concentration you need. DITCH THE DISTRACTIONS AND FIND YOUR FOCUS! THIS PROGRAM IS PERFECT FOR THOSE WHO: * Feel distracted or pulled in multiple directions * Are overwhelmed by communications, information, and media * Have trouble setting communication boundaries * Experience telepressure (pressure to answer emails) and FOMO (fear of missing out)

Learning Objectives:

• Identify how to increase willpower and decrease digital distractions
• Identify how to reduce communication overload and avoid costly mistakes by setting tech guardrails

Are you ready for SAS No. 149, _Special Considerations — Audits of Group Financial Statements (Including the Work of Component Auditors and Audits of Referred-to Auditors)_? This session will address the recently approved group audits standard, including significant changes as well as key definitions and concepts, and how the new standard may impact future audit engagements.

Learning Objectives:

• Recall the most significant changes related to planning and performing a group audit introduced by SAS No. 149
• Identify key definitions and concepts related to group audits, components, component auditors, and referred-to auditors
• Recognize the differing responsibilities related to the use of component auditors and referred-to auditors

Special purpose frameworks are widely used alternatives to the numerous and many times complex requirements prescribed by generally accepted accounting principles. The use of these special purpose frameworks can be beneficial to financial statement preparers for a number of reasons. This session will look into some of those beneficial reasons along with instances in which these special purpose frameworks are not appropriate. Join in on this interactive session on the benefits and potential pitfalls of cash and tax basis financial statements.

Learning Objectives:

• Analyze the benefits of special purpose frameworks to financial statement preparers
• Identify when special purpose frameworks are appropriate

Practitioners face a number of unique partnership accounting issues that are not specifically addressed in the authoritative literature. This session, presented by the Center for Plain English Accounting (CPEA), addresses these unique issues, such as methods of accounting for partner contributions, partner loans, transfer of a partner’s interest, allocation of salaries and bonuses, and other areas.

Learning Objectives:

• Assess technical literature and other practice guidance relevant to addressing the topics covered in this session.
• Evaluate answers to common partnership accounting questions
• Categorize issues and risks related to partnership financial reporting.

When ChatGPT was released to the public in late 2022, the world gasped at its ability to think and converse like a human with all the knowledge of the internet behind it. Now that we've had some time to test and use the AI tool, accountants and financial planners are getting creative with using its ability to synthesize portfolio data and provide investment commentary. We'll cover how to use ChatGPT and other AI tools in your practice and show examples of where AI excels and fails. We'll cover the pitfalls of AI and how due diligence is still a human endeavor.

Learning Objectives:

• Learn how to use AI to communicate with clients.
• Learn how to use AI for portfolio analysis.
• Learn how to make sure your client data is safe when using cutting edge AI tools

This session will provide an update on the M&A marketplace in the advisory space. Who are doing the deals and how are they structured?

Learning Objectives:

• You will come away with an understanding of the volume, type and structure of the recent M&A deals in the wealth management space.
• You will also learn how different variables impact the valuation of a firm.
• Additionally, you'll learn what synergies buyers are looking for to make the deal more attractive.

Retirement is seldom as simple as assumed in research and financial planning tools. This presentation will review a cohesive series of models designed to improve retirement income projections that incorporate spending flexibility implemented with a dynamic spending where optimal strategies are determined using an expected utility model based on prospect theory. This framework can result in guidance that is significantly different than models using basic assumptions, especially approaches relying on probability of success-related metrics.

Learning Objectives:

• Overview common assumptions in financial plans and where gaps may exist
• Explore how different outcomes metrics can result in different advice and how to implement this research in financial planning tools available today

Longer life spans mean longer retirements for many individuals--yet how prepared are they to manage the risks that come along with that? Whether you need to evaluate a client's existing annuity or are considering how to improve the outcome of their financial plan, annuities are increasingly important. With less access to pensions and Social Security payments insufficient to provide for basic income needs for most retirees, many clients seek out certainty and a reliable paycheck in retirement. An annuity is an obvious solution but where do they fit in best? And what is the implication of newer in-plan lifetime income solutions that are in the news lately? Get the latest on how to make sense of annuities in today's environment and have the opportunity to ask your own questions.

Learning Objectives:

• Recognize how annuities can fit within a client's portfolio
• Identify key designs of an annuity to help evaluate whether a client's existing annuity makes sense
• Recall three ways of generating income from an annuity and the tax implications
• Distinguish how the landscape of in-plan annuities differs from that of individual annuities

Your firm’s brand is more than a pretty logo and mission statement. Living your brand requires an understanding of who you are, where you came from, where you’re going, how you want to get there, and what you want people to feel when they cross paths with your firm and its people. In this session, we will explore how to bring your brand to life, show you how to articulate and create client experience standards, and talk about how to develop an onboarding process for your firm.

Learning Objectives:

• Reognize what it means to live a brand
• Identify client experience standards
• Recall how to develop a client onboarding process

There is lots of work and less people -- how is it all going to get done? Employers (hopefully) understand that six key motivators impact employee recruitment and retention. This presentation will highlight why top talent stays at an organization. It will also outline low- and medium-cost tactics and actions that aim to create a workplace where people from all backgrounds and cultures feel welcome, seen, appreciated, and valued. You will also learn tips and strategies to apply to your workforce that will help bolster employee engagement and satisfaction.

Although some strategies can be organization wide, some can be implemented even at a team level.

Come hear and share how you can have a positive impact on retention in your organization!

Learning Objectives:

• Analyze why we should care about retention
• Distinguish why people stay
• Apply strategies for recruitment and retention of our top talent

Thinking about your firm's future can be overwhelming. There's so much to consider--where do you even begin? What if you could crowdsource strategy? What if you could harness the collective wisdom of your peers? This hands-on, working session does just that. Together, you'll experience a strategy sprint where you will capture hard trends, share insights on their opportunities, and walk away with real ideas to take back to your firm. This session features resources made available through a collaboration of the AICPA’s PCPS team and the Business Learning Institute. Kassi regularly facilitates firm sessions using this engaging, collaborative and forward looking strategic planning process. These few minutes of focus just might change the future of your firm.

Learning Objectives:

• Analyze the power of hard trends in strategy planning
• Use collaboration to uncover opportunity in the midst of rapid transformation
• Identify ideas to take back to your firm

A fast paced and exciting review of Cash is King focusing maximizing cash flow from use of Tax Credits including practical experience by "The Tax Credit Guys" Kelly Allen, CPA and Joe Walloch, CPA who have extensive practical experience in maximizing the Employee Retention Credit and the Research and Experimentation Credit. There will also be a focus on new credit developments for Energy & Environmental Credits, CHIPs Credit and other recent credit developments. The outline includes dialogue on nearly 100 credits that may benefit your clients.

Learning Objectives:

• An exciting and fast paced review of Tax Credits by "The Tax Credit Guys", Kelly Allen, CPA and Joe Walloch, CPA based on real-life practical experience on the Employee Retention Credit, Research & Experimentation Credit as well as the new Energy and Environmental Credits
• New Developments on Other Important Credits including the CHIPS Credit, EITC as well as an overview of nearly 100 other credits available to your clients .

When it comes to trust and estate planning and administration, the need to understand the income tax treatment has become more important than ever. This program will discuss the fundamentals of distributable net income (DNI) and explain how DNI differs from taxable income and fiduciary accounting income. To help practitioners minimize the burden of higher trust tax rates and avoid many of the traps for the unwary, this program also will address the allocation of DNI among beneficiaries, the separate share rule, the 65-day rule, specific bequests, in-kind distributions, and the inclusion of capital gains in DNI.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the fundamentals of distributable net income and how it differs from taxable income and fiduciary accounting income.
• Learn how distributable net income is allocated among beneficiaries.
• Discover how to minimize the burden of compressed tax brackets for trusts and estates.

Tax strategies regarding real estate continue to be among our clients' most frequently asked questions. This fast-paced session covers recent law changes, IRS rulings and Tax Court decisions regarding both personal and investment property. We will also cover planning ideas for our clients who own real estate.

Learning Objectives:

• Clarify proper reporting for online rental activities.
• Update Section 1031 rules and strategies.
• Identify dealer vs. investor treatment of real estate sales.
• Get current on sale of residence guidelines.

Recent tax and legal changes have affected the “choice of a business entity” decision both from a planning and practice standpoint. This session considers planning issues by reviewing the kinds of entities, their opportunities and challenges, and current factors impacting on the appropriate decision – including considerations of potential changes from sunsetting. From a practice standpoint, the session offers pragmatic tips and tricks professional advisors can use in helping clients with this crucial decision.

Learning Objectives:

• Determine how different professions look at different elements in the “choice of business entity” decision
• Learn how current tax and legal issues affect deciding an appropriate business entity, including changes that may occur in taxes
• Consider practice techniques that help facilitate advising clients on the appropriate entity decision

This session will introduce you to the key concepts of IT governance, data governance, and risk management. You will learn about the role of IT governance in managing risks and ensuring compliance with regulations and standards, as well as its relationship to business strategies. You will also gain insights into best practices for developing and documenting data governance policies, procedures, and responsibilities, including data quality, data security, and data privacy. We will discuss how to assess and manage risks associated with IT systems and applications, including cybersecurity risks, operational risks, and compliance risks. By the end of the session, you will have a better understanding of the challenges and common pitfalls in implementing IT governance strategies and data governance best practices. This session is designed for beginners who are interested in learning about IT governance, data governance, and risk management.

Learning Objectives:

• Recognize the importance of data governance and how it supports effective IT governance
• Indicate the key components of a data governance framework
• Recall insights into the benefits of effective data governance
• Identify the various types of IT risks and how to manage them

ARE YOU TIRED OF GETTING FEEDBACK THAT ISN'T QUITE HELPFUL, NOT GETTING ANY AT ALL, OR NEEDING TO GIVE FEEDBACK THAT'S LESS THAN POSITIVE? Research shows that people feel there is a lack of transparency and understanding of the formal and the unspoken cultural rules and behaviors around performance feedback. They believe that because of their position, race and/or gender, they have not always received unbiased/objective evaluations from supervisors. Further, the feedback received is not provided in constructive manner to help them achieve growth. In this session you will learn effective strategies for seeking and receiving feedback, including recognizing when steps should be taken to seek additional feedback.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the key components of effective performance feedback: Participants will be able to explain the purpose of performance feedback, list the key components of effective feedback, and describe how to give feedback in a constructive and actionable manner.
• Analyze strategies for seeking out and receiving feedback: Participants will be able to describe strategies for seeking out feedback from managers, colleagues, and clients, and practice receiving feedback in a way that encourages dialogue and learning.
• Apply giving performance feedback: Participants will be able to practice giving feedback in a way that is specific, actionable, and focused on behaviors and results, and receive feedback on their own feedback-giving skills. They will also be able to identify common pitfalls in giving feedback and how to avoid them.

Collaboration in and out of the workplace is essential. Why, then, does it seem to be so difficult? We are constantly required to work with others with the intent of producing results. When we are unable to collaborate successfully, we are left feeling frustrated, inadequate, and hopeless. Projects aren’t completed. Deadlines aren’t met. Then everyone is on edge and placing blame. Without intervention, this can lead us to stop trying or even quitting. Something needs to change. SomeONE, besides me, needs to change! On the other hand, if we have experienced healthy collaboration with one team but not another, it may be hard to understand what is different or replicate the success. Collaboration is truly an art that requires reflection and intention. Join us as we talk about some of the reasons collaboration is a struggle, key takeaways for improvement, and the secret to the Art of Collaboration.

Learning Objectives:

• Recognize reasons we struggle to collaborate
• Identify key takeaways for improvement
• Recall the Secret to the Art of Collaboration

Overcome your fears of public speaking and continue to attract right-fit clients for your practice. The presenter is an accomplished and successful podcaster. Participants will gain understanding in how the process is utilized to gain referrals and new clients as well as who to utilize for purposes of production. You don't have to invest thousands of dollars to create a professional podcast. After attending this session, participants will have a "podcast in a box" system to implement immediately upon arriving back at the office.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand how podcasts may be utilized to communicate and grow your business.
• Gain knowledge as to the simplicity in establishing, creating and marketing your own podcast.
• Provide the participant with templates to create content and episode descriptions.
• Discuss the importance of using various platforms to reach your audience and how to easily achieve success.

This course will describe how grantor trusts came about, the rules used to determine if a trust is or is not a grantor trust and how to determine grantor trust status. We will address multiple issues of planning with grantor trusts – from living trusts for many clients to sophisticated planning techniques including Spousal Lifetime Access Trusts (SLATs), Grantor Retained Interest Trusts (GRATs), Qualified Personal Residence Trusts (QPRTs) and Intentionally Defective Grantor Trusts (IDGTs). The course will address the critical planning issues to be addressed in the coming months and the legislative proposals to end the favorable planning opportunities presented by grantor trusts.

Learning Objectives:

• 1. Gain an understanding of the grantor trust rules and how they determine how a person's income will be taxed and how their estate tax issues must be considered. 3. Evaluate the proposed changes to longstanding grantor trusts rules and opportunities that could eliminate them as a preferred planning technique.
• 2. Address a wide variety of tax planning techniques unique to the grantor trust - learn how these techniques work and when best to use them.
• 3. Evaluate the proposed changes to longstanding grantor trusts rules and opportunities that could eliminate them as a preferred planning technique.

After reviewing the challenges caused by the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act to get income tax savings from charitable gifts, this session will offer tax-saving strategies to overcome those challenges, including “bunching” gifts with donor advised funds and making qualified charitable distributions (QCDs) from IRAS. Beginning in 2023, donors can transfer up to $50,000 tax-free from an IRA for a charitable gift annuity. The session will also review the pros and cons to family members of naming a tax-exempt charitable remainder trust as the beneficiary of an IRA.

Learning Objectives:

• Compare the tax advantages of charitable gifts of appreciated stock versus gifts of cash, and the advantages of donor advised funds over outright gifts to charities
• Analyze when making charitable gifts from an IRA will be better than establishing a donor advised fund
• Identify when a donor should take advantage of the new law to use up to $50,000 of IRA assets to acquire a charitable gift annuity
• Determine when naming a charitable remainder trust as the beneficiary of an IRA will provide more benefits to family members than naming the family members as the beneficiaries, and when it won't

An exploration of issues that advisors need to consider when helping clients evaluate existing policies and complex life insurance structures when there has been a change in personal or economic circumstances. Should they continue making payments, make changes to the policy, or sell their policy and use the funds to help achieve other financial goals? We will examine case studies in several practice areas that demonstrate unique solutions for existing polices: Business succession planning options for disposition of existing business owned life insurance. Rescue underperforming split dollar agreements, premium financed polices, and other complex structures. Estate, retirement, and business planning needs have changed leading to a need to discuss all available options. Premiums have escalated an PO is questioning whether to keep paying premiums or allocate premiums to other investments. Changes in interest rates have impacted life insurance policies previously donated to charity and the fiduciary managing the polices needs help exploring options.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand how to help clients make informed decisions about the best solutions before they lapse or surrender an existing life insurance policy.
• Apply simple discovery tools that create opportunities to have meaningful discussions with clients before they make a costly mistake.
• Create numerous new planning solutions that protect client best interests and preserve your reputation as their most trusted advisor.

With higher income tax rates likely in the future and the popularity of sales to IDGTs in estate planning, understanding the income tax aspects of taxable installment obligations vs. IDGT installment notes vs. intrafamily promissory notes is crucial. This presentation (a fresh look at an old planning idea) will discuss the income tax benefits, pitfalls, planning opportunities, and the surprising unknowns surrounding taxable and non-taxable deferred payment arrangements commonly used by planners.

Learning Objectives:

• Go beyond the basics of taxable installment obligations.
• Recognize and plan to avoid the unexpected income tax consequences when grantor trust status is terminated.
• Explore trust and partnership planning opportunities with deferred payment obligations.

In today's rapidly changing business environment, traditional budgeting and forecasting methods may not be effective in helping organizations manage uncertainty and adapt to a shifting environment. Agile budgeting and forecasting techniques are becoming an increasingly critical as a way to help organizations navigate uncertainty, identify risks and opportunities, and respond quickly to changes. Participants in this session will come away with a clear understanding of how agile budgeting and forecasting can help their organization stay ahead of the curve. Based off our experiences at Unum, participants will learn practical tools and techniques for implementing these principles effectively and gain insights from real-world examples.

Learning Objectives:

• Apply the key principles of agile budgeting and forecasting and how they can help your organization navigate uncertainty and adapt to changing market conditions
• Identify relevant targets for your organization and learn how to track performance and adjust your financial plans to align with strategic objectives
• Analyze real world examples that highlight how successfully implemented agile planning has been key to meeting business objectives
• Use best practices for developing flexible financial models that can adapt to changing circumstances, including the use of "what-if" analyses and sensitivity analysis

Do you struggle sometimes to get your point across? Have you experienced friction in a relationship due to miscommunication? As accounting and finance professionals, communication is critical in everything we do, and yet many of us struggle with the process. Attend this session to learn about some different communication styles, when to use them and how be your authentic self when communicating.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify 4 different styles of communication and when to use each.
• Recall examples of miscommunication and how it could have been done differently
• Indicate an action plan for 3 things to try in your next challenging communication

As the CPA profession evolves, it is critical for Firm Managers and leaders to have a good understanding of the changing landscape, and its impact on Firm Growth. Topics related to Capacity and Staffing, Offshoring, Technology, Pricing, Services, Firm Economics and Private Equity/M&A will be covered, integrating the perspectives from over 250 US based independent CPA Firms and BDO USA (over one-third of Top 500 Firms). Come get the pulse of your peers on the fundamental building blocks for success in 2023 and beyond.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the evolving Landscape of CPA profession based upon insight from BDO USA and BDO Alliance USA (257 US-based CPA firms).
• Identify what a Firm Manager can do to help their CPA firm thrive in this evolving environment.

This group of experts will answer your most pressing questions on auditing, accounting, ethics, independence and quality management.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify key considerations in auditing, accounting, ethics, independence, and quality management.
• Select best practices in these areas and learn how to apply them in their day-to-day work.
• Apply practical guidance on how to navigate complex issues and challenges that arise in these areas.

Heard a lot about SOC? Could it be the rapid growth of SOC reports over the past 10 years? A 2020 survey of CPA firms indicated that the demand for SOC services was growing (and this continues today). SOC 2 engagements alone have increased by almost 50% from the previous two years. With that kind of growth, do you wonder what’s involved in starting a SOC practice for you or your firm? In this session, SOC SME Jeff Cook will discuss the key factors and decisions you need to consider to develop a SOC practice. This session will give an overview of the various offerings a SOC practice would have, what a SOC business model looks like, SOC practice implementation steps, how to determine scoping and pricing engagements, peer review considerations, and more. No prior SOC experience is necessary, and the information will benefit both CPAs and non-CPAs who are interested in learning more about the SOC space. Join Jeff as he dives into everything you’ll need to get started!

Learning Objectives:

• Recall about the various SOC engagements
• Indicate the steps for implementing a SOC practice
• Identify the scoping questions to ask clients
• Recognize what a SOC practice model looks like
• Distinguish the various resources available for SOC practitioners

Culture is an often used word in corporate culture and we're almost expected to include it in conversations about our firm. What is culture anyway? Let's take a look through the lens of some of our profession's cultural success stories and see what they have in common. Far beyond free snacks in our breakroom, flexible working hours, etc., we get to decide our own culture. It is clear, however, the decisions we make on our culture cascade through the essential elements of CPA Firm success: Growth, profitability, talent, operational excellence, etc. This session will allow us to connect essential elements in such as way as to define culture's full impact.

Learning Objectives:

• Analyze the definition of culture. What encompasses this broad word?
• Determine how performance and culture relate to each other. How do we appropriately balance the two within our organization?
• Use best practices that have created enabled success stories. What enabled success?
• Identify ways to become a culture champion by reflecting on the question "What if culture was up to you?"

Fine wine is an investment like no other. With over $353M in assets under management, Cult Wine Investment is one of the largest fine wine investment firms with offices in London, Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai, Toronto, New York, Dubai and Japan. Fine wine is uncorrelated to traditional asset classes, provides a hedge against inflation and has historically lower volatility over the long term. What drives fine wine performance? 1. Finite supply 2. Global consumption 3. Increasing desirability 4. Quality improves over time 5. Wine critic scores

Learning Objectives:

• Fine wine as an investment and asset class
• Benefits of investing in fine wine
• How it works and how to get started
• Cult Wine Investment
• Performance of fine wine

Working in the divorce niche affords you the opportunity to become an expert in both the technical areas around divorce as well as becoming an expert on the profile of the person you are helping. This session will dive into the tax specific issues and opportunities around divorce, including asset division, QDRO’s, filing status, etc. To better understand your client, we will discuss why you are more likely to be working with women than men, and what to expect from your client who is managing their way thorough the stress of divorce while making the best decisions they can.

Learning Objectives:

• Understanding the tax specific issues around divorce
• Understanding the stress impacting your clients decision making and how you can help

Planning for retirement is much more than creating a retirement portfolio. This session will explore the human implications of stepping away from the office and the paycheck, planning ideas on how to get the most after-tax income, and building resiliency into a retiree's financial life.

Learning Objectives:

• Categorize the decumulation methodologies and calculations to make sense when funding a retiree's (or couple's) post-employment lifestyle.
• Evaluate variables to incorporate and update when providing financial and tax guidance.
• Assess and predict future income and ways to manage future tax brackets.
• Formulate in basis planning for the surviving spouse.

Understanding and optimizing risks should be a constant focus for every business owner. Protecting, promoting, and preserving the value of their business is vital. This presentation will examine the risk management issues in the start-up, growth, maturity, and transfer life cycles of the business.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify how to help business owners protect their business from familiar insurable risk to more abstract insurable risks and other asset protection strategies.
• Determine ways to reduce risks that can promote the growth in value of a business and how it can be preserved through proper transfer planning.

Most firm leaders agree they don’t have enough people to properly serve the number of clients they have. Instead of getting rid of clients to solve capacity problems, let’s talk about revenue replacement.

Learning Objectives:

• Categorize Your Target Client(s)
• Interpret Packaging Services
• Formulate a Business Development Process
• Reconstruct Your Offering in a Compelling Way
• Evaluate How to Attract Leads Using a Marketing Strategy

Leading a firm involves the difficulty of leading humans through the complexities of growth. If you want to scale and grow a firm, you have to understand humans. Leadership is about implementing practical tips and tools to stay close to your team, invite them into accountability around their role, and check in often. This session will discuss how leaders who stay close to their teams can be successful in growing their firms.

Learning Objectives:

• Recall the neuroscience of the brain and how to coach those you lead.
• Identify the 4 areas of professional human capacity.
• Recognize a number of practical leadership tips that aid in team care.

This session will primarily focus on the rules for complying with the new Schedule K-2 and K-3 requirements which apply to partnerships with items of international relevance. The speakers will discuss relevant IRS guidance for completing Schedules K-2 and K-3 along and common reporting issues.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand when Schedules K-2 and K-3 are required to be completed.
• Identify common reporting issues and relevant IRS guidance for compliance.

Generative artificial intelligence (GAI) chatbot ChatGPT has taken the country by storm. ChatGPT reached 1 million (1M) users within only 5 days of its release. What is ChatGPT? It is a computer program designed to generate answers to questions posed in human-like, conversational responses.

ChatGPT is being utilized by young and old alike in federal tax practice as we speak. But, is it ready for prime time? ChatGPT has its strengths, but also notable weaknesses. Blink your eyes and it will change (and likely get a lot better very quickly). If tax practitioners do not jump on the GAI train now, they’re likely to get left at the station.

How many of the following questions can you confidently answer?

1. Is the use of general AI (ChatGPT in particular) helpful in tax practice?

2. If helpful, in what contexts may it best be used?

3. How can ChatGPT save you time and make you money?

4. What SKILL SETS capably aid you in your approach utilizing ChatGPT?

5. What are the practical limitations on its use? Can it be harmful?

6. Does ChatGPT hallucinate?

7. What are the legal, accounting and tax ethics rules applicable to the use of ChatGPT?

8. What must you know and do to prevent ChatGPT from getting you into trouble?

This course answers the above questions through a series of case study ChatGPT searches and second effort.

Learning Objectives:

• To learn the strengths and candid weaknesses of currently commercially available generative AI (GAI) such as ChatGPT
• To learn skill sets as to how to successfully utilize ChatGPT
• To learn the legal, accounting and tax ethics rules applicable to the use of ChatGPT

Technology continues to evolve at an accelerating pace - disrupting and transforming virtually all aspects of our personal and professional lives. And 2023 is no exception! From Open AI and ChatGPT, 5G and blockchain, to IoT, robotics and EVs - new technology is impacting and revolutionizing virtually every product and service available today. Join Inspector Gadget as he explores the very latest technology trends and vendor solutions, along with cutting-edge gear and gadgets. Technology has never been more critical and impactful than it is today. Make certain you have the essential details you need to navigate your next steps.

Learning Objectives:

• Recognize the latest technology trends and the impact these trends will have on next generation devices
• Identify where to wisely invest in new technology, and what to avoid.
• Recall how to prioritize technology initiatives based on greatest impact.

One of our most popular experiences from previous years is back! Do you need a new fun drawing of yourself and want to hear good music while you get animated? Look no further!

Data is the most valuable and vulnerable asset of the modern business world. Businesses of every size are generating huge volumes of data every day – data that needs to be properly stored, protected, and leveraged for decision-making. Today’s businesses need as much help managing their data as they do with managing their financials. Let's explore some simple strategies to offer a SaaS stack, modern cloud financials, and dashboard-as-a-service to improve the value of your monthly pricing.

Learning Objectives:

• A walk through of the CAS2.0 technology ecosystem, how its maps on to traditional CPA services and overview of the client messaging and demand factors.
• How to build a technology practice to address CAS2.0 and the important platforms such as Microsoft Power platform and Dynamics that form key foundations - understand them and how to build CAS2.0 services from them

Discover
how the tools available in the CCH Axcess Suite can improve the end-to-end tax
experience by increasing efficiency in every stage, from document collection to
preparation, review, and delivery. Join this session to see how you can take
advantage of an intelligent, scalable, and fully integrated tax preparation,
compliance, and workflow solution that’s been developed specifically for the
cloud and is suitable for firms of all sizes.

The payout from a settlement can have vastly different tax consequences for your client depending on how it is structured. A periodic payment solution paid out over time can help defer and spread the tax liability for a claimant involved in a taxable settlement. In this presentation, we will discuss the advantages of periodic payments versus a cash release and highlight a case example.

Learning Objectives:

• Learn the tax-efficient advantages of periodic payments versus a lump sum for a Legal Settlement.
• Review a case example in which a client was able to defer their tax liability.

From data security to talent acquisition, emerging challenges in the tax and accounting industry are putting tremendous strain on firms. For many, it can feel impossible to deliver a seamless, modern, digital-first experience that clients now expect. ShareFile for Accounting is a new client collaboration solution tailored for the accounting industry. This new solution equips firms to keep clients engaged and satisfied by simplifying client collaboration and accelerating the engagement lifecycle that replaces other costly software with just one digital solution. Join our client collaboration experts to see how ShareFile can makes it simple to create a compelling client experience despite industry challenges.

Melt away stress with our live virtual relaxation session! Guided visualization set to calming music will ease away any tension in your body and leave your mind feeling focused & refreshed. Feel free to have an eye pillow, blanket or bolster for under your knees, but props are not required. Beginners welcome. Have space to sit or lay down comfortably. Videos will be off during the session. Live on Zoom. 30 minutes.

In this session, Sovos and EY presenters discuss the importance of automation as it relates to reducing reputational, financial and compliance risk. With a strong mix of storytelling and practical strategies, our experts will share how you can utilize automation to free up your workforce to focus on value-added activities, such as finding growth opportunities.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify why automating routine processes can increase competitive advantage
• Determine how to mitigate reputational risk caused by tax strategy pitfalls
• Assess opportunities to reduce the risk of human error throughout financial processes

Join our session to discover how your finance team can use Workday Adaptive Planning to build driver-based models with ease, analyze unlimited scenarios on the fly, and create predictive forecasts using embedded AI and Machine Learning. See firsthand the power of Workday to plan, execute and analyze by combining Accounting, Finance and HR.

45% of companies have overpaid rent or expenses due to inadequate lease controls. While most businesses know exactly what they’re spending in terms of people-related costs (payroll, benefits, time off, etc.), they do not place the same rigor and controls around the management of their leased assets, which are typically their second-largest expense. In today’s session, Joe Fitzgerald, Visual Lease’s SVP of Market Strategy, will discuss how organizations can take charge of their leases to drive change and gain the following business benefits: a) stronger cross-departmental collaboration and efficiency, b) sustained lease accounting compliance, c) access to unique data and insights, d) the ability to strengthen the performance and ROI of tech investments, and e) the opportunity to track and report on carbon footprint to address environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals.

Learning Objectives:

• Assess the following business benefits: stronger cross-departmental collaboration and efficiency, sustained lease accounting compliance and access to unique data and insights
• Recognize how to strengthen the performance and ROI of tech investments
• Determine how to track and report on carbon footprint to address environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals

Many of the top issues faced by accounting firms are HR challenges. Recruiting and keeping employees. Managing the workforce in the office, virtually, and across state lines. Reducing your HR workload. Capacity planning. It’s time to rethink how to address them. Join us at this brief session to lean how CPA.com and Paychex worked together on a solution exclusively for AICPA members to specifically address the HR challenges firms are facing today.

Learning Objectives:

• Create a personalized strategy to meet your most challenging HR issues and requirements
• Offer valued employee benefits more affordably — to help you recruit and keep employees
• Save time on complex HR administrative tasks — so you can reinvest it in your firm

This expert roundtable Keynote session will dive into the fast - paced world of transformational technology and its profound impact on the accounting and finance profession. Greg Williams, Editor of Wired UK, will share insights and lead an expert panel consisting of Tanmay Bakshi, Juliette Powell and Jason Staats, in an engaging discussion exploring how emerging technologies including artificial intelligence and robotic process automation are not only changing the way things are done but also redefining the rules of the game.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the pros and cons of imminent technologies in the accounting and finance profession.
• Learn when and how these technological advances could play a role in your organization.

Start your day by joining us for a live yoga session via zoom, from your home or room onsite at the Aria.

Join award-winning journalist and New York Times bestselling author Dan Harris and a panel of firm and industry leaders, as they share insights on the evolution of leadership and the critical role that prioritizing well-being plays in achieving success. They'll also address how new work norms such as remote working, economic changes and silent resignations are challenging organizations to adapt and adopt a new way of thinking about success. You'll come away with practical strategies for promoting mental and emotional wellness in yourself and your team, and learn ways to help your business thrive by accepting and adapting to these new business norms. Don't miss this engaging and informative session on the power investing in your own well-being has on the success of your organization.

Learning Objectives:

• Learn practical strategies for promoting mental and emotional wellness in yourself and your team.
• Learn ways to help your business thrive by accepting and adapting to these new business norms.
• Understand how mental health and its affects on employees can affect your organization.

The accounting profession continues to navigate the changing and challenging business environment. We’ve been resilient by seizing opportunities, while also seeking ways to continue to evolve client services and business practices. In this panel discussion, moderated by Barry Melancon, Susan S. Coffey, Erik Asgeirsson and Okorie Ramsey will share how the profession is seizing the moment to grow services, deepen client and business connections and enhance stakeholder confidence. They will also provide examples of how AICPA & CIMA are supporting their members while keeping the profession attractive, prosperous and exciting for the next generation of CPAs and CGMAs.

Learning Objectives:

• Recall the current economic environment and important issues impacting the accounting and finance profession.
• Recognize how the profession is taking on the challenge of change and embracing digital acceleration and emerging technologies to create and deliver value and new services.

Our profession is made up of intelligent human beings who are deeply committed to being of service to the public. While noble, this commitment to others may be the very thing that gets in our way. Join us for a thought-provoking session where we uncover new possibilities for a different way of working. New ideas will be backed with proven examples of where innovative leadership is already taking place. You will leave with practical insights for creating healthier, sustainable ways of managing your own energy and the human beings working within your firm.

Learning Objectives:

• Indicate how to set healthy boundaries for self, colleagues, and clients
• Identify how to increase capacity by developing inner game consciousness
• Recall examples of best practices for humanistic firm and people management
• Recognize what practices will best serve you and your organization

Accounting firms have long understood the need to bring additional services and value to their clients, with one key area being wealth management services. However, whether built internally or through an external partnership with a wealth management firm, many have struggled to capitalize on the opportunity for a variety of reasons.

Tom Tillery will be sharing his experiences in building collaborative partnerships between accounting firms, COIs and financial advisory firms. These collaborative partnerships are essential to his role as an investment advisor representative of Paraklete® Financial, Inc., a fee-for-service registered investment advisor. Paraklete® provides unbundled virtual family office services to families throughout the United States acting as their Advocate in Financial Services®.

This session will provide practical and executable strategies that you can apply in your business to drive a successful accounting/wealth management partnership.

Learning Objectives:

• Review the activities of a personal financial planning engagement as proscribed by The Statement on Standards In Personal Financial Planning Services, No. 1.
• Learn useful practices that you can start applying in your wealth management business today to drive growth through COIs
• Discover best practices in driving a collaborative partnership between accountants and financial advisors, resulting in the two-way flow of referrals and growth.
• Evaluate wealth management models for your accounting firm.

We often of hear of this thing called “DEI fatigue.” Is it real? Should we lift our foot off the gas on diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI) initiatives to give people a break? This panel of professionals will discuss why maintaining momentum on DEI is critical to firm success. They will also provide strategies to ensure that DEI goals remain a priority and that all staff stay energized and invested in creating a workplace that supports people from all backgrounds and cultures.

Learning Objectives:

• Recognize the critical business case for DEIB in the accounting profession.
• Interpret reasons behind why some lose momentum.
• Identify specific strategies that can be applied to maintain DIEB momentum and accountability.

This session focuses on the key areas you need to address to build a robust succession plan for your firm. This includes best practices that firms need to implement to not only prepare them for a seamless succession experience, but to improve profitability, viability, and long-term sustainability. In this session, we will: * Review foundational areas necessary to developing a robust succession plan * Identify common disconnects between your current succession plan and this best practice review * Discuss the importance of developing capacity * Cover the common mistakes firms make retiring a partner * Introduce compensation strategies to support accountability and accomplishment, and more

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the component parts of a robust succession plan
• Identify the most common mistakes found when partners are transitioning out
• Identify the important role compensation needs to play in executing the succession plan

Four topics related to recent changes in retirement plans and their distributions will be presented by four different instructors.

Learning Objectives:

• Recognize opportunities for clients to maximize retirement wealth
• Determine planning strategies to make the most of SECURE provisions
• Identify the changes brought by SECURE that affect your clients

Did you realize estate tax planning doesn’t end with death? Many practitioners rightfully focus on the variety of inter vivos options clients can choose from. However, after death there’s plenty of work remaining beyond mere reactionary compliance. The options and choices are meaningful.

Specifically, there are many options to choose from when filing the: final 1040, final 709, 1041s, and the 706. Informed and deliberate filings can save significant tax presently and prospectively, protect the executor and retain future flexibility.

This presentation will cover many elections you must consider when helping to administer an estate.

Learning Objectives:

• Discover the vast amount of post-death estate planning elections available to the fiduciary
• Discover that some of the most important estate planning occurs are the client dies
• Learn how to implement the post-death elections for maximum tax savings

Attend this session to hear about hot issues that the IRS continues to raise in handling gift and estate tax audits and litigation. Our discussion will include preparing for audit at the planning stage, formula clauses, section 2036, valuation, GRATs, split-dollar life insurance, penalties, and more. Bring your questions!

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the common challenges that the IRS brings to estate and gift tax examinations
• Know how to help your client at the planning stage to minimize risks during audit
• Stay up to date on the most recent issues that tax litigators see in handling IRS audits and litigation

Affluent clients typically accumulate much of their wealth in trusts designed primarily to benefit family members. If these clients are philanthropically inclined, they may want to tap into the family’s non-charitable trusts for charitable giving. Specifically, the program will address: (1) how to utilize existing irrevocable trust assets for desired or obligatory gifts to charity either (i) directly from the trust, (ii) through an entity like a partnership, or (iii) by distributing to an individual beneficiary who then donates to charity, and (2) how to draft new trusts to promote flexibility for future family philanthropy.

Learning Objectives:

• Review of income tax deductibility for charitable distributions from non-grantor trusts.
• Analysis of existing irrevocable trusts to determine if distributions can be made or directed for charity or if distributions can be made to beneficiaries for charitable giving.
• Consideration of investing in a pass-through entity that can make charitable donations.
• Suggestions for drafting new trusts primarily for the family beneficiaries, but that also promote flexibility for future family philanthropy (including use of disclaimers for contingent charitable gifts).

Economic and societal change in recent years has been relentless with major innovations in technology, business models, and customer needs. Adding to this factor have been significant environmental, social, and governance (ESG) considerations which have significant impact on the ability of the enterprise to create sustainable value. This session will introduce AICPA & CIMA’s newly updated Global Management Accounting Principles (GMAP) that will help finance organizations towards better decision-making. The GMAP provides a framework to finance professionals for global business leadership and to take an active part in the value creation cycle.

Learning Objectives:

• Interpret the main global management accounting principles and how they relate to value creation
• Assess how these principles are applied in areas of practice within the finance function
• Evaluate how the GMAPs promote principle-based best-practice guidance on achieving better business decisions

Fewer people are sitting for and passing the CPA exam. Baby boomers continue to retire. Accounting enrollments are down materially at many Colleges and Universities. As the war for talent continues to rage at all levels in the Profession, concerns about the availability of entry level talent are growing more acute. This session will explore the status of the Pipeline Challenge and offer practical recommendations and strategies to help identify and recruit the next generation of CPA's.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the current extent of the Pipeline Challenge.
• Recognize how traditional recruiting approaches may need to evolve to respond to the current environment.

Learn about the new quality management standards and how to implement them: Applying the new, proactive, risk-based approach to quality management systems within firms. Scaling the standards to tailor your system to the nature and circumstances of your firm and its engagements.

Learning Objectives:

• Analyze the new requirements of the quality management standards
• Apply the new, proactive, risk-based approach to quality management systems within firms.

We will cover accounting and auditing concepts related to business combinations. These concepts will include identifying business combination transactions, recognition and measurement principles as well as auditing considerations for consideration transferred, assets acquired and liabilities assumed, certain exceptions to recognition and measurement principles, private company accounting alternatives, presentation, and disclosure.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify a business combination
• Understand recognition and measurement principles for business combinations
• Identify considerations that apply when auditing a business combination

This session covers frequently asked A&A questions asked by AICPA members through the AICPA's Technical Hotline and CPEA in the areas of accounting, financial reporting, audit, compilation, and review engagements, with a focus on private company issues. Get answers to technical questions that are impacting many practitioners and their clients.

Learning Objectives:

• Assess technical literature and other practice guidance relevant to addressing the topics covered in this session.
• Formulate answers to common A&A technical questions.
• Evaluate recent developments related to current A&A issues.

Direct Indexing is expected to grow faster than ETFs, mutual funds, and separate accounts over the next five years and is poised to reach more than $800 billion in assets by 2026. By using direct indexing, advisors can create customized portfolios for clients that track a popular index. That customization allows clients to align portfolios with ESG beliefs or other constraints, and to achieve tax optimization through loss harvesting. But those features come at a cost, and this session will separate the “hype” from the “reality” of direct index, and allow advisors to ask the right questions before they embrace this for their clients.

Learning Objectives:

• What is direct indexing and how does it work?
• What is the cost of direct indexing?
• What are the operational advantages and concerns with direct indexing?
• How are tax savings achieved and how much can be saved?
• Finance

By guiding clients to gain a deeper understanding of their values, identity, and purpose, advisors can assist them in defining their most significant legacy and taking the necessary actions to accomplish it. In this session, we'll explore how advisors can assist clients in reflecting on their experiences, relationships, and achievements, which shape the meaning and trajectory of their lives. Once clients have identified their most meaningful legacy, they can effectively communicate it and be remembered for what they cherish most.

Learning Objectives:

• Differentiate estate planning and legacy planning.
• Recognize the psychological need to address legacy and its profound benefits.
• Distinguish how legacy, identity, meaning, and purpose are related.
• Identify legacy coaching tools, such as the life reviews, and their applications.
• Discover how clients can be remembered for what they value most.

There are currently about 6.1m business owners with employees, 625,000 401 (k) plans in place, and about 25,000 cash balance plans. The common nexus to America's business owners is the CPA. In this session, you will learn simple language that will transform the conversation from a conversation around top-line numbers into a process of simple steps to follow to help clients understand the opportunities to engage with you around their retirement plan, how the plan can help your client create programs that are custom tailored to their corporate culture, and how, after years of building a practice, the business owner can finally start to save for retirement in a meaningful way. Discussions focused on what is important to the business owner transform the understanding and the potential for meaningful savings, tax deductions, and contributions to employees.

Learning Objectives:

• Use the Retirement Plan Cake to reveal significant tax deductions for business clients to integrate retirement plans into their company to complement company culture.
• Reframe the conversation of employee contributions costs into practical bottom line costs.
• Simple steps that may transform retirement plans for participant outcomes.
• Gain knowledge around how key aspects of the Retirement Plan Cake fundamentally transforms low income and minority communities to help achieve today's discussions around Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion by taking advantage of tax and regulatory incentives.

We can plan for many variables with our clients, but the concerns that rarely go away are the "what ifs?". In an ever-evolving economic landscape and endless information accessible to clients, we, as advisors, need to help our clients reduce risk and build a financial plan capable of withstanding life's ebb's and flow's. Learn about how updated research and financial planning data guides clients to think about diversification beyond asset classes and explore the use of proper risk management tools that can provide much desired peace of mind!

Learning Objectives:

• Diversification
• Retirement Probability
• Client Problem Solving

Are you taking steps to help insulate your firm from a professional liability claim? Are you at risk of being taken down by a lawsuit? While exposure to such claims is an ever-present danger for CPAs, developing firm risk management protocols often takes a backseat to client demands, deadlines, and time constraints. In this session, we'll explore how professional liability claims arise and share five key strategies along with lessons learned to help reduce your risk.

Learning Objectives:

• Recognize how professional liability claims arise.
• Recall practice management strategies to help mitigate the risk of a professional liability claim at your firm.

Organic revenue growth is an evergreen topic and being in sync with market conditions is the key. Today the fish are jumping in the boat, so managing organic growth is all about focus and being selective. Be prepared to discuss cutting edge ideas about sustaining high growth.

Learning Objectives:

• Assess the key principles of revenue growth in diverse market conditions
• Evaluate application to today’s environment and opportunities

The IRS assesses penalties for many reasons, including failure to file, failure to pay, and other inaccuracies. Although true, the IRS may also allow for a reduction of the amount of some penalties in certain cases. In this environment of increased emphasis on enforcement initiatives, what types of penalties is the IRS most likely to assess and how should taxpayers and practitioners position themselves for successful abatement of such penalties?

Learning Objectives:

• Explain the penalties most commonly asserted by the IRS
• When is the utilization of First Time Abate (FTA) appropriate?
• Identify common defenses to penalties

This session will use a multi-disciplinary panel approach to discuss the importance and benefits of a high-level team approach when advising clients on issues such as estate and trust planning, retirement planning, cash planning and various other tax and financial related matters. We will look at who should be at the table, responsibilities and accountability of each team member, the actual planning process and the use of engagement letters in advisory engagements.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the importance and benefits of using high-level, multi-disciplinary teaming when providing income, retirement and estate planning.
• Understanding how to put a high-functioning team together and how to deal with advisors that don't play well in the sandbox.
• Gain an understanding of the planning process and responsibilities of each member of the team, as well as the need for engagement letters in advisory services.

Eric Johnson and Mark Bauters from Deloitte Tax LLP will cover recent hot topics for single family offices, including an overview of recent case law and judicial activity, tax matters concerning the formation of the family office, leading practices for structuring investment partnerships, and looking ahead to observed trends and other developments.

Learning Objectives:

• 1. Consider recent case law and judicial developments impacting family offices
• 2. Review tax matters concerning the formation of the family office
• 3. Analyze leading practices for structuring investment partnerships
• 4. Recognize observed trends and other developments

In today's fast-paced business environment, effective digital collaboration is crucial for enhancing productivity and staying ahead of the competition. Join us for an engaging and informative session as we unpack the difference between collaboration and teamwork, and then leverage the power of Microsoft Teams to boost collaboration efficiency and streamline communication across your organization. In 2022, Microsoft announced that Teams was used by 270 million users, making it by far the most popular business communication platform, vastly outperforming Slack’s 18 million active users. In this session, you will learn: The criteria for effective collaboration, as it differs from the criteria for effective teamwork. * Techniques for real-time communication through chat, voice and video calls, and screen sharing, reducing the need for long email chains and unnecessary meetings. * Various methodologies to deliver content for contemplative reasons, including files, notes, and tasks. * Tips for setting up channels, managing permissions, and organizing your workspace to encourage a clutter-free environment. Whether you're new to Microsoft Teams or looking to optimize your current setup, this session will equip you with valuable insights and practical tips to take your team's collaboration to new heights. Don't miss this opportunity to elevate your firm’s collaboration efficiency and harness the full potential of digital collaboration using Microsoft Teams.

Learning Objectives:

• Indicate the key differences between collaboration and teamwork and recognize the importance of effective digital collaboration in the modern workplace
• Identify the essential features and functionalities of Microsoft Teams that facilitate real-time communication and collaboration, such as chat, voice and video calls, and screen sharing. Apply v
• Recall various methodologies for delivering and managing content within Microsoft Teams, including organizing files, notes, and tasks.
• Recognize best practices for setting up channels, managing permissions, and organizing workspaces in Microsoft Teams to create a clutter-free and efficient environment.

Today’s Client Accounting Services environment is rapidly evolving and it can quickly become overwhelming in evaluating your specific client vertical needs, assessing compatible applications, and ensuring data flow and workflow is efficient.

Learning Objectives:

• Recognize a vertical tech stack and differentiate it from a horizontal tech stack and learn best practices in assessing your specific vertical’s needs
• Identify how to incorporate the fundamentals of data architecture and how to apply a consistent architecture across multiple platforms
• Indicate evaluation criteria for applications across the key areas of function, configuration, and support
• Distinguish how to buy-in from your clients on the process, not just the outcomes

The world is changing around us and so is the way we are learning! Join us to hear about our evolution of innovation and transformation in our learning ecosystem and how you can learn smart.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the changing landscape of learning styles and habits
• Understand what AICPA & CIMA LEARN can offer you to meet your CPE requirements

Engage with peers and exchange ideas on managing an efficient and profitable tax practice. In this collaborative workshop, tax practitioners will examine creative solutions for enhancing innovation, productivity and performance in their tax practice. The AICPA Tax Practice Resiliency Task Force will be on hand to guide and provide their own insights for reimagining a tax practice for longevity and success.

Learning Objectives:

• Recognize the top practice management challenges facing tax practitioners.
• Recognize ways to strategically position a tax practice for success
• Identify available resources to support firm's practice management strategies

AICPA & CIMA's Future of Finance group, made up of world leading companies, has constantly ranked hiring and retaining talent as the number one concern. To help with this concern, AICPA & CIMA has recently launched the very first Finance Business Partner apprenticeship in the US. This apprenticeship uses the the world leading CGMA Finance Leadership Program as the instruction and enables organizations to professionally diverse their existing teams and attract a diverse group of candidates. Plus, organizations may be eligible for financial benefits and tax credits from this program. Join us to learn more - we will cover: 1 - trends in staffing shortages in business and industry 2 - benefits of apprenticeships 3 - how the apprenticeship works and how you can realize the benefits quickly

Learning Objectives:

• Analyze trends in staffing shortages in business and industry
• Identify the benefits of apprenticeships
• Determine how the apprenticeship works and how you can realize the benefits quickly

CITP credential holders are invited to participate alongside CITP peers and AICPA staff in an interactive roundtable discussion on the CITP credential body of knowledge. Participating CITPs will be asked to share insight into their current role within their firm or organization, including: * Tasks performed in their current role * Knowledge areas and skills needed to perform those tasks

Learning Objectives:

• To collect feedback from CITP credential holders on tasks performed in the current marketplace
• To collect feedback from CITP credential holders on the knowledge areas and skills that are essential for success in their current role

TBD

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the requirements of the PFS Experienced Pathway
• Recognize the benefits of the PFS credential in a CPA practice

In today's uncertain economic climate, more small business owners are seeking guidance on financing decisions from their accountants. Join Biz2Credit and CPA.com for a Lunch & Learn that will equip you with the knowledge and tools to provide valuable Financing Advisory Services to your clients. Learn how to identify quick and secure financing options for your clients and discover advisory strategies to help them navigate rising costs and economic challenges. Take your relationship with your clients to the next level and drive more value for your firm. BY ATTENDING THIS SESSION, YOU'LL GAIN A COMPETITIVE EDGE IN THE MARKETPLACE AND POSITION YOUR FIRM AS A TRUSTED ADVISOR TO SMALL BUSINESSES.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the current economic outlook and its impact on small businesses
• • Identify lending options for small business clients in need of financing
• • Develop advisory strategies to protect clients from rising costs and future economic challenges

One of our most popular experiences from previous years is back! Do you need a new fun drawing of yourself and want to hear good music while you get animated? Look no further!

Firms keep turning away work but are struggling to find the right solutions. Frank Tirelli gives a State of the Union Address on the CPA profession and presents all the tools you need to be leveraging to better serve your clients while being able to take on more!

Learning Objectives:

• Solutions for scaling your firm.
• Identifying reasons your professionals are disengaged or leaving.

While we hear a lot about the “audit of the future,” the reality is that it’s already happening. In this session, we’ll explore the various tools in the Dynamic Audit Suite (OnPoint EBP, OnPoint PCR, OnPoint Audit and the Dynamic Audit Solution (DAS)) and how these can provide firms with a roadmap to the audit of the future. From client acceptance and collaboration, to automation in report creation and delivery, you’ll learn how the OnPoint Suite of tools remain consistent with guidance and methodology in place as end-to-end solutions to better position firms for the transformative methodology of DAS.

Come hear a tale of two succession transitions, told from the younger partner's perspective. We'll cover the good, the bad and the oh so ugly! Walk away with tips to give you every chance of a smooth transition and understand potential pitfalls to avoid at all costs.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the do's and don'ts of succession planning
• Analyze a perspective of succession planning from the buyer's standpoint

This session will focus on comparing the mathematics of various common estate tax planning strategies in the current environment. Specifically, it will cover: GRATs, IDGT sales, SCINs, private annuities, the "tax burn," and GST exemption leverage. Income tax basis considerations will be included. Bob will also help you understand how to run the numbers, communicate these concepts to clients, and how to compare approaches to develop a client-appropriate strategy.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the mathematic principals of various estate tax planning techniques.
• Be prepared to compare the relative effectiveness of various approaches for your client.

This session will discuss the income tax consequences with an estate or trust transfer assets to the beneficiaries, whether that beneficiary is an individual or a trust. We will review the funding issues for (1) a specific bequest, (2) a pecuniary bequest and (3) a fractional or residuary bequest. The session will review the 6 issues that must be addressed for each of the three listed types of bequests.

Learning Objectives:

• Learn the 6 issues that must be addressed when distributions are made from an estate or trust to a beneficiary
• Discover what sections of the Internal Revenue Code affect the income tax consequences of funding bequests
• Learn the planning opportunities available when funding a bequest.

To avoid stalling in your career you must master the skills of managing up. Managing up can feel uncomfortable and scary, but with the right tools, you’ll make your leaders impressed and thankful while calming your nerves at the same time. This session covers what managing up means: being adaptable, effective at communicating, aligning your goals, and more, as well as how to overcome common misconceptions and roadblocks. You’ll walk away with the confidence and knowledge you need to advance your career.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify how to effectively manage up and why it matters.
• Identify how to adapt to different personalities and styles to best meet their needs.

This session provides information essential to all peer reviewers and includes a high-level overview of changes to Peer Review standards and guidance.

Learning Objectives:

• Recall the latest developments in Peer Review
• Identify new challenges and opportunities
• Recognize common areas of noncompliance

Hearing a whole lot of buzz about Data/Analytics and not sure what it is all about? Debating whether to invest some time & energy to acquire much desired knowledge in this trendy Technology area? This session will not only teach but show you the why & how of data integration techniques as well as converting raw data to elegant informative dashboards to gain a better understanding of your data for strategic competitive advantage! Come join us on Wednesday June 7th at Aria Hotel in Las Vegas or online!

Learning Objectives:

• Get introduced to the Data Analytics & Integration concepts: The what & why
• Learn & appreciate how Data Analytics help Businesses of all sizes for better understanding of their data and data-driven decision making
• Exposure to some premier Tools & Technologies used for Data integration, Data warehousing and Business Intelligence

Embracing diversity and practicing inclusion is critical to the success of your firm. Inclusion happens when people feel like they experience a sense of belonging within their organization. The AICPA National Commission on Diversity and Inclusion has developed core Diversity and Inclusion competencies essential for firm staff to possess to provide outstanding client service. In this session you’ll learn how to incorporate these competencies at every staff level to help maintain employee accountability.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the AICPA DEI competencies and how they are being used to advance talent and client impact
• Upskill to better enable the ability to learn, live and lead an inclusive culture strategy
• Understand and implement the inclusion safety framework at every level
• Leverage inclusion competency model to drive connections and business results

Wealthy clients under current law along with "middle rich" clients after the proposed sunset of the 2017 Act are likely payers of the federal estate tax. This session will discuss some of the more sophisticated planning techniques to enable clients to address how to confront the anticipated tax liability. Can it be avoided, reduced, or pushed ahead to the next generation? If it must be faced sooner, what can be done to protect essential family assets? How can we help those who have already exhausted their transfer tax exclusions?

Learning Objectives:

• Examine strategies to avoid or reduce the estate tax liability.
• Review techniques allowing deferral of estate tax liability
• Focus on and evaluate specific planning tools (SLATs, IDGTs, GRATs, CLATs, INGs, etc.) to address these issues.

As the traditional nuclear family has changed, accountants and other tax planning professionals must be prepared to both identify concerns and thoughtfully problem solve for issues clients face. This discussion will touch upon a potpourri of issues to consider, including: Marital Status (single, divorced, unmarried couples and polyamorous relationships); Defining Descendants (stepchildren, adoption, nonmarital children and assisted reproductive technologies); other forms of Diversity (disability, LGBTQIA+, religious, racial and cultural inclusion), Estate Planning for Flexibility, . . and more!

Learning Objectives:

• Consider how the definition of family has changed for families of wealth and how these definitions are reflected in governing estate planning documents.
• Consider sensitivity to issues of diversity, equity and inclusion while estate planning and tax professionals are working with families.
• Consider the influence accountants may be able to exert during the overall estate planning process to encourage flexibility and sensitivity.

Are you interested in becoming a CFO or other senior finance professional? If yes, attend this session to hear from three current CFOs about their path, and their recommendations of the skills and competencies needed in the position.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the skills needed to become CFO
• Recognize different paths toward becoming CFO
• Recall the types of skills a CFO and other finance professionals will need in the future

Financial forecasting and budgeting shouldn't be painful. They shouldn't be a time suck. And they shouldn't leave to the end-users with the burden of interpretation. The reason so many financial models fail is they aren't built in ways that are user-friendly and enduring. Many FP&A and financial professionals simply build them the way they always have -- inefficiently, with bad structure, too many schedules, and a lack of thoughtful organization. It doesn't need to be this way. In this session, an FP&A practitioner who has trained and advised more than 13,000 finance and accounting professionals globally, at many companies you know, will walk you through current trends and mesmerizing but easy-to-comprehend techniques. These discoveries will help you save time, minimize your rework, eliminate mistakes, and elevate your forecasting and budgeting capabilities to levels you didn't know were possible. You'll build confidence in your end-users, mitigate risks in your company, and position yourself to deliver the financial intelligence and insights you've always wanted to focus on. You'll receive tangible takeaways that you can bring back to your company and implement immediately.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify common issues that arise with conventional budgeting methods and how to address them in dynamic forecasting models.
• Analyze how to design and structure their financial models in a way that is efficient, organized and easy for end-to-end use.
• Determine ways to improve the accuracy of their rolling forecasts, leading to better decision-making confidence and related justification.

Building and sustaining professional relationships is critically important to the long-term success of any CPA or professional services firm. This session will explore practical strategies for building Firmwide competencies in this area and leveraging one of your Firm's most important assets that is NOT reflected on your balance sheet. It will also address how to develop a strategic focus that will help embed a focus on relationships into the DNA of your Firm.

Learning Objectives:

• Recognize why relationships may be your Firm's most valuable asset not reflected on the balance sheet.
• Identify techniques to optimize the benefits of the Firm's collective relationships.

Firm Managers, also known as Firm Administrators, COOs, Directors of Operations, and more, are known for "wearing many hats" in their firms. They lead administrative teams and functional areas such as Human Resources, Finance, Marketing, and Technology. But more importantly, firm managers can help grow the firm and improve both the employee and client experience. With our rapidly changing environment, including the talent shortage and the rise of automation and artificial intelligence, the most important "hat" our firm managers must wear is that of "change agent." During this session, learn more about the importance of the role of firm managers, how the role changes with firm size and growth, and how firm managers can directly support your firm's growth. If you are a firm manager, leader, or managing partner, this session is for you.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the role of firm manager and how it evolves with firm growth.
• Identify practical ways firm managers can directly support firm growth.

Bring your highlighters and red pens! Join the course an experience a guided tour with hands-on experience as Shelby Nelson, Frazier & Deeter SOC National Practice Leader and 2020-2023 AIPCA SOC School author and instructor, walks you through the components of SOC 1 and SOC 2 reports, and shares insights as to how to “audit” those reports based on your specific needs. Shelby will also highlight chages to AICPA Attestation Standards and the new AICPA SOC 2 Guidance.

Learning Objectives:

• Analyze key differences between SOC 1 and SOC 2 report content.
• Apply multiple scenarios to evaluating both SOC 1 and SOC 2 report content.
• Use a clarified understanding of new AICPA attestation standards and guidance impacting SOC examinations.

Building on Part I, which focused on identifying and overcoming potential barriers to auditors’ use of information technology and the opportunities to deliver audit value through technology, Part II is a deeper look at how auditors can increase their use of technology and analytics to plan and perform audits. This session will offer practical applications and examples of how technology and analytics can enhance today’s audit.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the opportunities the evolution of technology and data analytics bring to auditors in the planning and performance of an audit.
• Recognize where technology can improve efficiency and effectiveness.
• Recall the mindset, talent, and resource investments necessary to sustain audit quality delivered through technology and data analytics.

Join us for a plan-English overview in accounting for nonfinancial asset impairment models. We’ll make this an interactive session to discuss accounting and auditing concerns when dealing with various impairment models for nonfinancial assets.

Learning Objectives:

• Grasp the fundamental concepts underlying nonfinancial asset impairment accounting for: 1) Long-lived assets; 2) Indefinite-life assets; 3) Goodwill for private companies.
• Navigate through various impairment models and recognize their implications
• Understand the interplay between accounting and auditing in the context of impairment

Real estate is by some measures the largest asset class in the world, yet many advisors ignore it. Or, at best, have a small allocation to public REITs in their portfolios. Would you like to develop a better strategy for advising your clients on real estate? In this detailed yet engaging session, David Blain covers the range of options for investing in real estate, discussing the advantages and disadvantages of each. He finishes the presentation with a detailed overview of the specific technique and vehicle he uses in his practice to invest his clients in this relatively low-risk, uncorrelated, tax-efficient, and cash-generating asset class.

Learning Objectives:

• Analyze the use of real estate as an asset class for individual investors
• Identify opportunities to offer real estate advisory services in your practice

The U.S. retirement market was roughly $33.6 trillion at the end of 2022, and more than half of those assets were held in IRAs and similar defined contribution plans. Much of that wealth rests in the hands of an aging Baby Boomer generation, and financial advisors will play a critical role in passing these assets along to clients’ beneficiaries as intended, and as tax efficiently as possible. Sometimes, that may require using a trust as an IRA beneficiary. But while these tools can be incredibly effective at protecting and preserving wealth, they can also add considerable cost and complexity to a plan, especially in light of changes made by the SECURE Act. In this session, attendees will learn about some of the biggest pros and cons of leaving an IRA to a trust, as well as the critical IRA trust rules they must know in order to properly guide clients.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the difference between the treatment of see-through trusts and non-see-through trusts.
• Discover the different types of see-through trusts and how they impact the calculation and taxation of distributions.
• Explore the “life cycle” of an IRA Trust.
• Examine the impact of the SECURE Act on IRA trusts.
• Identify common mistakes made when trusts are named as a beneficiary.
• Analyze different alternatives to naming a trust as a beneficiary.

Ever feel like you're shoulding into the void when it comes to your marketing? Maybe, sometimes, it even feels like you're wasting your breath. Let's fix that. In this session, let's learn about what it takes to have your voice heard about the din and how to land your brand in the hearts and minds of your ideal target customers.

Learning Objectives:

• Gain the necessary knowledge to craft a brand voice and to know the difference of what makes a good one versus a bad one.
• Obtain a play book and the do's and don'ts when it comes to delivering your brand message.
• Understand the marketplace of venues for expressing your brand voice.

Prepare for a powerful exploration into one of life's most significant changes – retirement.

Picture the journey into retirement as a path with two lanes - one technical, the other human. Each is intricately woven with complexities and details, and each is as critical as the other. In this presentation, we'll delve into the realm of Authentic Intelligence - the artful fusion of the fact-driven technical side with the deeply personal human experience. We'll explore how they inform and shape each other and why this balance is not just important, but essential.

Learning Objectives:

• Learn how to set and manage expectations pre-retirement, paving the way for a smooth transition.
• Discover how to reset agreements and decision-making processes as retirement becomes a reality.
• Uncover the Quadrant conversation structure that fortifies emotional decision-making during this period of intense change.
• Equip yourself with a personal transition checklist for those inevitable life changes post-retirement.

Business model changes are imminent—some being forced from outside the firm. Who we serve, what we do for them, who does it (and where) are all evolving fast! With an organized approach, maximize opportunity instead of just reacting. CPA consultant & thought leader Michelle Golden shares what well-planned business-model changes can look like and where to begin. Do firms have just one business model? Should they? What does it take to shift? Do we need different skills? And why start with a revenue-model change? As we evolve to higher-value advisory work, we leave money on the table charging hourly—money that can fund advancements. Firms who price based on worth instead of hours focus on customer R-O-I. Earnings increase as does customer loyalty. Dozens of firms—large and small—see that a pricing differently spurs faster, broader firm-wide transformation. Discover how to get paid what you’re worth, elevate client experience, and position your firm for the value you deliver and begin to transform your business model.

Learning Objectives:

• Assess how positioning your customer value proposition without talking about "time" re-energizes passion for the work
• Interpret how to correlate client success levels with varying investment levels
• Predict what else changes once you alter your pricing approach
• Evaluate specific steps you can take now to begin transforming your firm's business model

International tax reporting is unavoidably now a part of our everyday tax practices. As the compliance requirements continue to become more extensive and complex, practitioners are finding themselves struggling to keep up, uneasy with potentially significant penalties, and unsure how to advise their clients. In this session, I'll highlight the most common international tax forms, emphasizing those with high noncompliance penalties, and identify common errors on our most-used international reporting forms.

Learning Objectives:

• Avoid common errors on frequently-used international tax forms
• Identify compliance risks for common international tax forms - FinCEN 114, 8938, 5471, 5472, 8865, 8858, 926, 8621, 1116, 1118, 8992, 8993 and more
• Understand when a specialist is needed

Some of the tax rules for digital (crypto) assets are clear, but others are not. This session will utilize an easy to follow and useful framework to cover basic and advanced topics to help you apply your knowledge of capital gains, gifting, step-up in basis, wash-sales and more in your client conversations – and you’ll discover that whether, when and how much tax your client owes depends on whether they buy a digital asset, mine it, stake it, mint it, earn it, are given it, or obtain it via an airdrop or fork. And you thought you knew the tax code!

Learning Objectives:

• Learn how crypto assets are acquired including through purchasing, receiving, earning, minting and mining.
• Learn what taxable events can occur when simply holding digital assets and when transferring and/or disposing of digital assets.
• Learn how NFTs and crypto loans are viewed for tax purposes.
• Learn the difference between being a hobbyist or a business when working with digital assets.
• Identify the top tax issues clients will be asking you about this year.

Understand the basis on BOTS, RPA and Machine Learning in the Practice Today. Participants will get a 30,000 foot view of each of these technologies and how they are starting to play a role in our practice today and the potential role they can and will play in the future. Participants will hear about how these technologies can help from audit to tax preparation and the speakers will share how they are currently being incorporated into applications today.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify various AI technologies and their broad industry applications.
• Recall an in-depth understanding of Robotic Process Automation "Bots" as they apply to various tax & audit processes.

Trying to inspire young staff to pursue their CPA license or a student to consider an accounting degree? Or maybe you are trying to figure out the next step in your own career path? Come listen to and interact with six young CPAs who each started a different journey through the CPA profession. Questions welcomed!

Learning Objectives:

• Identify six examples of different potential career paths for CPAs to help inspire them and/or the people they lead.
• Recognize the pros of those career paths and some things each panelist wishes they would have known at the start.

For a decade, estate planning advisors operated in an interest rate environment where the applicable federal rate (and Section 7520 rate) were historically low and essentially stable. Over the last year, that environment has changed, with interest rates increasing and showing signs of volatility month-to-month that can have real world impact on how clients achieve their objectives. With input from an estate planning lawyer and a financial planning advisor, this session will tackle the world of planning in a changing interest rate environment with a focus on the analysis of advanced estate planning techniques that thrive – or falter – as interest rates change.

Learning Objectives:

• Evaluate the role interest rates play in the success or failure of advanced estate planning techniques.
• Assess the trusts, transfers, and planning opportunities most suited for changing interest rate environment.

The AICPA and CPA.com launched a startup accelerator in 2017 focusing on Accounting, Finance & Regulatory tech solutions. Its purpose is to foster innovation and assist emerging technologies to better understand and service the accounting profession. Investment into new technologies and solutions is critical for not only staying ahead of the curve, but providing client-centric services. In this session, you will hear about trends in FinTech and AI developments – and meet the startup companies that represent the 2023 cohort.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify trends in FinTech and Accounting that are impacting the profession and your role
• Recall insights from the front lines about designing new tech for business & finance
• Compare the startups that are members of the 6th cohort of the AICPA and CPA.com Startup Accelerator
• Analyze how you can leverage emerging technologies to be ahead of the mass adoption curve
• Understand true maturity of AI platforms like Chat GPT and how they integrate with software used in business

Once the trust is created and funded, helping assure that the client comply with the formalities of the trust (which often includes entities) are all adhered to, is critical. Improper administration of the trust will undermine the tax and asset protection benefits intended. Since CPAs have regular contact with the client and prepare tax returns for the components of the structure, the CPAs role is essential. Details of what can and should be done will be explored. The recent Smaldino case provides a checklist of errors the taxpayers made in the implementation and administration of a plan to transfer assets to an irrevocable trust. This case will be used as a framework for part of the discussion as to how to properly administer trusts. Common issues that clients frequently mishandle in trust administration will be discussed. A checklist construct for proper trust administration will be presented. This technique is easily adaptable for all trust plans from a simple life insurance trust to a complex dynastic, trust in a different jurisdiction with a complex note sale and other transactions. Income tax reporting, trust records, gift tax return considerations, handling of common expenses, monitoring a Wandry or other valuation adjustment clause, and other topics, will be addressed.

Learning Objectives:

• Learn why the CPAs role in trust administration is vital to the success of client trust plans: tax compliance, tax planning, respecting the formality of the structure, and more.
• Understand what additional services CPAs can and should provide to help clients meet the objectives for their trusts.
• Recent high profile tax cases like Smaldino, Levine and Sorensen provide guidance as to how trusts should be administered. Learn how to apply these lessons to your clients.

Real estate is a highly specialized asset with unique characteristics, often presenting special planning opportunities and challenges. In this program we will identify these unique issues and the techniques used to effectively plan for them during life, at death, and after death.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify common lifetime planning techniques and considerations with real estate.
• Recognize situations when a partial grantor trust return is required.
• Understand the impact of when grantor trust status terminates during life.

So You Wanna be a Philanthropist ? This session will identify the cost-benefit choices for a charitable donor when choosing between a private foundation, a a donor advised fund, or a supporting organization. What are the tax and regulatory differences, and how do donors subjectively view the prospect of using one vehicle instead of the other? In addition to illustrating the legal and operational differences, Ted Batson and Chris Hoyt will describe the most frequent donor likes and dislikes that they have heard over the years.

Learning Objectives:

• Define and differentiate the types of charitable and philanthropic tools
• Identify the regulatory requirements and charitable deductions that apply to each type of philanthopic tool
• Evaluate which type of vehicle is the best fit for each client's unique situation and objectives

You won’t want to miss this panel of experienced Cyber security leaders that will address the latest trends and outlook. Topics include how CFOs and Finance leaders can prioritize security spend and key trends and risks impacting every industry and business.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the latest trends and risks in Cybersecurity that are affecting various industries and businesses.
• Analyze how CFOs and finance leaders can prioritize their security spend to effectively mitigate these Cybersecurity risks.

Accounting is a Profession that involves constantly meeting deadlines and often working overtime. This can result in sustained pressure and stress and lead to partners and employees feeling overwhelmed. Many accountants suffer burnout, and the consequences can be extremely negative for a Firm, its employees and its clients. This session will address the challenges of Burnout and offer practical strategies to avoid it and/or minimize its impact on your Firm.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the causes and implications of burnout.
• Recognize proactive techniques to avoid burnout.

People and machines working autonomously and contributing to overall problem solving in the work force is a natural evolution in the workplace. As we reinvent our firms, it is becoming common place to look at all processes, services and tasks to see where it makes sense to utilize technology and/or humans to collaboratively create a firm that is providing an amazing client experience. In this session we will:

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the fear that some humans feel when looking at AI and how we must overcome that fear.
• Analyze real life examples of firms that are actively using humans and technology in concert together.
• Identify actions that will allow your firm to make positive and successful steps to reinvent your firm

Substantive analytical procedures are used in nearly all audit engagements. But unlike substantive tests of details, such as sampling, analytical procedure are often performed without a cohesive model to guide their design, their evaluation, and the extent to which they provide sufficient evidence relative to audit risk. Expanding on the guidance in the new Evidence Standard, this session provides a framework for designing stronger analytical procedures, determining the level of evidence needed from - and provided by - analytical procedures, and using analytical procedures to drive audit quality and audit efficiency. Discussion will also include incorporating more advanced data analysis tools into the audit strategy. The session is focused on practical guidance and examples that you can take back to your firm and use right away in your audits and audit training programs.

Learning Objectives:

• Apply a model for determining the level of evidence needed from - and provided by - analytical procedures
• Use analytical procedures that provide the necessary level of evidence
• Identify an audit strategy that considers the relative evidence provided by analytical procedures and other audit procedures
• Select advanced analytical techniques

Accounting for the issuance of debt and equity securities is one of the most challenging areas in all of US GAAP. Using a case study, this session will demonstrate the process in accounting for capital raising activities involving convertible securities (including Simple Agreements for Future Equity, or SAFEs) and warrants.

Learning Objectives:

• Analyze the roadmap in accounting for complex financing arrangements
• Distinguish between freestanding instruments and embedded features
• Determine how to journalize transactions involving the issuance of baskets of securities

This panel of accounting and auditing experts will answer your most pressing questions from the day's sessions.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify key considerations in auditing, accounting, ethics, independence, and quality management.
• Select best practices in these areas and learn how to apply them in their day-to-day work.
• Apply practical guidance on how to navigate complex issues and challenges that arise in these areas.

Fraud is always on the minds of auditors, but in the current economic environment it should appear as a flashing red light. Opportunity, rationalization and motive, the three pillars of the fraud triangle, can be extremely high in a recessionary period, like the one we are seeing today. What types of fraud are being perpetrated today? How can auditors be more aware and continue to fulfill their responsibilities under US GAAS? The financial statement auditor’s identification of fraud risk factors, their assessment of fraud risk, and their fraud risk responses are key to the auditor’s consideration of fraud and fraud detection and this session will highlight recent research conducted, the current schemes being seen and the auditor’s responsibilities with respect to fraud. Addressing the issue from all sides, this panel will examine the activities from the academic, forensic and practitioner points-of-view. Never a topic to overlook, with stories from the front lines, be ready going into your next audit when it comes to the potential for fraud.

Learning Objectives:

• Recognize the key results of recent academic research on fraud to update and inform practitioners, researchers, standard setters, regulators, and other stakeholders in the financial reporting process.
• Identify the different types of fraud currently being seen in practice.
• Recall the requirements for auditors with respect to fraud identification and detection under GAAS.
• Recognize the importance of professional skepticism and how skepticism plays a key role in addressing fraud in a financial statement audit.

Understanding how and why people make decisions is a very difficult concept to grasp. Furthermore, influencing one’s decision making can be even more challenging. In the business world, building connections and influencing decision making is key for the success of any firm. To help professionals develop emotional intelligence and to understand the ideal frame of mind, Strategic Advisory Solutions’ Business Strategy team offers “Building Connections and Influencing Decision Making.” This interactive workshop teaches numerous best practices that can be utilized every day.

Learning Objectives:

• Learn tools and action steps to help move clients and prospects into the ideal frame of mind to make a decision that sticks
• Learn a framework for forming questions and responding in order to demonstrate empathy
• Learn strategies for developing situational awareness around preferred communication styles and techniques to adapt your approach

The session will cover the changing landscape of running next-gen practices, including the use of technology to help you scale a more hands-on approach for younger, tech-savvy clients. As an example of the use of technology, the following Session Description was written by ChatGPT in 10 seconds:_ The session may begin with an overview of the challenges facing wealth management professionals today, including increased competition, changing client needs and expectations, and the rise of digital technology. The presenter may then outline some of the key trends and best practices that are driving success in the industry today, such as the use of advanced analytics and artificial intelligence, personalized client experiences, and digital marketing and branding. Next, the presenter may dive into the specifics of how to create and operate a next-gen practice, including steps such as: * Defining your target market: Wealth management professionals need to be very clear about who their target clients are and what they are looking for in a financial advisor. This may involve conducting research on the demographics, psychographics, and financial needs of your ideal clients. * Embracing technology: Wealth management professionals should leverage the latest technology to streamline their operations, enhance their client experiences, and stay ahead of the competition. This may include using advanced analytics to identify investment opportunities, offering online portals for clients to access their accounts, and using social media and other digital marketing tools to reach new clients. * Developing a unique value proposition: Wealth management professionals need to be able to clearly articulate their unique value proposition to potential clients. This may involve differentiating themselves from other advisors in the market by offering specialized services, a more personalized approach, or better investment returns. * Investing in your team: A next-gen practice should prioritize hiring and retaining top talent, with a focus on recruiting younger professionals who have a deep understanding of digital technology and can help drive innovation within the firm. The session may conclude with a discussion of the benefits of operating a next-gen practice, including increased profitability, improved client satisfaction, and greater competitiveness in the marketplace. Overall, the session would be aimed at helping wealth management professionals adapt to the changing industry landscape and position themselves for success in the years to come.

Learning Objectives:

• Tips and tricks for pricing, tech stack, operations, scope of services, nicheing, etc.
• Learn what a next-gen practice looks like compared to more traditional models

Environmental, social and governance (ESG) strategies have experienced a massive inflow of capital despite a lack of evidence that ESG investing accomplishes its purported goals and without investors having information, tools and methods to evaluate and communicate their ESG objectives. Without these tools, it is impossible for investors with ESG intent to know if they are getting what they are paying for, to distinguish between investment managers based on non-financial objectives or to improve the likelihood of achieving positive ESG investing outcomes. This session highlights key challenges faced by ESG investors and portfolio managers implementing ESG investment mandates, provides guidance on the information required to make informed ESG investing decisions and proposes a performance evaluation and attribution framework to support the ESG investment management process.

Learning Objectives:

• Describe the importance and challenges of defining non-financial investment objectives for a portfolio with an ESG investment mandate
• Articulate the relationship between ESG performance evaluation and ESG investment objectives
• Evaluate portfolio performance (including non-financial portfolio impact) for a portfolio with an ESG investment mandate

Have you heard the tale of the founder who wouldn't retire? Or the one about two partners who provided very different levels of value to the firm, but retired with the same buyout? The lateral-hire partner who spent little time working and a lot of time gambling with the firm's money? The firm deadlocked on any initiative due to unanimous voting or management by committee? Join us for these troublesome tales of partnership matters gone wrong, and learn how you can avoid their fate.

Learning Objectives:

• Analyze the surprising and significant ways that CPA firms have created problems by having poor partnership or operating agreements
• Identify the good intentions behind their original agreement terms (or lack of).
• Analyze how a partner agreement is not only an important legal document but serves as a blueprint for firm governance.
• Use recommendations for action so you can tell a tale of success about your firm.

Gather with your peers to share best practices to face common practice management challenges. You'll network with a community of small firm practitioners and identify resources to help you succeed.

Learning Objectives:

• Analyze the current practice management landscape for small firms
• Identify ways to tackle pressing practice management issues using resources and best practices

Staffing continues to be a challenge for most firms creating capacity issues with the potential to cause burnout, decreases in client satisfaction and stagnant growth. So how are firms addressing the issue? One strategy is formally evaluating clients and creating strategies to transition clients out of the practice. Client base right-sizing, or client culling, is an effective way to restructure workloads and enable your people to do more for existing clients—but it’s an endeavor not to be taken lightly. Transitioning clients out of your practice can create opportunities to grow (addition by subtraction), but must be handled with intention and expert communication. This session will offer attendees and process to evaluate existing clients, transition strategies to move them out of your practice and tools to support the process. We’ll also explore resources available from the PCPS to help.

Learning Objectives:

• Compare options for evaluating and transitioning clients
• Analyze revenue planning considerations for client-base right-sizing
• Identify communicating the right message, the right way
• Use resources and tools available to support your process

Coverage of significant court decisions, federal tax regulations, IRS rulings, and law changes in the past year relevant to all types of businesses and entities. These developments involve deductions, accounting methods, energy credits, new corporate taxes, and some state tax developments to watch. Due diligence and planning considerations are emphasized throughout.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify tax planning and compliance points from significant federal and state tax developments of the past year.
• Identify due diligence actions highlighted by tax law developments of the past year.

Robotic process automation (RPA) bots, custom apps, and digital plumbing are revolutionizing how work gets done in today’s economy. Many firms and their clients have embracing “best of breed” solutions and would like to automate the exchange of data between different business solutions using solutions like the Microsoft Power Platform (Power Automate, Power Apps, and Power BI), which already work with over 300 different platforms. While these technologies have already been adopted by many enterprises, their uses in small and mid-sized businesses are still emerging, and accounting professionals must understand the implications of their use on their internal control structure and situations where applying RPA is beneficial. Attend this session to learn the fundamentals of these innovative automation solutions and see how others are effectively using these solutions and watch a demonstration of an RPA being built in session.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify key terms associated with process automation technologies like robotic process automation, digital plumbing, pro-code, low-code/no-code, and enterprise architecture
• Differentiate between digital plumbing solutions, application program interfaces (APIs), and robotic process automation
• Formulate a simple RPA

Do you hear talk about having a “Tech Stack” and wonder if you have one at your firm? Or maybe you don’t know where to begin? During this session, we will discuss best practices in creating a tech stack so you may have the opportunity to visualize what could look like for your own CAS practice. Whether you deliver bookkeeping, controllership, or outsourced CFO services, these solution providers will provide live demos so you can identify the technology solutions that can help you automate your practice, free up more time to spend with your clients, and to solve many of the pain points you encounter daily delivering these services.

Learning Objectives:

• Recognize how to select technology that will meet the needs of your CAS practice.
• Identify technology solutions that your clients in vertical industries can take advantage of better information and time savings.
• Select a technology strategy and assess the right technology fit for your practice.

We invite you to see how Workday is supporting transformations for organizations through a demonstration of our Financial Accounting Solution. Discover how easy Workday can transact, consolidate, report, and analyze all in a single cloud environment driving higher business effectiveness from your accounting efforts. Empowering organizations to plan, execute, and analyze in a single cloud solution.

Today’s businesses say their finance function is not proactive enough in using data and data analytics to identify, prioritize, and address critical issues in the business. In this session, we will focus on how your CAS practice can help its clients achieve its strategic and profitability improvement goals through: * Structuring data in a way that makes it easy to analyze * Ensuring data accuracy * Accessing that data in real-time * Creating a practice that holds experience in connecting data trends with critical business issues. * Upskilling talent that holds analytics, creative, curious, and intuitive skill sets

Learning Objectives:

• Determine ways to expand traditional metrics by utilizing data analytics
• Analyze how to upskill talent that holds analytics, creative, curious, and intuitive skill sets
• Identify the various technology tools available to deliver the desired result

When we are in situations where we are the only ones or perceive ourselves as the "only one," we may not perform at our best because often, "imposter syndrome" can kick in. What is imposter syndrome? How can we prepare ourselves to lessen its impact? Much has been said about the negative impacts of imposter syndrome, but this session will focus on what we can control and plan to do to boost our confidence and chances of success for everyone to shine at their best.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the potential impact of imposter syndrome with greater self-awareness
• Recognize skills for proactively building resilience
• Recall tips you can use right away to more quickly and easily help yourself and others
• Indicate how to use inclusive leadership and belonging leadership strategies so that all feel safe and welcome

An overview of federal profession issues including legislative and regulatory actions.

Learning Objectives:

• Learn federal and regulatory issues that impact the profession.
• Learn how the political landscape can impact legislation and regulations.

Join Bob Keebler for a fast-paced review of the important estate planning developments in 2022 along with an analysis of what CPAs should be doing in the fall of 2022 and early 2023. Bob will also cover the alternative valuation and gain/loss recognition issues associated with today’s market volatility in the context of an estate administration.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand key developments for the prior year.
• Understand potential key developments for the upcoming year.

As an accounting or finance professional, are you interested in being a better business partner? If so, come attend this session to hear from Chief Operating and Accounting officers their ideas and opinions about how finance and accounting can better partner with operations and all business units.

Learning Objectives:

• Recognize the needs of business unit when it comes to finance
• Identify the skills needed to become a better business partner
• Indicate what C-suite members would like to know from the finance and accounting teams

This session looks at the kind of skills and perspectives leadership/management requires if we want to be as effective in our people positions as we have been in our technical ones. Some of the topics we will cover are: * The most common areas of focus in Strategic Planning for Firms * Common areas of misfocus for leaders/managers * How to develop people faster and hold them accountable * Communicating clearly, often, while minimizing ambiguity * For your organization to get better, faster and stronger, as its leader, you need to understand Change Management Principles

Learning Objectives:

• Identify typical issues that are top Strategic priorities for CPAs
• Analyze root causes of critical issues firms are facing and why progress often isn't made
• Recognize the importance of accountability in change management

With deterioration in the general economic conditions due to inflation, supply chain, liquidity concerns, and decreased consumer spending resulting in numerous accounting and audit matters in financial reporting. This session will address Going Concern, Debt Compliance, Impairment, Fair Value, and Revenue Recognition issues impacted by the current economic conditions.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify how current economic conditions impact accounting and auditing considerations.
• Analyze the impact of unfavorable economic conditions and determine their effect on financial statement disclosures

This session will provide an interactive update on recent PCAOB inspection findings, enforcement actions, and standard setting activities.

Learning Objectives:

• Recall recent PCAOB inspection findings, enforcement actions, and standard-setting activities and explain their potential impact on audit quality and financial reporting.
• Identify best practices for addressing common audit deficiencies and staying up-to-date with evolving standards and guidance.

A large number of commercial entities and their auditors now find themselves subject to the audit requirements of 2 CFR 200 (Uniform Guidance) for the first time. This course will explain how to determine if a commercial entity is subject to a Single Audit and what will be tested in for the program(s) selected for audit. In addition, attendees will be provided with best practices along with tools and resources for both auditees and auditors in order to achieve successful results in the Single Audit.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify if a commercial entity is subject to a Single Audit and what will be tested in for the program(s) selected for audit
• Recall best practices, tools, and resources for both auditees and auditors in order to achieve successful results in the Single Audit

This session will dive into the practices that drive sustained business performance under difficult market conditions. We will explore current industry dynamics and take a look back to the lessons from the Great Recession, examining four key practices that enabled a select group of advisory firms to outperform.

Learning Objectives:

• Recognize how to optimize business performance through the proactive management of key growth levers that will sustain a firm during challenging market conditions.
• Analyze the big industry trends impacting on advisory firm performance to support smart human capital decisions and advance the client experience.
• Identify ways to protect owners during downward market conditions and better position for success when the recovery takes hold.

Now that we have experienced our new “normal tax season” after the pandemic, it’s a perfect time to debrief and reflect on this past tax season. This session will present as a panel of seasoned professionals discussing what went well, what we are struggling with, and what strategies our firms are using that made this tax season a success. The session will be interactive by using polls and audience participation to identify and tackle the issues the collective group cares most about. Firms will likely take away ideas to implement into their own practice.

Learning Objectives:

• Recall best practices among firms related to operating a less “taxing” tax season.
• Identify key areas we are all struggling with and learn simple strategies you can put into play to make tax season better.

In this course, Tony Nitti will update you on recent developments involving S corporations.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify opportunities to cure an invalid S election using Rev. Proc. 2022-19.
• Understand the due date for a final S corporation return when the corporation is acquired and a Section 338(h)(10) or Section 336(e) election is made.
• Identify issues in key court cases involving S corporations over the past 18 months.

Checking in with the status of Section 174 R&E expenses and how to help your clients navigate the current landscape.

Learning Objectives:

• Update on the status of Section 174 capitalization
• Practical advice for how to discuss 174 with clients

This program will provide an overview of the often surprising state tax consequences of remote workers and some tips and traps when a taxpayer claims a change of residence to a new (often low or no-tax) state.

Learning Objectives:

• To understand the state tax impact of remote work on individual employees and their employers.
• To learn what it takes to get a state to accept a taxpayer's change of residence.
• To identify some of the numerous traps of multi-state business activities.

From IoT to AI - Web3 to ChatGPT. What does this all mean? And, why should you care? These emerging technologies are closer than you think. Now is the time to not only prepare for them but to embrace them within your firm. Join this session to learn how you and your firm can leverage the latest in technology.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify emerging technologies and how they've changed over time
• Recognize currently trending technologies with a deep dive on current trends such as Blockchain, AI, and the Metaverse
• Recall core success skills